Demonstrations in Kenya: Important Details You Need to Know

A Google search for demon­stra­tions in Kenya shows cap­tions from news orga­ni­za­tions cov­er­ing the oppo­si­tion protests against the gov­ern­ment in Kenya. April 1, 2023

“We shall now hold protests every Mon­day and every Thurs­day begin­ning next week,” said Raila Odin­ga, oppo­si­tion par­ty leader who lost to Pres­i­dent William Ruto in Kenya’s last pres­i­den­tial elections.

A for­eign source cov­er­ing the recent Kenyan demon­stra­tions said Kenyans are angry Ruto lied to them. Police arrest­ed over 200 peo­ple dur­ing a March 20 protest orga­nized by Odinga.

One per­son is report­ed dead and oth­ers are injured in the after­math. In an iron­ic twist, the protest about the cost of liv­ing has cost Kenyans a rev­enue loss of 40 mil­lion in the cap­i­tal,  Nairobi. 

In a pre­vi­ous post, I cov­ered the Kenya elec­tions and how democ­ra­cy pre­vailed. A key griev­ance for the oppo­si­tion is that they had won the con­test­ed elec­tions. How­ev­er, after going to court, Ruto’s win was upheld. This might seem like a biased per­spec­tive on the sit­u­a­tion. How­ev­er, the oppo­si­tion in Kenya has con­test­ed every elec­tion since 2007.

What is Happening? 

The cur­rent Kenyan strug­gles are due to infra­struc­ture spend­ing, a bal­loon­ing wage bill, loan repay­ments, and fail­ure to meet rev­enue col­lec­tion quo­tas.  All this trans­lates into a rise in the cost of liv­ing and increased taxes.

Kenya’s exter­nal debt was $31 bil­lion in 2018. By 2021 the debt stood at $41 bil­lion. In March 2018, the oppo­si­tion leader Odin­ga and then Pres­i­dent Uhu­ru Keny­at­ta, through a hand­shake, agreed to work togeth­er. The hand­shake proves the cur­rent Pres­i­dent, William Ruto, and the for­mer pres­i­dents, Keny­at­ta, and Odin­ga were once in government. 

How­ev­er, dur­ing the peri­od when they were in lead­er­ship, Kenya’s for­eign debt rose by around $10 bil­lion. The ques­tion now is: if the debt came about because of pre­vi­ous gov­ern­ment spend­ing, who is respon­si­ble for it? 

How the Media is Reporting the Demonstrations

The cov­er­age of the demon­stra­tions appears to be fair. The Times of India wrote an excel­lent arti­cle high­light­ing the caus­es of the cri­sis. It said the lead­ing cause was debt.

How­ev­er, in the arti­cles, the images accom­pa­ny­ing the analy­sis were select­ed from anoth­er  African coun­try, Nige­ria. I won­der why this was so when the focus was on Kenya, not Nigeria.

An image of protests would have been excus­able. The image is of a woman in the Makoko float­ing slum in Lagos Nigeria.

They say a pic­ture is worth a thou­sand words which a per­son view­ing the arti­cle would assume is a Kenyan image. Even more puz­zling is that the image is cap­tioned and prop­er­ly labeled. The ques­tion how­ev­er remains, why use an image of a cer­tain coun­try to report the news of anoth­er region?