KENYA
POLICE SHOOT AT URBANIZED AND EDUCATED GEN Z
(July 19, 2025)
NAIROBI. Exactly one year after demonstrations against the finance bill that significantly increased taxes, especially for lower– and middle-income classes, Nairobi’s Gen Z has once again went to the streets to protest against William Ruto’s government.
What sparked the riots? The death of Albert Ojwang, 31, blogger and teacher, who was arrested on June 7 and died the following day while in police custody.
Official sources claim suicide, but marks found on his body indicate he was severely tortured while in a detention center.
Meanwhile, protestors are being attacked by groups hired from the capital’s slums, armed with whips, sticks, stones, and knives. According to Kenyan press, these clashes, which have reportedly been planned for some time, have led to the destruction of businesses.
July 7 was a particularly bloody day, commemorating the 1990 clashes[1]: 31 people were killed, including a 12-year-old girl.
“This year the country seemed on the brink of the abyss,” commented Nairobi’s newspaper The Star . “From Nairobi to Kisumu, from Mombasa to Eldoret, deserted streets, empty shops and offices, public transport halted: on the horizon, columns of smoke from burning barricades. In various cities and informal settlements, heavily armed police officers clashed with groups of young people frustrated by unemployment, who demanded President William Ruto’s resignation.”
In a year of protests against the government, at least 100 young people have died and 80 have disappeared, likely swallowed by the repressive system put in place by the regime.
Yet, upon coming to power in 2022, the President had promised to end violent police practices, and in 2023, he disbanded the brigade previously given a license to kill. “No Kenyan will die in circumstances the government cannot explain,” he promised.
However, in the aftermath of July 7, 2025, he now publicly sided with the security forces, while a video shows the Interior Minister instructing officers to shoot at demonstrators.
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FURTHER ARRESTS
Almost simultaneously with Ojwang’s arrest, Rose Njeri, another young Kenyan and IT expert, was also arrested. Her crime? Creating software that allowed people to criticize the 2025 finance bill.
“On the one hand,” writes Patrick Gathara[2], “the government invites citizens to participate in public debate, and on the other, it arrests and punishes them. In reality, the ruling elite is obsessed with last year’s youth protests and the poor image those events cast on Kenya.”
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AUTHORITARIAN DRIFT
What is happening in and around Nairobi is part of a broader authoritarian drift affecting all of East Africa.
• In Tanzania, where presidential elections is schedule in October, several opposition figures have been arrested and put on trial.
• In Burundi and Rwanda, the ruling groups are severely restricting freedoms.
• In Uganda, Yoweri Museveni, nearly eighty years old and in power since 1986, announced he will run for president again in January 2026, while preparing for his son to take over the reins of the state.
At a time when governments in the West are also strongly tempted by authoritarian impulses, democracy is not faring well in the youngest continent either, risking plunging various states back into the darkest years of oligarchic totalitarianism.
PIER LUIGI GIACOMONI
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NOTES:
[1] On July 7, 1990, large demonstrations against dictator Daniel Arap Moi took place in Kenya: this is known as “saba saba” (seven seven in Swahili).
[2] P. Gathara, East Africa’s rulers saw what Gen Z can do – now they’re striking first, https://www.aljazeera.com/opinions/2025/6/11/east-africas-rulers-saw-what-gen-z-can-do-now-theyre-striking-first
