Over the last three weeks Kenya has witnessed widespread protests throughout the country. The proposed 2024/2025 Finance Bill, which included a raft of new taxes, seemed to catalyze public dissent. But the demonstrations quickly grew to include broader grievances with the administration of President William Ruto. These include deteriorating quality of public services (especially health and education), corruption and waste in the public sector, lack of jobs, and the rising cost of living that has resulted in declining incomes over the last five years. The police response to the protests so far has resulted in at least 50 deaths.
Kenya’s dire fiscal situation had prompted a series of tax hikes over the last two years. The 2024/2025 Finance Bill initially proposed new taxes on essentials like bread, sugar, and cooking oil, in an attempt to raise government revenues. Kenya’s public debt stands at about $80 billion – that’s around 70% of GDP, with debt servicing consuming about half of revenues. Ongoing fiscal reforms are happening under an International Monetary Fund (IMF) program whose primary goals are to raise more revenue, reduce deficits, and place the country’s burgeoning public debt on a more sustainable path.
Protesters aren’t following prior patterns
One of the defining features of the current protests has been the claim by demonstrators to be leaderless. While it is true that several focal people have emerged to coordinate fundraising, lead online discussions, and coordinate the printing of posters and t-shirts, etc., the demonstrators so far have eschewed any association with Kenya’s mainstream political parties. Part of their mobilization “brand” is that they are “leaderless” and “tribeless.” Previous protests against government policies, including the 2023/2024 Finance Bill, were led by opposition parties. That made it easy for the government to cast the protests as representative of specific ethnic interests.
So what has changed? I argue that Kenya’s protests reflect the ongoing erosion of the legitimacy of important institutions – especially the presidency, parliament, and political parties, but also religious institutions and the authority of Kenya’s ethnic political kingpins. This erosion is an important backdrop to the current protests. Young demonstrators have come out in large numbers to express their discontent at elected officials in both the national and county governments.
Over the last decade, Afrobarometer surveys show a decline in the number of respondents who express trust in the presidency and parliament. Legislators’ approval declined from 55% in 2008 to 45% in 2022. The share of respondents in Kenya who say they trust the president “a lot” has declined from 43.1% in 2014 to 21.8% in 2022 (and it is likely that the decline has deepened since President William Ruto took office in late 2022). At the same time, the share of respondents that declare affiliation with a political party has declined from almost 70% in 2003 to less than 50% in 2022 (see figure).
Surveys suggest declining participation in formal politics among younger Kenyans
Notably, the decline in affiliation with political parties has happened at a faster rate among younger Kenyans – the demographic that has been the vanguard of current protests. This is clear in the data when one uses the 35-year cutoff (Kenya’s official youth status marker). While in previous rounds roughly the same proportion of respondents around this cutoff age reported non-affiliation with parties, a marked divergence occurred after 2014. At that point, younger respondents’ disengagement from political parties began happening at a relatively faster rate (see figure).
The decline in youth participation in organized politics was evident in the 2022 elections. The share of youth (35 and under) registered to vote declined by over 5%. An outstanding research question is why declining participation in formal politics (through party affiliation and voting) has been followed by an apparent willingness to engage in street demonstrations.
These trends in the erosion of trust in core state institutions have also been reinforced by Ruto’s political style over the last 18 months. Ruto won by just over 211,000 votes (or 1.64%) in the 2022 elections. Yet he managed to successfully entice several opposition legislators to cross the aisle and guarantee his coalition’s dominance in the National Assembly and the Senate.
These moves made Ruto an easy target for protesters
Ruto’s political dominance planted the seeds of his current political challenges. First, the cabinet that he was able to get approved by Parliament – with most cabinet members lacking both experience in public service and their own independent political bases – eventually proved unable to deliver, especially in essential dockets like health, education, and agriculture. This helped fuel public anger over the proposed tax increases. The president’s dominance over legislative affairs also kept this same cabinet largely insulated from scrutiny. Second, Ruto repeatedly was able to help push through legislation without any opposition votes. The passage of the 2023/2024 Finance Bill attracted big protests organized by the leading opposition coalition. The same uncompromising approach led to the passage of the most recent Finance Bill – the one that triggered street protests.
Ruto’s total dominance over the legislature has concentrated blame on myriad government failures on the presidency – and that’s currently reflected in demonstrators’ demands that he resign. As I outline in my book Legislative Development in Africa: Politics and Postcolonial Legacies, the Kenyan legislature has historically served an important informational function when conditions allowed for robust internal debate and improvements on legislation. Under those circumstances, presidents were able to get better legislation. And, importantly, presidents could also share blame with legislators in case of unpopular laws.
Ruto backed down – and the protests continued
Ruto has backed down to some extent – he rescinded the Finance Bill and disbanded his cabinet. There is little evidence that Kenya’s protests will abate any time soon, however – for two reasons. Protesters are demanding far-reaching public sector changes and improvements in the state of the economy. These demands will be hard to achieve in the medium term.
Second, the strategic refusal by protesters to accept a leader or group of leadership has denied Ruto a focal point for negotiation – or a leader he can persuade to back down with the offer of a government appointment. In the same vein, the protesters’ claim to being “tribeless” has also taken off the table the government’s standard approach of dealing with national crises: merely increase the size and ethnic diversity of the governing coalition. So, in other words, these protests now demonstrate the decreasing salience of ethnicity as the primary organizing principle in Kenyan politics.
In the long run, many will likely see Kenya’s protests as a lesson in how incumbents may struggle to respond to crises – particularly those that appear to scramble established political cleavages (ethnicity) and means of purchasing legitimacy (ethnic inclusion). The protests also reflect the consequences of executive dominance over important institutions like legislatures, as well as the ongoing erosion of participation in organized politics through parties.
