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People attend a demonstration against Kenya's proposed finance bill 2024/2025 in Nairobi, Kenya, June 25.
Protests turn deadly as Kenyans storm Parliament
Kenyans enraged over a new finance bill that would increase taxes attempted to storm Parliament in Nairobi on Tuesday, prompting police to use live ammunition. Part of the building was set on fire, and multiple people were reportedly killed.
The demonstrations, which have also spread to other major cities and led Kenya to deploy the military, have been “a long time coming” and reflect the general mood across the country, says Caroline Gray, a Fulbright scholar based in Nairobi.
Kenyans — especially the younger generation, which is driving the protests — are fed up with the high cost of living and rising unemployment. “These proposed tax increases on everyday, basic goods have pushed people over the edge,” says Gray.
The protesters wanted lawmakers to scrap the bill, which aims to ease Kenya’s sizable debt burden, but it was pushed through Parliament on Tuesday. President William Ruto can now either sign the legislation or send it back for amendments.
Many young Kenyans who once supported Ruto feel betrayed and are now calling for his resignation. “They feel Ruto is taking instruction from the IMF,” says Gray, which recently gave Kenya additional loans to help with its financial problems – but with conditions to ensure repayment.
Meanwhile, the Kenyan government just sent a large police force to help quell gang violence in Haiti, which bolsters the view among the population that Ruto is “not working for them but for his global image,” Gray adds.
The president has two weeks to act on the legislation. Ruto on Tuesday pledged a tough response to the “treasonous” protests. In the meantime, if Ruto doesn’t make changes to the bill or other concessions, Gray says the protests are likely to “continue and escalate.”
Toussaint Louverture International Airport in Port-au-Prince, Haiti. Commercial flights in and out of the airport have been suspended since early March 2024 when armed groups targeted the facility and nearby domestic airport.
Kenyan officials arrive in Haiti to prep police deployment
An advance team of Kenyan security officials has arrived in Haiti to make final preparations for the deployment of a long-awaited police force to help take back the streets from gangs. If they find the facilities for the mission are adequately prepared, it could mean Kenyan cops hit the streets of Port-au-Prince within weeks or even days.
The arrival coincides with Kenyan President William Ruto’s state visit to Washington, DC, during which he and President Joe Biden are planning to discuss the deployment. The US has opened its wallet to the tune of $300 million to support the Kenyan mission to Haiti — after all, a stable Haiti is much more in Washington’s interest than Nairobi’s. But the ties go deeper.
The Biden administration has pulled Kenya closer to the center of its Africa policy as relations cool with Ethiopia and South Africa, formerly Washington’s best allies on the continent, and military juntas in the crucial Sahel region expel US forces. Kenya has a stable democracy and growing economy, and it has proven its commitment to regional stability with troop deployments to Somalia, South Sudan, and the Democratic Republic of Congo, among other conflicts.
But the deployment to Haiti presents big risks. It will be the first time an African country has led a security deployment outside the continent, and it will be under heavy scrutiny given the atrocious behavior of past foreign peacekeepers in Haiti. The UN force that operated there after the 2010 earthquake is accused of abandoning hundreds of children they fathered with Haitian women and of bringing cholera back to the country.
If Kenyan officers fall or are injured, a domestic political crisis could ensue for Ruto, whose constituents don’t necessarily see the sense in sending their boys to die on an island 7,500 miles away. We’re watching for how much Washington backs up Nairobi when the going gets tough — and with Haiti’s gangs promising a hard fight, that could be soon.Kenya’s mission to Haiti hits early roadblock
It’s been barely a week since the UN approved Kenya’s proposal to lead a police force to quash Haiti’s gangs – and the wheels are already coming off.
Kenya’s high court on Monday temporarily froze the deployment, citing a lawsuit by a local politician who says President William Ruto’s approval of the plan was unconstitutional. The government has to respond to the lawsuit this week but won’t get a full hearing until Oct. 24.
The Haiti plan, part of Ruto’s bid to raise Kenya’s global profile, has caused broader blowback among Kenyan elites, says Mercy Kaburu, a professor at United States International University in Nairobi. “The situation of Haiti is understandably dangerous, and there are concerns as to why President Ruto has agreed to deploy Kenyan police.”
The country’s main opposition leader, Raila Odinga, has blasted the Haiti mission – and at a time when Ruto is already struggling with broader discontent about the economy. Last week, the president reshuffled his cabinet, moving his foreign minister to the tourism portfolio in a move that suggested infighting within Ruto’s circle.
Will Ruto back down on Haiti? The US and the UN both strongly support the mission, as does the Haitian government.
“He is all in on Haiti,” says Connor Vasey, a Kenya expert at Eurasia Group.
But Kenya’s own courts may yet have the final word.
For more on why Kenya wants the daunting task of battling Haiti’s gangs, see our explainer here.Kenya's President William Ruto, flanked by African leaders, addresses the media after the close of the Africa Climate Summit in Nairobi.
African leaders call for global carbon taxes
One of the big questions hanging over the historic African Climate Summit in Nairobi this week was: Where’s the money going to come from? After all, switching to sustainable energy sources and coping with the worst effects of climate change is expensive, and while African nations suffer disproportionately from the risks — droughts, conflicts over scarce resources, irregular migration — the continent receives just 12% of global financing to tackle the problem.
The summit’s solution? A global tax on the trade and use of fossil fuels. The levy would raise money for climate action, especially in poorer nations, as well as to reduce borrowing rates for lower income countries struggling with high debt burdens.
Global taxes are a tough sell of any kind, as they require lots of coordination and compromise. But if the African proposal can get buy-in from heavyweights like the US, EU, and China, it will have a shot.
Next up? The African proposal will be a major part of the UN’s upcoming COP28 summit on climate change in the UAE this November.
Riot police disperse supporters of Kenyan opposition leader Raila Odinga in Nairobi.
As Kenyans protest, their politicians play chicken
For two weeks, Kenya's major cities have been hit by anti-government protests that have since turned violent. Security forces have tear-gassed demonstrators in the capital, Nairobi, while pro-government mobs ransacked former President Uhuru Kenyatta’s farm and businesses shut their doors for fear of looting.
With no end in sight, the next round of rallies is scheduled for Thursday.
Despite the institutional gains made over the last decade, the specter of previous episodes of political violence hangs heavy in Kenya. So, what’s going on?
The flames of unrest are being stoked by two bitter political rivals, opposition leader Raila Odinga and President William Ruto, who squared off in a tight presidential election in 2022. Odinga is contesting his narrow loss to Ruto, the ex-VP of Kenyatta (who endorsed Odinga in the race).
These three political heavyweights have a long history of working together in Kenya, where the separation between elite business and politics is slim to none.
Who’s who:
- Odinga hails from a political dynasty in Kenya. Despite losing the presidency five times, his political power stems from his ability to mobilize his passionate supporters — who have granted him nicknames like “Father,” “Act of God,” and most endearingly: “Tractor” — to stir up trouble on the streets.
- Ruto claims to be the first president not to come from a political family. He won in 2022 as a champion of the poor, pushing his rags-to-riches story and hustler image.
- Kenyatta ruled the country from 2013 to 2022. He’s left behind a mixed legacy of massive infrastructure development but also debt and corruption.
The relationship between the three is, to put it mildly, awkward. Ruto wants to take credit for what went right under Kenyatta and distance himself from the pitfalls. Similarly, Kenyatta and Odinga are old political rivals who buried the hatchet in 2018 with a joint statement declaring each other as “brothers.”
Officially, the protests are over inflation, which Odinga blames on Ruto and Ruto blames on Kenyatta. But Odinga also wants the president to step down because he claims — without evidence and despite the Supreme Court ruling otherwise — that he was cheated in 2022.
The problem is that Odinga was so sure he'd win that his coalition has struggled to regroup as the opposition, says Eurasia Group analyst Connor Vasey. Meanwhile, Ruto has co-opted many Odinga allies, hampering the ability of his rival to challenge him in parliament.
Odinga is using the cost-of-living narrative as a "lightning rod to ensure turnout" at his protests, Vasey adds. This is dangerous, he explains, because the opposition leader is a master at rallying his supporters to reach his political ends, no matter the risk of instability. (After he lost to Kenyatta in 2017, Odinga spurred violent political protests until he received public recognition of his power – in the form of a firm handshake – from the president.)
So while Odinga is officially trying to overturn Ruto's victory, Vasey believes that what he really wants is a "Handshake 2.0" or public recognition of his political power and influence.
Kenya is thus stuck in a political game of chicken in which Ruto, as president, has the upper hand (and not just because he was once a chicken vendor).
Odinga might be a political force on the streets, but Ruto is consolidating power in parliament and using the security forces to stop the protests from spreading beyond Nairobi and other major cities. The president believes he can wait Odinga out, gambling that if he doesn’t get what he wants soon, he’ll lose the political momentum.
Meanwhile, Vasey adds, Odinga has no choice but to “escalate in the hope [that] Ruto bites.”
Supporters of Kenyan opposition leader Raila Odinga throw stones at riot cops in Nairobi.
What We’re Watching: Kenyan protest politics, twice the Ma in China, SNP names new leader
Anti-government protests escalate in Kenya
On Monday, hundreds of protesters stormed a controversial farm owned by Kenya’s former President Uhuru Kenyatta. The rioters stole livestock, cut down trees, and then set the land on fire.
The motive likely has something to do with the ongoing protests against the government of President William Ruto captained by opposition leader Raila Odinga, who narrowly lost the 2022 election to Ruto, Kenyatta’s ex-VP. (The members of this political threesome have all worked with each other in the past in Kenya, where elite business and politics are about as tight as can be.)
This behavior is nothing new for Odinga. While the protests are outwardly about the rising cost of living, Eurasia Group analyst Connor Vasey says that the opposition is just “taking his politics to the streets,” using inflation and other grievances as a “lightning rod to ensure turnout”. And while he is officially trying to overturn Ruto’s victory, Vasey believes that what Odinga really wants is an unofficial executive role in government.
From here, we can expect a test of political willpower. Odinga is threatening more rallies, while Ruto says he’ll continue to deploy the security forces against the protesters. The president hopes that if his rival doesn’t get his political concessions soon, popular support for his mobilization will subside.
The Mas go to China
On Monday, Alibaba founder Jack Ma appeared in public in China for the first time since late 2020, when he got caught in the crosshairs of Xi Jinping's tech crackdown after criticizing Chinese regulators. The billionaire, once China's richest man, paid the price by giving up control of his fintech company Ant Group, which was also blocked from going public and fined a record $7.5 billion for antitrust violations.
Meanwhile, Ma Ying-jeou (no relation) became the first former president of Taiwan to set foot in China since 1949. Ma — who is also the only Taiwanese leader to have met the sitting Chinese leader — is visiting this week as a private citizen, but anything Taiwan-related is always politically sensitive. What's more, his trip comes just days before current Taiwanese President Tsai Ing-wen travels to Central America and the US amid bubbling cross-strait tensions.
The Ma trips are unrelated and probably coincidental. Still, Jack Ma's resurfacing might be a sign that Xi is no longer going after China's tech titans because he needs them to help the economy recover from zero-COVID. For his part, Ma Ying-jeou probably wants to pitch the opposition Kuomintang party's softer touch with China in contrast with Tsai's hardline diplomacy ahead of the presidential elections in 2024.
Yousaf will lead Scotland’s divided governing party
“We will be the generation to win independence for Scotland.” So pledges Humza Yousaf, who was named leader of the Scottish National Party on Monday following a two-week-long election. Parliament will officially vote him in on Tuesday, naming him Scotland’s sixth first minister, the head of its devolved government.
Press attention will focus on the novelty of his win. Yousaf is the first Muslim to lead a major party in Britain. But he’s also now the first person to lead the SNP following the shock resignation of the still-popular Nicola Sturgeon, whose departure was seen by many as an admission that a new Scottish independence referendum is highly unlikely for the foreseeable future.
Yousaf’s razor-thin victory margin – he won just 52.1% of the vote against rival Kate Forbes – raises the thorny question of whether the party can remain strong without a credible call for a near-term independence vote to keep the party united despite its many differences on other issues.
“We are family,” says Yousaf of the party he now leads. How functional a family? We’re about to find out.
A man scuffles with the security officials before the result of Kenya's presidential election is announced in Nairobi.
What We’re Watching: Kenyan election jitters, Ukraine hits Wagner, Israel strikes near Russian bases
Kenya's new president is … ?
Deputy President William Ruto won Kenya's presidential election with 50.5% of the vote, the electoral commission declared Monday. Still, the process was very messy: authorities initially delayed the announcement amid clashes at the national counting center and accusations of vote rigging from Ruto's rival Raila Odinga. What’s more, four out of the commission's seven members refused to endorse the result over vague fraud claims. So, what happens now? Odinga, who represents the country’s dynastic politics, might contest the result in court, as he did five years ago, when the Supreme Court found so many logistical errors in the presidential election that it forced a rerun. Also, in 2007 more than 1,200 Kenyans were killed following a similarly disputed vote. (Both Ruto and outgoing President Uhuru Kenyatta were then taken before the International Criminal Court for inciting violence, but charges against both were later dropped.) All eyes are now on the 77-year-old Odinga, in his fifth and presumably last run for the presidency. Will he risk more unrest and perhaps violence to win at all costs? Such uncertainty doesn't bode well for East Africa's most vibrant democracy. This election “started off as the most transparent and ends up in farce," tweeted political cartoonist Patrick Gathara.
Ukraine hits Wagner Group HQ
On August 8, a pro-Russian journalist working in the Ukrainian town of Popasna in Russian-held territory posted a series of images from his visit to the local headquarters of a Russian mercenary organization known as the Wagner Group. One of those images included a street sign that read Mironovskaya 12, the building’s address. Though the journalist later deleted that image, it appears the Ukrainian military had already seen it. On Sunday, Ukrainian officials claim its forces destroyed that building with the help of a HIMARS, a US-provided artillery rocket system capable of hitting a target precisely up to 43.5 miles away. Pro-Russian journalists have confirmed the hit, though reports of casualties remain sketchy. It’s another high-profile setback for the Wagner Group, believed to be closely linked to the Kremlin through one of Vladimir Putin’s most trusted advisers and to the GRU, the Russian military intelligence agency. Wagner has been active in Ukraine, Syria, Libya, and West and Central Africa, sometimes at the invitation of local governments. It has also been accused of war crimes and human rights violations.
Israel strikes too close for Russian comfort in Syria
Syria’s state broadcaster said Monday that three Syrian soldiers were killed in a series of Israeli air strikes on Damascus and south of Tartous province. For years, Israel has been striking targets in Syria in order to hamper Iranian efforts to deliver weapons to Hezbollah in neighboring Lebanon. But this time was different: Israel hit targets that are very close to Russia’s sole naval base in the Mediterranean, where Russian warships are docked, and to a Russian air base in Latakia province. Moscow, which backs Syria’s President Bashar al-Assad rand largely controls Syrian airspace, has long allowed Israeli warplanes to target Iranian strategic assets there, so long as they don’t interfere with the Kremlin’s strategic interests in the region. Russia has also been willing to cooperate with Israel on these aerial missions in part because it is competing with Iran for dominance inside Syria. But Israeli-Russian ties have been strained in recent months as Israel has sought to offer some support to Ukraine. Indeed, Russia might punish Israel with more limited access to launch strikes against Syria — a move Israel would see as a big threat to its national security interests.Cricket fans, with their faces painted in the Indian and Pakistani national flag colors, ahead of a match between the two countries.
What We’re Watching: Partition 75th anniversary, Kenyan vote count, US-China in Southeast Asia
India & Pakistan turn 75
This year’s Aug. 15 Diamond Jubilee of Partition, when the British Raj split into India and Pakistan, is a complicated affair. India has gained more from independence in 1947 than Pakistan: earlier this summer, the Indian economy crossed the $3.3 trillion mark and officially overtook the UK to become the world’s fifth-largest — a nice touch to celebrate 75 years of independence from its colonial master. But India’s democratic credentials remain under threat by the rise of Hindu nationalism. However, Pakistan’s experiments after Partition — proxy wars, civil war, martial law, and Islamism — brought much suffering to its people. Today, the country is at the verge of another financial crisis and negotiating its 23rd IMF bailout, as well as in talks with its own version of the Taliban. Unfortunately, a growing nuclear arsenal is the only equalizer for the political and economic imbalance between the two countries. But there is still hope yet. After years of making zero progress, India and Pakistan are now involved in a backchannel dialogue, which may bring some normalcy between the old enemies. That, and the cricket, of course: Pakistan has won more games overall against its arch-rival, but never beaten India in a World Cup match.
Kenya's election nailbiter
Six days after Kenya's presidential election, the race between Deputy President William Ruto and opposition leader Raila Odinga is still undeclared. As of Monday afternoon in Nairobi, Ruto is ahead by a slim margin with about half of the vote officially counted, while unofficial media tallies that initially put his rival in the lead now also have Ruto winning. Both sides accuse each other of tampering with the process, which is painstakingly slow to avoid past instances of fraud: in 2007, more than 1,200 people were killed in violent clashes across the country after Odinga claimed the election had been stolen, and in 2017 a string of logistical mistakes forced the Supreme Court to annul the result and order a rerun. The result must be announced no later than Tuesday, a full week after the vote. Also, if neither candidate gets more than 50% of the vote and at least 25% of the ballots cast in a minimum of 24 out of Kenya's 27 counties, the presidential election will for the first time go to a runoff before Sept. 8.