Right-wing disinformation tactics have crossed borders into Kenya, fuelling a dangerous intersection of digital misogyny and real-world violence that is driving record numbers of femicide.
With the recent Netflix adaptation of Gabriel García Márquez’s One Hundred Years of Solitude, I recount what it meant to read his work as a young writer living in Nairobi.
Earlier this year, a new young generation of Kenyans went out to protest a crippling finance bill and a government that is undermining their future. The protests, though met by brutal state violence, have fundamentally shifted the Kenyan political landscape.
Kenyan writer and author of Half Portraits Under Water, Dennis Mugaa, believes that President William Ruto’s administration is authoritarian: ‘Young people genuinely want a better country, but we are living in a country that has been slowly sliding into authoritarianism over the past two years, since President Ruto’s government took over. Beyond that, his leadership has been very poor.’
At a time when art is becoming more detached and exhibitionist, ‘Whispers of Power’, a live performance by Kenya-based musician, Liboi, staged at Nairobi’s Sarakasi Dome, counters this trend by creating an environment where the audience is an integral part of the performance.
Author of ‘Remembering Kampala’, Carey Baraka, says the most common misconception about East African literature is that South Sudanese author and critic, Taban Lo Liyong, called the region a literary desert: ‘It is funny that East African writers continue to write against Lo Liyong, insisting that he is wrong, when what people are fighting doesn’t actually exist.’
Considering the 2024 Kenyan Gen Z protest, and the rising discontent among African youths, can literature play the role of lens in times of moral crisis, that too for a population that doesn’t read?
The co-founder and executive director of feminist movement, Feminists in Kenya, discusses convening Kenya’s anti-femicide protests of January 2024 and what needs to happen next.
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