In late June 2024, protests reached nationwide scales not seen since Kenya's independence from colonial British rule in 1963. In the capital city of Nairobi, armed Kenyan Police launched more than a thousand and counting canisters of expired teargas on peaceful protestors, along with water cannons and live bullets. The Central Business District felt like a conflict zone in which the government turned on civilians overnight, resulting in dozens of fatalities, countless injuries, and hundreds of unwarranted arrests. The demonstrations, organized mostly by Gen Z and youths, resulted in unison across party lines as they demanded a rejection of President William Ruto’s proposed Finance Bill, which would heavily tax already-struggling civilians to pay off foreign debts, despite well-documented accounts of political corruption.
On assignment for Bloomberg.
