The lessons of history
Three years on, the Building Bridges Initiative (BBI), initiated by Kenya's President, Uhuru Kenyatta, with former opposition leader, Raila Odinga, feels like an elite pact with no popular support.
From The Elephant
The class curse
How is Kenya's "new middle class" contributing to a pervasive low-quality oppression that leaves Kenyans feeling hopeless?
The unforeseen threat
Many of Nairobi's apocalypse merchants and prophesy peddlers have disappeared in the past year. Reflections on how COVID-19 has re-shaped the city and residents' lives.
The value of care
2020 has given us an archive of heart-breaking examples of the politically transformative power of care.
The death of cities
Cities will continue to exist and grow despite the coronavirus crisis because of the distinctly human need for social interaction, physical contact, and collaboration.
The music of the Nyayo era
Tracing the music, from 1978 to the 2000s, that defined the rule of former Kenyan president Daniel Torotich Arap Moi.
How Indian cinema shaped East Africa’s urban culture
The 60s, 70s, and 80s are often described as the Golden Age of Indian cinema and Nairobi, Mombasa and Kisumu had a large number of cinemas devoted to showing films made in Bombay.
Death by pesticide
How pesticides banned in the European Union continue to be sold in Kenya, and with devastating impact.
Museveni and the Americans
The United States must make the choice to side with the majority of Ugandans who would like to see democracy take root in Uganda.
Traditional wars
With Kenya in the grip of a global pandemic and grappling with an ailing economy, is constitutional reform really a priority?
COVID-19 and cultural rites
In a Kenya coping with COVID-19 restrictions, circumcision season presents an impossible choice between tradition and civil obedience.
Remembering Emma Gama Pinto
To those who did not know Emma Gama Pinto, she was just “the wife of Pio Gama Pinto,” the Kenyan anticolonial fighter, but to those who knew her, she was fearless in her own right.
Hustler mentality
Kenya's Deputy President, William Ruto, wants to be president. He projects himself as a go-getter. But there is a more sinister story behind his hustler narrative.
Blackness in Amsterdam
At the largest gathering of black people he had ever seen together in Amsterdam, the author, originally from Kenya, wonder why they knew so little of each other.
Food crimes
Why the World Food Program doesn't deserve the 2020 Nobel Peace Prize.
The soft, patriarchal underbelly of Kenya’s Parliament
Kenya's 2010 Constitution put limits on men's dominance of public institutions, including parliament. Since then, men have done everything to sabotage it, but also to scrap it altogether.
Abolish Kenya’s prison system
Arresting and jailing Kenya's poor isn't working to cut crime or protect people's rights. We need something else.
In the shadow of a liberation war
Kenya needs to understand the Oromo cause and what is happening across the border in Ethiopia.
The rising lakes of the Rift Valley
How climate change is threatening lives in Kenya.
What washerwomen would say on a webinar
Regular Kenyans try to survive the economic fallout from the coronavirus.