Kenya’s Leadership has bred Poverty since 1963, and is reaping Riots

Kenya’s antigovernment protests continues into the second month and are similar to Ghana’s in 2022, as both started from over taxation and worsening living standard, problems absent in South East Asia (e.g. Vietnam), which was also colonized. Kenya, Ghana, and Zambia have attempted development for 6 decades but lag behind Vietnam, which started developing under 4 decades ago. Clearly, Kenya and African countries need to change their development model from the World Bank/IMF’s neoliberal Ponzi for enriching western corporations.

Dispossession –Poverty -Protests

As Kenyan’s antigovernment protests continue into the second month, participants’ idleness and poverty resulting from unemployment is being identified as a key driver, even as some groups participate to loot (here). President William Ruto, noting the role of idleness, has been commissioning large construction projects to employ hundreds of young people (here) but in vain, since more remain due to long-term inequality that was created by the founding president, the UK government, and US corporations. The aforementioned took large pieces of fertile land for their use and hence robbed Kenyans of livelihoods at independence, while succeeding governments have continuously sidelined victims from economic opportunities, such that close to 80% of Kenyans remain poor or vulnerable (here), 61 years on.

As Mr. Ruto blamed the Ford Foundation for funding the ongoing protests (here), the real reason for their persistence is unemployment and poverty, which Washington has been helping its ‘allied’ Kenyan government to create, but is now taking advantage of; there is surely no honor among thieves. Resultantly, unemployed Kenyans in their 20s have recently found the thrill of engaging the police in running battles while looting........

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