In June, a series of protests led by young people and others frustrated with regressive tax reforms and police brutality swept Kenya. Its Left Alliance played a role in organizing these protests, and now it is getting ready to win electoral power.
On June 25, 2024, Kenya entered a new political era. Sparked by opposition to the Finance Bill — a package of regressive taxes pushed by President William Ruto’s government — the protests that began in Nairobi quickly spread nationwide, escalating into a mass rebellion against austerity, elite impunity, and the hollowing out of democratic life. Dozens were killed, hundreds detained or disappeared. What followed was not simply a policy defeat for the state, but a profound crisis of legitimacy.
For weeks, the streets became a site of generational reckoning. Disillusioned with formal politics and disconnected from traditional civil society, a new political subjectivity emerged — youth-led, digitally coordinated, ideologically inchoate but morally resolute. Even after the Finance Bill was withdrawn, the protests continued. By June 2025, they had reignited in response to the death of Albert Omondi Ojwang in police custody, now squarely targeting state violence and the wider political order. The demands had shifted: no longer just focused on reform, but on complete rupture. Still, if the movement has posed powerful questions, there remains the matter of answers: What comes next? How do we sustain this moment? Who is building a politics for the long term?
In this episode of the Africa Is a Country podcast, editor William Shoki is joined by Sungu Oyoo, a longtime activist, writer, and community organizer based in Nairobi — and a 2027 presidential candidate in Kenya’s presidential elections. Sungu is the national spokesperson of…
Auteur: Sungu Oyoo
