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Kenya is in an argument between its past and its future. Some might say that this argument has been brewing for a long time, and they would be right. Every day that Kenya has spent as “Kenya” has been a day during which the layers of this brewing argument have been added to. Today, though, it does feel as if the daily tweaks have added up to something fully formed and ready to be sampled by everyone. The central question is, “What must Kenya become to defy what it has been?” To become—beginning to be—demands that we all know what “being” is. We already know what it is not. Kenya must not become more corrupt, more unequal, more cynical or more divided than the spectre of its politics suggests that it is today. Kenya cannot become a hellscape of poorly educated, badly medicated and undernourished people who continuously vote against their interests. We cannot be that. So what must we become?
A first-world nation? Singapore? A nation of “cousins” unified against one man? These are the suppositions of our current political class. Reading from the critiques of Kenyans who have been asked about these visions for the country, it is safe to say that they are not reaching for the stars in their imaginativeness. Yet the politicians have done and continue to do something that the nation has not yet found the courage to do. They are defining what their version of Kenya looks like. There is a lot of power in being the one who defines. A father and a son of African extraction are currently typifying the importance and power of defining—Professor Mahmoud Mamdani, and his now world-famous son and recently sworn-in Mayor of New York City, Zohran Mamdani.
The younger Mamdani’s 1 January 2026 inauguration speech was the expected exclamation point to his redefining of politics in New York, and likely politics in America. While democratic socialism is not new, its most recent champion told New Yorkers and the world in very specific terms what an administration governed with this as its guiding philosophy would look like, and who it would represent. Zohran Mamdani painted a picture of New York’s future in broad strokes but with a very specific flourish. I will return to him later. For now, I will dwell on the ideas of his father.
Mamdani senior’s latest book, Slow Poison, analyses the presidencies of two men: Idi Amin—Uganda’s president from 1972 to 1979, whose rule remains in the public’s imagination as one marked by brutality, blood and buffoonery—and Yoweri Kaguta Museveni, president from 1986 to date—a man whose rise, or rather march, to the presidency was painted as that which delivered Uganda from the hands of the brutes and buffoons of yore. His book challenges these two definitions, and so far it is brilliant. But it is his introduction that I would like to focus on. Mamdani talks about the power that came from Britain’s ability to define many things during the summer of its empire. Boundaries, language groups, tribes—which he defines as political units rather than cultural ones that many would assume them to be. To imagine how these same definitions have shaped many of the countries upon which they were thrust is to think about the histories of tens of nations and hundreds of millions of people. Yet, for the everyman and the empire, it is the seemingly simple act of defining that begins to separate wishful thinking from wherewithal.
Criticisms of President William Ruto’s vision of Kenya becoming a first-world nation within the next 30 years, an African Singapore as he likes to put it, place him firmly in the category of those brave, or brazen, enough to define. After all, Singapore is a real place with a real, storied past and present, and literal books on how it became the envy of many—and the apple of this African president’s eye. So why then does his defining seem more like a pipedream than a real plan? It is not because his government does not have or cannot find the capacity to set this dream in motion. Rather, it is because he refuses to purge it of the evils that have held Kenya back since it was defined as Kenya. It is not even a passive refusal. His chief economic adviser David Ndii puts it bluntly: “We shall leave Kenya as corrupt as we found it,” as Ruto goes about building Kenya’s food security, energy and infrastructure. Kenya’s slow poison left to seep through new veins.
While there are many differences between the life of the individual and the life of the state, the inward journey required to purge oneself of vice and the work a nation must do to clean house share a common ingredient: a stubborn willingness to hold to principle. Malcolm X offers a powerful example of this cost. Arrested and jailed in his early twenties, Malcolm Little was once a living repudiation of the values instilled by his Garveyite parents. His transformation into Malcolm X was neither easy nor clean. It required rupture—first with his past, and later with the Nation of Islam itself, when its leadership failed to meet the moral standards he had come to embody. That break, costly as it was, clarified his integrity and sharpened his commitment to his people. Malcolm X’s courage to define himself—again and again—became a moral force that fertilised Black emancipation movements far beyond his lifetime.
William Ruto, by dint of his position, is one of Kenya’s key articulators of what Kenya can become. Yet, for all his slick advertising of a Singaporean utopia, he does not seem interested in any reflection about the corruption in his government. Instead, as his lieutenants, bloggers and defenders say, the problem either lies in Kenya’s past presidencies or in its society, not with him or his people. The inability to reflect and hear the public when they say that they want corruption to be dealt with will continue to hollow out his vision. Ruto’s Singapore is just rebranding precisely because there is no moral reckoning with what is wrong with Kenya.
New York City has had its own reckoning—and against the odds that status quo politics had betted on, or placed in the way of Zohran Mamdani, his moment arrived all the same. His inaugural speech laid out what a social democratic government would look like more in prose than in policy, but that is what speeches are for. One passage stood out: “And yet we know that too often in our past, moments of great possibility have been promptly surrendered to small imagination and smaller ambition. What was promised was never pursued, what could have changed remained the same. For the New Yorkers most eager to see our city remade, the weight has only grown heavier, the wait has only grown longer.” Zohran was talking about New York, but it easily could have been a critique of Kenya 2022. When William Ruto rode to power, it was a moment of great possibility, and grand promises were made. Three years into his presidency, his promises lie scattered behind him like so many made by presidents past. Today’s pledge stands on legs emaciated by a history of not following through. Kenyans sense that his latest promise will also wind up in purgatory.
So what should Kenya become? I would begin to define it this way: It must be a country that values integrity, both in personal spaces and public life. Kenya must be a place led by a person who articulates the people’s vision, not one who weaponises lofty visions for political propaganda.
Kenya must be a country where the lives of its people are respected and not instrumentalised. Under former president Uhuru Kenyatta, hundreds were murdered during protests via kidnappings. Under William Ruto, hundreds more have been murdered despite a promise to break with the past. If Ruto has failed the public on this promise, why should they believe Singapore will be delivered when he cannot introspect, be accountable to the parents and families of those who were killed, or stop hiding behind the recalcitrance of others? We all saw how doggedly he pursued the presidency, even enduring disrespect by his juniors in the Uhuru cabinet and four years on the leeward side of Uhuru’s favour. Where is that determination to end this culture of brutality now?
Kenya must be a country where one does not have to choose between feeding their family and mortgaging their dignity. The same government that wants credibility cannot lead the charge in vote buying and bribery, as we saw in Kenya’s late 2025 by-elections. We have had far too many students of Machiavelli.
Kenya must be a place where government enables the aspirations of every citizen, not stands in their way. No bribery for documents or government jobs. No unjust taxes or half-baked policy.
Expanding food production, building highways and producing more electricity can create the metrics for progress—but it is the internal infrastructure of leadership that truly makes a country. Those moral highways must lead to one metric—dignity.
