Since its creation, northern Kenya has been marginalised, alienated and dispossessed by both internal and external actors. The region has been underdeveloped by the central government’s failure to allocate adequate resources. Yet, opines Abdullahi Boru, the future of project Kenya may in fact lay in the development of Northern Kenya.
Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed's dramatic move to recentralise governance in Ethiopia has an old and predictable logic to it. Eritrea's leader Isias Afwerki has pushed for it as well. But it has meant Ahmed abrogating the Ethiopian constitution and shredding the underlying political contract between elites from the different regions of Ethiopia. It immediately led to war with Tigray that has literally collapsed Ethiopia's once-mighty military machine. As July ends the Prime Minister has been forced into the dangerous move of mobilising ethnic militias. Matt Bryden argues the only way out is negotiation.
Eritrea is Africa's most closed society and most fiercely authoritarian state. Its President Isaias Afwerki has been president for almost 30 years and is considered one of the continent's most gifted and ruthless strategists. As both Somalia and Ethiopia convulse, the now not so hidden hand of Eritrea's leader has become increasingly apparent as Eritrea very effectively leverages limited resources but deep experience into a disproportionate impact on the entire Horn of Africa. The Elephant in conversation with Matt Bryden.
For the first time in post-independence Kenya, there is a sense of unity among Kenyans drawn from humble beginnings irrespective of their tribe. The hustler nation is a story current state of lives shared by the majority of Kenyans. Dr Ngala Chome explains this shift in Kenya's politics.
Ethiopia seems set to enter a new phase of a brutal civil war. For some of the country's communities, an existential contest between a centralising logic in Addis Ababa and self-determination among the regions has begun. Oromo activist and storyteller, Ms Soreti Kadir, argues that the brutality against civilians in Ethiopia is about to intensify and prospects for the Ethiopian state are bleak.
Kenya's youth demography is made up of over 9.5 million people, more than 20 per cent of the population. Despite being the majority, youth interests have always been overlooked. The Building Bridges Initiative is stipulated to address youth matters. This webinar explores the effects of the historic May 13, 2021 judgment declaring the Building Bridges Initiative unconstitutional and what this means to Kenya’s youth and marginalised.
Heinrich-Böll-Stiftung (HBS) Nairobi Office, in collaboration with the Elephant, cordially invite you to the Building Bridges Initiative (BBI) Judgement Series. This new series seeks to interrogate the effects of the historic May 13, 2021 judgment declaring the Building Bridges Initiative unconstitutional and what this means to Kenya’s constitutional path.
In this penultimate conversation, the panelists will explore how activism of different kinds has catalysed, enriched, nurtured, sustained, and challenged the Pan Africanist vision and mission through time.
In conversation with The Elephant, Mtumishi Njeru wa Kathangu places into context the unconstitutional BBI process which seeks to change the constitution of Kenya 2010 within Kenya's socio-political history of fighting for freedom and sovereignty.
In this episode of #Captured, we unveil from leaked procurement data of the mobile clinics project and show you how several companies, some linked to sitting MPs, are at the center of a corruption scandals worth hundreds of millions of shillings relating to this project. This project carried the promise of lowering child mortality and getting health services to communities and was aggressively sold to the Kenya's public between 2014 and 2015.
During thirty years in the cold of non-recognition as a state by the international community and the African Union, Somaliland has engineered a unique hybrid democracy that's possibly the most impressive in the Horn and Eastern Africa. Built on a foundation of traditional institutions and painful memories of war between 1980 and 1991, quietly and without external interference the small country has successfully built a resilient democracy with a capacity for self-correction; and, a peaceful society that demonstrates what's possible when a people get the software right and trust informs relations between a people and those who govern them.
Abiy and Amhara nationalism is bringing back the echoes of the Derg era and the upcoming June election is unlikely to resolve current crises; if anything, it will exacerbate them.