#in Kenya

[kropotkindersurprise]

June 20, 2024 - A protester takes on the role of mobile eyewash station to deal with police tear gas during a demonstration against proposed tax reforms in Nairobi, Kenya. [video]

[afrotumble]

Rest in peace Roger Whittaker

[whatevergreen]

Massive protests against the 2024 Finance Bill continue in Nairobi and across Kenya. Parliament has been stormed, and City Hall set on fire.

The bill imposes taxes that will further impoverish those already suffering from the increasing cost of living. The government even tried to put a tax on bread and cooking oil, but this was apparently withdrawn. The International Monetary Fund is putting pressure on president Ruto to impose austerity measures and raise taxes.

Supreme Court staff and lawyers helping demonstrators with water.

Some protestors have been shot, with fatalities. The police have apparently arrested a number of paramedics trying to treat the wounded.

Homes of several MPs who support the finance bill have been looted and set ablaze. I have no sympathy.

A protestor stated:

“We are the flames burning up the country. We cannot stand still while we are robbed and made poor. “This movement will not stop until we have won. They can kill us but they can’t beat down our movement.”

[no-passaran]

33-year-old Ugandan marathon athlete Rebecca Cheptegei, who competed in this summer's Paris Olympic Games, has been killed by her ex-boyfriend. He doused her in petrol, set her on fire and burned her alive when she came back from church with her two daughters.

Gender-based violence is a major concern in Kenya, where Cheptegei lived and worked. In 2022, at least 34% of women in Kenya said they had experienced physical violence, according to a national survey.

Her death comes after the killings of fellow East African athletes Agnes Tirop in 2021 and Damaris Mutua in 2022, with their partners identified as the main suspects in both cases by the authorities.

Our thoughts are with her family, who are left without their loving relative and the family's main breadwinner.

[nyloww]

jumping on the trend with Kamba Miku :3

[snototter]

A white-backed vulture (Gyps africanus) sits on a hippo skull in Maasai Mara National Park, Kenya

by praveen pandian

[thrdnarrative]

Father and child in Lamu, Kenya © Eric Lafforgue

[folkfashion]

Swahili henna, Kenya, by Carol Beckwith and Angela Fisher

[wocina]

[dcminions]

LAUREN LONDON in YOU PEOPLE ( 2023 )

[travelbinge]

By Lostwithanna

Diani Beach, Kwale County, Kenya

[coochiequeens]

Thousands protest against increasing violence against women in Kenya as they march to the parliamentary building and supreme court in the capital Nairobi [Gerald Anderson/Anadolu Agency]

Published On 27 Jan 202427 Jan 2024

Thousands of people have gathered to protest in cities and towns in Kenya against the recent slayings of more than a dozen women.

The anti-femicide demonstration on Saturday was the largest event ever held in the country against sexual and gender-based violence.

In the capital, Nairobi, protesters wore T-shirts printed with the names of women who became homicide victims this month. The crowd, composed mostly of women, brought traffic to a standstill.

“Stop killing us!” the demonstrators shouted as they waved signs with messages such as “There is no justification to kill women.”

The crowd in Nairobi was hostile to attempts by the parliamentary representative for women, Esther Passaris, to address them. Accusing Passaris of remaining silent during the latest wave of killings, protesters shouted her down with chants of “Where were you?” and “Go home!”

“A country is judged by not how well it treats its rich people, but how well it takes care of the weak and vulnerable,” said Law Society of Kenya President Eric Theuri, who was among the demonstrators.

Kenyan media outlets have reported the slayings of at least 14 women since the start of the year, according to Patricia Andago, a data journalist at media and research firm Odipo Dev who also took part in the march.

Odipo Dev reported this week that news accounts showed at least 500 women were killed in acts of femicide from January 2016 to December 2023. Many more cases go unreported, Andago said.

Two cases that gripped Kenya this month involved two women who were killed at Airbnb accommodations. The second victim was a university student who was dismembered and decapitated after she reportedly was kidnapped for ransom.

Theuri said cases of gender-based violence take too long to be heard in Kenyan court, which he thinks emboldens perpetrators to commit crimes against women.

“As we speak right now, we have a shortage of about 100 judges. We have a shortage of 200 magistrates and adjudicators, and so that means that the wheel of justice grinds slowly as a result of inadequate provisions of resources,” he said.

People gather to protest in an anti-femicide demonstration, the largest event of its kind ever held in Kenya. [Gerald Anderson/Anadolu Agency]

Kenyan media outlets have reported the slayings of at least 14 women since the start of the year. [Gerald Anderson/Anadolu Agency]

A protester holds a Palestinian flag during a march to protest against the rising cases of femicide, in downtown Nairobi. [Brian Inganga/AP Photo]

Women and feminists in Kenya took to the streets to march against the rising cases of femicide. [Brian Inganga/AP Photo]

In Nairobi, protesters wore T-shirts printed with the names of women who became homicide victims this month. [Gerald Anderson/Anadolu Agency]

Protesters react against the rising cases of femicide. [Brian Inganga/AP Photo]

A human rights activist reacts as she attends a protest demanding an end to femicide in the country. [Monicah Mwangi/Reuters]

Protesters gather during the anti-femicide demonstration. [Gerald Anderson/Anadolu Agency]

The crowd, composed mostly of women, brought traffic to a standstill. [Gerald Anderson/Anadolu Agency]

[kropotkindersurprise]

July 16, 2024 - A Kenyan protester throws back a tear gas grenade, that was shot at them by riot police without provocation, smoking the cops out of their truck.

Kenyans have been protesting proposed neo-liberal tax reforms for weeks. After a brutal crackdown by police killed at least 50 people the protesters are now in the streets demanding justice for the murdered, and for the right-wing president Ruto to step down. [video]

[reasonsforhope]

African poverty is partly a consequence of energy poverty. In every other continent the vast majority of people have access to electricity. In Africa 600m people, 43% of the total, cannot readily light their homes or charge their phones. And those who nominally have grid electricity find it as reliable as a Scottish summer. More than three-quarters of African firms experience outages; two-fifths say electricity is the main constraint on their business.

If other sub-Saharan African countries had enjoyed power as reliable as South Africa’s from 1995 to 2007, then the continent’s rate of real GDP growth per person would have been two percentage points higher, more than doubling the actual rate, according to one academic paper. Since then South Africa has also had erratic electricity. So-called “load-shedding” is probably the main reason why the economy has shrunk in four of the past eight quarters.

Solar power is increasingly seen as the solution. Last year Africa installed a record amount of photovoltaic (PV) capacity (though this still made up just 1% of the total added worldwide), notes the African Solar Industry Association (AFSIA), a trade group. Globally most solar PV is built by utilities, but in Africa 65% of new capacity over the past two years has come from large firms contracting directly with developers. These deals are part of a decentralised revolution that could be of huge benefit to African economies.

Ground zero for the revolution is South Africa. Last year saw a record number of blackouts imposed by Eskom, the state-run utility, whose dysfunctional coal-fired power stations regularly break down or operate at far below capacity. Fortunately, as load-shedding was peaking, the costs of solar systems were plummeting.

Between 2019 and 2023 the cost of panels fell by 15%, having already declined by almost 90% in the 2010s. Meanwhile battery storage systems now cost about half as much as five years ago. Industrial users pay 20-40% less per unit when buying electricity from private project developers than on the cheapest Eskom tariff.

In the past two calendar years the amount of solar capacity in South Africa rose from 2.8GW to 7.8GW, notes AFSIA, excluding that installed on the roofs of suburban homes. All together South Africa’s solar capacity could now be almost a fifth of that of Eskom’s coal-fired power stations (albeit those still have a higher “capacity factor”, or ability to produce electricity around the clock). The growth of solar is a key reason why there has been less load-shedding in 2024...

Over the past decade the number of startups providing “distributed renewable energy” (DRE) has grown at a clip. Industry estimates suggest that more than 400m Africans get electricity from solar home systems and that more than ten times as many “mini-grids”, most of which use solar, were built in 2016-20 than in the preceding five years. In Kenya DRE firms employ more than six times as many people as the largest utility. In Nigeria they have created almost as many jobs as the oil and gas industry.

“The future is an extremely distributed system to an extent that people haven’t fully grasped,” argues Matthew Tilleard of CrossBoundary Group, a firm whose customers range from large businesses to hitherto unconnected consumers. “It’s going to happen here in Africa first and most consequentially.”

Ignite, which operates in nine African countries, has products that include a basic panel that powers three light bulbs and a phone charger, as well as solar-powered irrigation pumps, stoves and internet routers, and industrial systems. Customers use mobile money to “unlock” a pay-as-you-go meter.

Yariv Cohen, Ignite’s CEO, reckons that the typical $3 per month spent by consumers is less than what they previously paid for kerosene and at phone-charging kiosks. He describes how farmers are more productive because they do not have to get home before dark and children are getting better test scores because they study under bulbs. One family in Rwanda used to keep their two cows in their house because they feared rustlers might come in the dark; now the cattle snooze al fresco under an outside lamp and the family gets more sleep.

...That is one eye-catching aspect of Africa’s solar revolution. But most of the continent is undergoing a more subtle—and significant—experiment in decentralised, commercially driven solar power. It is a trend that could both transform African economies and offer lessons to the rest of the world."

-via The Economist, June 18, 2024. Paragraph breaks added.

[textless]

This is a secretarybird, the most alien-looking bird I have ever seen in person. It stands about four feet tall, and hunts lizards, snakes, and other small animals by walking along looking at the ground. It can strike prey with its beak, but often uses its long legs and claws.

I have read that secretarybirds often hunt in pairs or groups, but the two I saw were solitary.

Masai Mara, Kenya, July 2023.

[soon-palestine]

Cheat sheet for what’s happening in Kenya

Kenya is owning billions

Kenya decides to raise taxes to cover debt

Protesters who are taxpayers say No. The protesters tell their government to “cut spending instead of raising taxes.”

Government and taxpayers disagree

Taxpayers protest

Their government kills them for protesting