Returning to a theme I have tackled before, I recently put this question to an economist whom I consider to be well informed: Do you think William Ruto’s many high-profile “development projects” will have had a substantial enough impact on the lives of ordinary Kenyans to help put him over the top in the 2027 presidential election?
His answer was that he would normally have insisted that Kenyans never vote based on the state of the economy, as is common in industrialised nations. But given what we saw of the Gen Z demonstrations of 2024, which were the first time a “mass action” in Kenya had a clear and undeniable focus on a purely economic issue, maybe in 2027 the dynamics would be different.
Otherwise, the tribe-based architecture of Kenyan voting patterns was well known: the key factor was never the state of the economy, but rather regional narratives that were at the core of political identity.
These regional narratives often boil down to “us against them” – which region is perceived to be on “our side”, and which region is clearly “against us”.
This kind of thinking leaves little room for any assessment of the economic impacts – good or bad – of any Kenyan government’s policies or development initiatives.
To understand the potency of identity politics, you only need to consider those very large crowds that recently turned up in Nairobi (and a few major towns) to celebrate the Arsenal football club winning the Premier League.
For those of us who do not follow football that closely, the amazing fact was that ordinary Kenyans who identify with that team had kept faith for 22 years, waiting for the day when “their team” would return to glory as the winners of the Premier League.
As we are thousands of kilometres away from the locations where this team plays, you might think – logically – that over a period that long, the fans would either lose interest or even transfer their loyalty to a different team.
But that did not happen: their loyalty remained rock-solid until at last the victory they had so long craved was delivered in this year’s contest.
Kenyan politics is a lot like that.
Consider how the coastal region, for example, remained loyal to the late opposition leader (and former Prime Minister) Raila Odinga, for no less than 20 years, in the face of repeated losses in presidential elections.
At the coast, the twin issues of historical land injustices and the collapse of regional food processing factories (sugarcane, cashewnuts, etc) are well-defined priorities. And apparently, the good people of the coast believed that only Raila Odinga could see justice done and also restore the region’s economic prospects.
And even then, only after he ascended to the presidency.
Never mind he was not a native of the coastal region. Every attempt to snatch that vote bloc from him failed, just as badly as any effort to penetrate his Nyanza regional political backyard.
There is nothing political in the devotion that Kenyan fans of the Arsenal football club have shown towards “their team”. But the psychology behind such fandom is really much the same as that of Kenyan regional vote blocs.
Or so it has been up to now.
Come 2027, we shall have the opportunity to find out if the Kenyan Gen Z factor is really as powerful as it has occasionally seemed.
Their clarion call – “tribeless, leaderless, fearless” – certainly brought very large crowds out to the streets and shook the whole country as well as its leadership to the core.
Similar demonstrations taking place in Tanzania, after a recent general election, led to even greater national shock and tragedy.
But, back to our own Gen Z, battling the police on the streets, or even setting the House of Parliament on fire, is relatively easy, as compared to generating a unified country-wide vote large enough to produce a decisive impact on the final outcome of the 2027 presidential election.
At the present time, it seems wholly unlikely that any such Gen Z wave could possibly support the candidature of William Ruto.
But a year is a very long time in politics.
