The Kenya Youth Are Caught Up In A 20-20 Situation: They Are Ready Be Sacrificed For A Better Kenya

The distressed state of the Kenyan youth today is not an accident, nor is it an unfortunate twist of fate. It is the direct result of systematic looting, poor governance, corruption, and deliberate exclusion by the political class. For decades, the political elite has perfected the art of creating poverty and then weaponizing that poverty for political survival. Every promise made to the youth has been betrayed, every opportunity deliberately blocked, and every chance at a dignified life has been suffocated under the weight of greed and incompetence.

The political class continues to live in obscene luxury, flying private jets, driving fuel-guzzling convoys, and dining on the sweat and tears of the very youth whose dreams they have crushed. Meanwhile, the ordinary Kenyan youth wakes up to unemployment, rising taxes, collapsed healthcare, dilapidated schools, and a future that feels like a punishment. The economy has been turned into a private estate where the gates are tightly shut to the millions who were told to believe in the so-called ‘Kenyan dream.’

Data from the Kenya National Bureau of Statistics (KNBS) paints a horrifying picture. Over 67% of the unemployed population in Kenya are youths aged between 18 and 34. This is not by accident. The government continues to prioritize vanity projects, white elephant schemes, and inflated procurement scandals while ignoring the most pressing needs like job creation, skill development, and business financing for young people.

Even more damning is the latest Auditor General’s report, which reveals that over KES 500 billion could not be accounted for in the last financial year alone. That is money that could have transformed Technical and Vocational Education and Training (TVET) institutions, funded youth startups, and modernized agriculture to create jobs. Instead, it disappeared into the pockets of the same political class now calling for ‘dialogue’ whenever the youth rise in protest.

The problem is structural and intentional. The government deliberately sets up policies that serve multinational corporations and politically connected cartels at the expense of local industries. Small businesses are suffocating under punitive taxes, endless licenses, and bureaucratic extortion. How do you tell a youth trying to run a small kiosk or online hustle to pay eTIMS, VAT, and turnover tax while their MPs earn allowances for simply breathing?

While the political class celebrates billion-dollar loans from the IMF and World Bank, the youth are left drowning in the consequences. Every loan Kenya signs comes with austerity measures—higher taxes, reduced subsidies, and cuts in social spending. Who bears the brunt? The youth. And when they dare to complain, they are met with bullets, tear gas, and threats of being labeled ‘terrorists’ for simply demanding the right to survive.

It is beyond hypocrisy for the same government that has looted, mismanaged, and driven the country into economic ruin to then turn around and dictate how Kenyans should express their pain. You cannot light a fire in someone’s house and then complain about how loud they are screaming for help. You cannot crush people and then try to regulate their groaning.

The anger among the youth is not just political. It is existential. It is the anger of young men and women who have watched their parents die without dignity because of broken healthcare. It is the anger of graduates with first-class honors hawking smokies on the roadside while politicians’ children fly abroad for schooling and vacations. It is the anger of a generation that has realized that the system is not broken; it was built to exclude them.

Suicides among young Kenyans have skyrocketed. A report from the Ministry of Health in 2023 showed that suicide is now the leading cause of death among Kenyans aged 18–35. These are not just statistics; these are bodies of young Kenyans whose dreams were murdered long before they took their own lives. And still, the government talks of ‘calm’ and ‘patience.’

This government—and the broader political class—has had over 60 years to fix this country. They have had every opportunity, every resource, and every mandate to transform Kenya into a place of opportunity for all. But they chose theft over service, nepotism over merit, and oppression over democracy. Their failure is deliberate, and their arrogance is astonishing.

What is even more dangerous is that they now weaponize religion and parental guilt to try and silence the youth. By parading clergy, elders, and parents to plead with the youth to stop protesting, they are essentially saying: ‘Die quietly. Suffer silently. Let us continue to loot without interruption.’ But the pain has become too personal. Too deep. Too unbearable to ignore.

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The youth know they are already dying—whether from hunger, depression, police bullets, or hopelessness. Therefore, dying while fighting for a better country feels less tragic than dying while begging for jobs that will never come. It is a final act of dignity. A declaration that they will not be buried with their voices still inside them.

Every protest that happens in Kenya is a mirror held to the face of the government—a reflection of how badly they have failed. And every attempt to criminalize protest is an attempt to break that mirror rather than clean the filth it reflects. It is both cowardly and futile.

The same government that cannot collect garbage, cannot fix roads, cannot run hospitals, cannot fund education, and cannot provide water somehow finds the efficiency to deploy battalions of armed police against unarmed youth. Suddenly, they remember how to be effective when it comes to violence.

A World Bank report in 2024 highlighted that Kenya’s youth bulge is both a blessing and a time bomb. Over 75% of Kenya’s population is under the age of 35. A country that fails its youth is sitting on an explosive keg. But rather than addressing the ticking bomb through meaningful reforms, job creation, and social investment, the political class is busy pouring petrol on the fire.

And the betrayal is comprehensive. From the Presidency to Parliament to the Judiciary. Parliament passes oppressive laws with military speed. The Judiciary looks the other way or dances around technicalities. Meanwhile, governors are little kings in counties, running them like private fiefdoms, looting health budgets, bursaries, and development funds without shame.

When the youth protest, they are met with sanctimonious lectures about ‘peace’ and ‘order’ from the very mouths that have been feeding off corruption. But there is no peace without justice. There is no order in the face of systemic exploitation. What the political class calls ‘disorder’ is merely the people refusing to be slaves.

It is also ridiculous for the political elite to try to gaslight the youth with nationalism and patriotism. How do you demand patriotism from a hungry belly? How do you demand love for a country that offers nothing but pain? Patriotism is a two-way street. You cannot ask for loyalty from people you have abandoned.

The middle-class illusion is also collapsing. For years, the Kenyan middle class was the cushion that absorbed the frustrations of the poor. But now, even the middle class cannot breathe. They too are being evicted. Their children are being kicked out of private schools. Their businesses are crumbling under taxation. The lie that hard work equals success in Kenya is dead.

This is why the government cannot dictate how we react. You cannot orchestrate the suffering and then police the response to that suffering. You cannot steal bread and then be offended by how loud the hungry are crying.

If Kenya burns, the architects of the fire are the political class. They ignored every warning. Civil society warned them. Economists warned them. Religious leaders (those few not bribed) warned them. The youth warned them. But they chose arrogance over humility. Loot over service.

Even the IMF and World Bank have issued warnings about Kenya’s unsustainable debt levels and the risk of social unrest if economic reforms are not accompanied by social protection. But what does the political class do? They increase taxes on food, fuel, and basic commodities while exempting their own privileges.

The recent Finance Act is a textbook example of class warfare. Taxing digital creators, taxing M-Pesa transfers, taxing basic imports while giving tax holidays to large foreign corporations like Google and Visa. This is not taxation for development. It is extraction for survival—survival of the political elite.

And when the youth demand accountability, the same government suddenly remembers the church. They mobilize bishops, pastors, and imams to preach peace, hoping that divine threats will do what good governance failed to do. But even God must be disgusted at how His name is invoked to protect thieves.

Subsequent protests will be dangerous—not because the youth are inherently violent, but because the government has left them no peaceful options. When democratic spaces are closed, when petitions are ignored, when courts are compromised, and when Parliament becomes a cartel headquarters, the streets become the only court left.

It is tragic but not surprising that the political class still believes they can police people’s pain. They believe they can slap you, rob you, humiliate you, and then dictate how loudly you are allowed to scream. That era is over. The pain has metastasized into rage.

And let us be clear—the youth are not protesting because they hate Kenya. They are protesting because they love it too much to let it be destroyed by thieves in designer suits. They are not enemies of the nation. They are its last line of defense.

The government’s stubborn refusal to implement any form of economic justice is what has birthed this rebellion. The youth have simply realized that the future the government promises does not exist. That future was auctioned long ago in Dubai, London, and New York by politicians with offshore accounts.

Every time the government borrows, it mortgages the future of the youth. Every time it mismanages, it turns that mortgage into a foreclosure. And every time it deploys police against peaceful protesters, it signs the death certificate of the social contract.

Kenya’s politics is a mafia operation with state machinery as the enforcement arm. Corruption is not a bug; it is the system. The tragedy is that the victims are the ones who produce the wealth—young farmers, boda-boda riders, online freelancers, artisans, and small traders. Yet, the benefits flow upward to an elite class that has never worked an honest day in their lives.

It will get worse because the political class has shown zero interest in change. They are doubling down on the same policies that led to this crisis. More borrowing. More taxation. More repression. No country survives this trajectory without implosion.

The housing levy, the fuel taxes, the increased VAT on essentials—they are all symptoms of a government that has no plan other than squeezing the last drop of blood from its citizens. And when citizens gasp, it criminalizes their very breathing.

But the youth have seen through the charade. They understand that their mere existence is now an act of resistance. That daring to dream, daring to organize, daring to demand dignity is a revolutionary act in a country designed to deny them those things.

When the dust settles, history will not judge the youth for protesting. It will not judge them for refusing to suffer in silence. It will judge the political class for creating the conditions that made protest the only viable option.

The solution is not in pleas for calm. It is in a complete dismantling of the extractive political economy. It is in breaking the cartel state. It is in land reforms, tax justice, social safety nets, and a government that serves instead of exploits.

Until then, the youth are right. Dying while fighting for a better Kenya is better than dying quietly in a broken one. Their deaths are not suicides; they are sacrifices. Their pain is not noise; it is the sound of a nation waking up.

And if the political class refuses to listen, then the consequences are theirs to bear. They had their chance. They blew it. If Kenya collapses, let it be written clearly and without apology: The blame is squarely on them.

The blame is not abstract, nor is it shared. It rests entirely on the shoulders of those who wield power, write laws, sign contracts, and loot public coffers with reckless abandon. For too long, the political class has treated Kenya like a personal ATM—drawing endlessly from the labor, taxes, and sacrifices of ordinary citizens while offering nothing in return but hollow speeches, empty promises, and brutality.

They have perfected the art of manufacturing crises to distract from their failures. Every time citizens demand accountability, the government responds with diversions—ethnic tensions, fake reforms, meaningless reshuffles, and promises of non-existent jobs. But this time, the youth are not buying it. The pain is too raw. The betrayal is too visible. No amount of theatrics can mask the rot anymore.

You cannot rob an entire generation of their future and then criminalize their frustration. The youth are being asked to be calm in the face of joblessness, to be peaceful in the face of hunger, to be patient as they bury their friends who died from preventable diseases in hospitals that collapsed because governors stole the health budgets. How do you ask for calm from people whose backs are already broken?

Look at the data. The 2024 Kenya Economic Survey showed that the cost of living has increased by over 45% in the last three years, while real wages have stagnated or fallen. Electricity costs are up by 32%, fuel by 48%, and food prices by 60% in some urban areas. And yet, Members of Parliament awarded themselves higher sitting allowances, new car grants, and foreign travel budgets. How dare they then speak of austerity?

The truth is that the Kenyan government is a masterclass in gaslighting. It manufactures poverty and then accuses the poor of laziness. It creates unemployment and then tells the jobless to be innovative. It kills local industries with overtaxation and overregulation and then blames young people for not starting businesses.

Every institution that was supposed to protect citizens has been captured. Parliament no longer legislates for the people; it legislates for cartels. The Judiciary does not dispense justice; it dispenses favors for those who can afford them. The police are not public servants; they are state mercenaries deployed against taxpayers.

The financial mismanagement is beyond criminal—it is treasonous. Kenya’s public debt has crossed KES 12 trillion. Every child born today inherits a debt of KES 246,000 the moment they breathe. And what do we have to show for it? Crumbling roads, empty hospitals, ghost dams, and incomplete railways. Yet, the government still has the audacity to demand silence and obedience.

And when the youth decide that silence is complicity, when they rise to reclaim the country that was stolen from them, the government responds with bullets. Tear gas. Live ammunition. Mass arrests. Internet shutdowns. And media blackouts. All in the name of ‘security.’ But whose security? Certainly not the security of the youth who are gunned down while waving flags.

The political class is desperate to control the narrative. That’s why they flood media with propaganda, pay influencers to sanitize theft, and even weaponize misinformation to pit Kenyans against each other. But the truth is louder than their lies. The youth know who the enemy is—and it is not each other. It is the entire political infrastructure built on exploitation.

And no, calling for dialogue at the edge of a gun barrel is not leadership. It’s cowardice. Dialogue should have happened before the Finance Act. Before the fuel taxes. Before the housing levy. Before the police were unleashed on unarmed demonstrators. The time for dialogue passed when the government declared war on its own citizens.

The betrayal of the youth is intergenerational. It started with land injustices at independence, was worsened by structural adjustment policies in the 90s, and reached catastrophic levels with the debt-fueled corruption of the last two decades. This is not a recent accident. It is a deliberate, sustained project of theft and exclusion.

Even education, the so-called equalizer, has become a scam. Graduates leave university with degrees financed by HELB loans only to enter a job market that does not exist. They are hounded for repayment by a government that offered no jobs, no internships, no economic stability. The message is clear: in Kenya, you are punished for daring to dream.

Health is no different. SHIFhas become a sinking ship, riddled with corruption scandals. Hospitals are underfunded. Cancer patients die on waiting lists. Pregnant mothers deliver on hospital floors. And yet, every budget allocates billions to mysterious ‘confidential expenditures’ that nobody can account for.

Mental health is at crisis levels. Depression, anxiety, and substance abuse are skyrocketing. But of course, the government has no mental health programs. It is too busy chasing taxes from boda boda riders and mama mbogas while writing off billions owed by politically connected firms.

The anger that is boiling is not simply about taxes or bad policies. It is about dignity. It is about a generation that refuses to be told that suffering is normal. That misery is their portion. That silence is patriotism.

It is also a testament to the failure of fake nationalism. When politicians say, “Respect the flag,” the youth ask, “What has the flag done for us?” When they say, “Love your country,” the youth respond, “The country does not love us.” Patriotism cannot be one-sided. You cannot demand loyalty from people you are actively destroying.

And no amount of security crackdowns can extinguish the hunger for dignity. You can arrest bodies, but you cannot jail an idea whose time has come. You can kill a protester, but you cannot kill a movement. Every bullet fired plants a seed of resistance in ten others.

The politicians had the chance to change course. They were warned. By economists. By civil society. By international institutions. Even by their own conscience, if they had one. They ignored every warning, convinced that repression and propaganda would be enough. But the dam has broken. The river of pain is overflowing.

If you look at the demographics, this rebellion was inevitable. Seventy-five percent of Kenyans are under 35. A country where the majority have nothing to lose is a country where the elite should sleep with one eye open. Because when suffering becomes the norm, rebellion becomes a duty.

This government cannot now dictate the terms of dissent. You cannot steal someone’s future and then write them a script for how to cry about it. The youth do not owe the government politeness. They do not owe it patience. They do not owe it silence.

And as this rage spreads, fueled by economic despair and political betrayal, it will not be confined to Nairobi. It will spread to Mombasa. To Kisumu. To Eldoret. To Garissa. To Nyeri. Because poverty knows no tribe. Hunger does not care about your second name. Unemployment does not discriminate.

If the political class thinks they are insulated, they are fools. When the fire starts, it burns the fence first. No armored car. No gated community. No offshore bank account will save them from the consequences of the suffering they have engineered.

Let it be clear. The destruction of Kenya, if it happens, will not be the fault of the youth. It will be the fault of those who held power and chose greed over governance. Who chose theft over service. Who chose oppression over democracy.

This crisis is not a storm that came out of nowhere. It is the harvest of seeds planted by corruption, watered by impunity, and fertilized by indifference. The political class planted it. Now it grows. And it will grow until it consumes them too.

To the youth, their cries are no longer just pleas for jobs or lower taxes. They are a demand for a new Kenya. A Kenya where leadership is a service, not a business. Where citizenship comes with rights, not just burdens. Where dignity is not a privilege, but a birthright.

But that Kenya cannot be born in negotiation rooms chaired by thieves. It cannot be legislated by parliaments full of looters. It will not be delivered by court rulings written with invisible ink and sold to the highest bidder. It can only be won. On the streets. In solidarity. Through resistance.

This is why the government cannot dictate how people respond. Because the government is the crime scene. The government is the perpetrator. The government is the reason.

And until the political class acknowledges that, until they surrender their greed, until they dismantle the systems of theft they have built, the youth will not stop. The fire will not die. The streets will not empty. The pain will not go quiet.

Let it be written clearly in the chronicles of history: the youth did not destroy Kenya. The politicians did. The youth simply refused to die quietly.

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