With matchmaking almost complete, the Kenyan political dance now takes on a more structured character as we head into election season proper between April and August 2022.

With the collapse of the One Kenya Alliance, we now know that, nationwide, it is a two-horse presidential race between William Ruto and Raila Odinga, each backed by supporting alliances, but with Raila’s Azimio la Umoja also backed by President Uhuru Kenyatta and the state apparatus. The contortions required for an incumbent president to support his strongest opponent to succeed him destroyed the ruling Jubilee party during 2020-21. This leaves a rump Jubilee allied with ODM and 20+ other “Azimio-friendly” parties facing the recently formed Kenya Kwanza alliance, centred on Deputy President Ruto’s UDA.

The two alliances are now neck and neck overall, with most models giving both candidates between 7.5 million and 8.5 million votes each, leaving the result open and subject to influence from other factors, including the financial resources of the two alliances, state support and simple luck.

With the onboarding of Luhya leaders Musalia Mudavadi and Moses Wetangula to his new coalition during February, Ruto has strengthened his national credentials and gained a strong base in the Western region, but benefited less than he had hoped nationwide, as a substantial element in FORD-Kenya and the ANC defected to Azimio. Raila’s Azimio alliance has lost most of the Kikuyu, Embu and Meru, but elsewhere has strengthened its position in the last six months, picking up support in northern Kenya and the coast and recently winning over a very reluctant Kalonzo Musyoka. He was the last big player left in the now collapsed OKA alliance.

Whether Raila can keep Musyoka—who now controls maybe 50 per cent of the Kamba vote—is less certain, as Musyoka is openly angry and prepared for trouble. But this last-minute shotgun marriage gives the ramshackle Jubilee-ODM-Wiper-KANU alliance a narrow majority (52-53 per cent) in the National Assembly once more (which the government had lost for a few weeks in February).

The diagram below shows the political allegiances of the elected MPs in the national assembly as of early March 2022, after Musyoka finally declared for Azimio. Orange indicates Azimio (for now, as they have not decided on a colour as a brand) and Yellow for Kenya Kwanza (the colour of the UDA, its largest component).

A square represents one elected MP. There are also 47 elected women representatives and 12 party-nominated MPs (not shown). They follow a similar pattern but with a slightly greater leaning towards Azimio as a result of the vulnerability of nominated MPs to party recall.

My calculations show that Azimio has the backing of 150 elected MPs while Kenya Kwanza has 134, with six having refused to declare their stand or flip-flopping so fast their position cannot be determined.

Both presidential candidates have failed to nominate a running mate as deputy president, holding back from making that choice for as long as possible, until defection from their alliances by spurned partners becomes impossible. Both have onboarded very senior allies (Luhya Mudavadi, Kamba Musyoka) without formally naming them as deputy, leaving the Kikuyu, Embu and Meru vote still potentially swingable by a strong choice of DP by one or both alliances.

This last-minute shotgun marriage gives the ramshackle Jubilee-ODM-Wiper-KANU alliance a narrow majority.

In truth though, there are few senior Kikuyu, Meru, Embu or Mbeere with the mettle to become Deputy President to either candidate. Martha Karua is, in my view, the best Kikuyu candidate for Raila, but they have a difficult history together and she commands respect more than she does votes. Peter Munya might work for the Meru but not elsewhere. Peter Kenneth is a safe pair of hands but he is more of technocrat than a rabble-rouser. For Ruto, none of the floated names (Wahome, Gachagua) makes real sense. They are not national-level players, and many have skeletons bursting out of their closets. Susan Kihika in Nakuru might be my pick (a female DP is a distinct possibility) but she is still new and the Nakuru governorship is hers for the taking so a 50-50 chance at DP might be less attractive than a definite governorship. Anne Waiguru would be another option, but again, she has a solid chance of re-election and she does not have the common touch. Justin Muturi would do, but he doesn’t set hearts alight. Mudavadi would motivate the Luhya more than Muturi would sustain the Kikuyu.

At the county level, the model below shows my prediction as to which alliance and presidential candidate will (based on multiple factors) win the presidential election in that county. Where opinion polls have been (properly) conducted, those numbers have been incorporated.

As we can see, the two alliances are again neck and neck, with a fractional advantage for Kenya Kwanza. In most counties, the leading alliance is now pretty clear to all but diehard supporters. The final result will be determined by the size of the winner’s majority, so turnout will play a huge role in the outcome.

Another huge influence on constituency and county elections (but not the presidential election) will be “friendly fire”, i.e. split votes between different candidates from the same alliance. Both alliances have decided not to hold cross-alliance primaries, leaving multiple candidates from the same alliance competing for the seat in different parties. This was the bane of the pro-Kibaki parties in 2007 and is likely to have the same effect on Azimio. Real three- and four-horse races will result across at least a fifth of the country (with Jubilee candidates standing against ODM and DAP-K candidates for example, or UDA, ANC and FORD-Kenya competing against each other), making the result in a first-past-the post system hard to predict. But assuming no upsets, we can predict that UDA and ODM will be the largest parties in the next parliament, and UDA will be the largest, as it is the dominant player in the Kenya Kwanza coalition everywhere except among the Luhya, while support for Azimio is more evenly spread between constituent parties.

Regional models do not tell the whole story, however, for in presidential elections some counties are more equal than others. At the extremes, Nairobi has 2.5 million voters, while tiny Lamu has 80,000. Presidentially, therefore, Nairobi’s dominance is worth 30 times the dominance of Lamu. Historically, Kenyan elections have been about many things, including real issues (corruption, economic reform, ethnic clashes, multi-party democracy), personal loyalties and alliances and loyalty to party (although the parties change every five years), but underlying those have been consistent ethnic community preferences. To use a pithy phrase coined in 1992, that election was about “bribe and tribe”, and while the situation has changed in the last 30 years, that characterisation is still familiar to many.

In truth though, there are few senior Kikuyu with the mettle to become Deputy President to either candidate.

In the last two general elections, an ethnically-based predictive model—looking at the population of each ethnic group, registration, predicted turnout and estimated voting intention for each community—proved extremely accurate in predicting overall results. Whether the turnout and voting preference predictions will be accurate this time cannot be confirmed until the day, and outcomes can change with events, such as unexpected selections of Deputy Presidents, wars, disease, sudden deaths, major defections, blatant election rigging or catastrophic faux pas by leading candidates. But it did well in 2013 and 2017.

Overall, my current national presidential model is based on the input that there are between 51 and 52 million Kenyans today, of which roughly 30 million are aged 18 and over. We know the ethnicity of these people in 2019. Of the 30 million, we know that 22 million have registered to vote, 13 per cent more than in 2017. But we also know that voting registration rates have historically differed between communities and have varied depending on whether they have ethnic “skin in the game”.

Looking at historical registration rates and turnout, and current registration by constituency, gives us an estimate of the number of actual voters in 2022—I predict between 16 and 17 million. We do not know the ethnicity of those registered voters, above all because the government has failed to release the census results regarding ethnicity at the district or county level since 1989. But we have 1989 and can make a good guess at the changes since. Adding to the mix the predicted voting preferences of each community, one can then estimate the votes for each candidate.

There are four important notes to this model though. First, for this election, William Ruto has run an effective grassroots, economy-based campaign, the first true national populist campaign since Matiba in 1992, openly critical of the wealthy elites and appealing to the poor and marginalised of every ethnicity (most Kenyans). While senior politicians and most elites have turned against him, the poor have not; his “hustler versus dynasties” campaign has given them hope. I therefore predict that in this election we shall see some cross-ethnic economic voting. I think that Ruto will poll 25 per cent and above in places like Ukambani (if Musyoka does not become Raila’s running mate), Kisii and at the (Christian) Coast even when much of the political establishment is with Azimio.

The two alliances are again neck and neck, with a fractional advantage for Kenya Kwanza.

Religion is another cross-ethnic political theme, stronger than in most previous polls, with Ruto explicitly branding himself as a Christian leader and receiving the support of grassroots religious groups in Christian areas but correspondingly finding it heavy going in Muslim areas of northern Kenya and the Coast.

Thirdly, this model does not take material election rigging into account. Top-up voting in the homelands of the two candidates is common (whether you like it or not) and is to some extent factored in. Material rigging (entirely faked results) is different—it can produce totally unpredictable results. But the Kenyan courts have become increasingly assertive on such matters and the risks of rigging were made evident with the annulment of the 2017 presidential result (even though no rigging was proven). Whoever wins, I’m sure the other will petition.

Finally, this assumes both alliances have the financial resources to finish the campaign. Both have big donors, and both are seeking funds from home and abroad. But Azimio has the dubious honour of having close connections to the state apparatus and its opportunities to free up funds. On the other hand, Ruto has personally bankrolled an insurgent campaign for two years, and even his deep pockets must one day run dry.

Putting all this together, the result of my current model (all other things staying equal) is a narrow Ruto victory of 8.3 million to Raila’s 8 million (51 per cent-49 per cent). But this is not cast in stone. A 5 per cent error in my prediction of the Kikuyu vote (estimated at 71 per cent Ruto to 29 per cent Raila in my model) changes that result to a narrow Azimio win. In one sense, it is all to play for. However, in another, given the country’s violent political history and the endless disputes over election rigging, such a narrow victory for either alliance is unlikely to be a comfortable outcome for Kenya.

Somalia has been at a crossroads in recent years, with one pathway leading towards forging state-building and re-establishing democracy and another threatening a regression on the substantive gains made on many fronts. Narratives of Somalia’s growth and potential fronted on social media by ordinary citizens and returning diaspora are contrasted by conflict and frequent attacks on civilians by armed non-state actors.

These attacks have claimed the lives of innocent civilians, including many talented youth and diaspora returnees, many of whom chose to trade in a comfortable life for a precarious one to bring back skills to their home country.

Many Somalis who have returned from the diaspora engage on social issues, telling powerful stories of Somalia’s potential on social media. However, the security situation is causing disillusionment among citizens and observers alike and, over time, the narrative of resilience is being replaced by increased demands for accountability.

On the economic front, debt cancellation by the World Bank is a notable milestone that has brought the state closer to regaining access to financing from global institutions. The federal government has made gains in institution building, including taking back Somali’s airspace for the first time since the civil war broke out in 2017.

While the reach of the federal government has expanded, tensions between the central government and federal member states—characteristic of similar systems in many contexts across the world—has re-emerged more overtly. For example, armed clashes between the Somali National Army and Jubaland state forces broke out in February 2020, with the heightened tensions culminating in more intense fighting in January 2021 that claimed the lives of over 20 civilians and led to the displacement of many others.

The Somali government has accused Kenya of meddling and harbouring hostile forces, a claim the government of Kenya has refuted. The Jubaland conflict, coupled with a maritime border dispute at the International Court of Justice, forms the backdrop of an enduring diplomatic rift between the two neighbouring and interdependent countries.

AMISOM

Continued attacks by al-Shabaab in the country, and particularly in the capital, have called into question the role of the African Union peacekeeping force in stabilizing Somalia. The armed extremist group still controls some parts of Somali territory.

The “ungoverned” spaces that remain in the control of al-Shabaab pose the single biggest threat to the country’s stability. The African union-backed force and the Somali Armed Forces have faced a difficult mission in liberating towns from the hands of the militant group. The presence of international troops in some parts of the country keeps the group at bay but, with the current security architecture, it is a seemingly herculean task to keep the group from taking over locations with a power vacuum in the long-term. And while some domestic actors have been calling for the withdrawal of AMISOM forces, if not well planned, their departure could have catastrophic consequences; stabilizing Somalia against the backdrop of a haphazard withdrawal will be untenable.

Continued attacks by al-Shabaab in the country and particularly in the capital have called into question the role of the African Union peacekeeping force in stabilizing Somalia.

The withdrawal of United States troops from Afghanistan and the ensuing chaos has reignited the debate about the utility of militarized foreign interventions in stabilizing countries in conflict. But while the historical contexts of Afghanistan and Somalia are different, there are parallels to be drawn and lessons to be learned.

In international law, there are limited circumstances in which foreign military interventions are sanctioned to enforce the “right to protect”. The principle of jus cogens comes into play when protecting civilians overrides state sovereignty because a state is unable or unwilling to protect them, for instance, in the context of genocide.

However, in the new millennium, the US “war on terror” normalized foreign military interventions for counter-insurgency operations and to “liberalize” countries. However, interventions in Iraq, Libya, and the Sahel have failed to achieve their objectives and have instead led to further instability.

The AMISOM intervention in Somalia dates back to 2007 when the troops were given a counterinsurgency task. Its current mandate is mainly under the auspices of Kenya’s war against the al-Shabaab, which has claimed numerous attacks in Kenya. Kenya’s 2011 military intervention was absorbed into AMISOM with a renewed United Nations Security Council mandate in 2013. The main objectives of the peacekeeping forces from five African countries were to stamp out the al-Shabaab threat, reinforce the role of Somali security forces in providing security for the political process, and peacebuilding with a gradual handover to the country’s forces.

While AMISOM has partly secured the capital and continues to prop up the political establishment in Mogadishu, an evaluation of the performance of the peacekeeping force at a time of the force’s likely withdrawal indicates that the mission is far from having achieved the objectives set out in its mandate.

AMISOM’s mandate, which was extended by three months in December in 2021, will soon expire, and the fate of the mission will be decided in March. As one scholar argues, the AU mission has been stuck on basics and has failed to create a peace that paves the way for state building. Without control of territory and governance structures at different levels, the security gap remains the biggest impediment to state building.

The African Union has proposed a transitional mission with a focus on handing over to Somali security forces. The European Union, which funds AMISOM, has realized that a purely militarized solution is unsustainable, and even counterproductive, in resolving Somalia’s crisis and has called for changes if it is to continue supporting the mission. On the other hand, the Somali government has rejected an extension of AMISOM’s mandate.

The AU mission has been stuck on basics and has failed to create a peace that paves the way for state building.

While Somalia’s crisis appears to be a military question and is primarily dealt with as such, it is at its core an issue tied to the politics of the country and to state building. Any initiative to promote stability and a durable peace should consider local ownership through investment in a Somali-led state-building process.

Elections 

The election of President Farmajo in 2017 ushered in a new era since the collapse of the state and was the first peaceful transition in the country for decades, and was lauded for the hope for the future that it represented.

However, elections that should have taken place two years ago have been delayed by a year, with a gridlock among political stakeholders threatening a potentially dangerous turning point in Somalia. There were real fears that the country would descend into conflict when political actors mobilized the military to contest power. While negotiations supported by the international community diffused the tensions, what is seemingly a zero-sum and highly fragmented politics keeps the country on edge, as witnessed in this current electoral cycle.

There were real fears that the country would descend into conflict when political actors mobilized the military to contest power.

While significant in the practice of democracy, elections are not a panacea for the problems that face post-conflict states; they can spark new conflict and divisions. To achieve positive progress in Somalia, Somalis themselves, the international community, donors, think tanks, and supporters must rethink the trajectory and the formula for peace in Somalia. The focus should shift from an international template of peace to solutions that are crafted primarily with and by local actors—peace from below. A mixed approach that considers the contextual complexity, history, and what would work from local perspectives is the way to give peace a chance.

International Women’s Day “brings together all working women to discuss our struggle against exploitation,” declared Stella Mwasa as she invited working women and men to gather for a meeting on the 8 March in Manzese, a working-class area of Dar es Salaam.

Stella is a leading organiser with the Manzese Working Women’s Cooperative, or UWAWAMA as per the Swahili acronym. UWAWAMA unites the savings and loan groups of petty traders and cargo porters, seeking a cooperative alternative to the “slavery” of financial institutions.

UWAWAMA hosted the meeting in a rented space, dubbed Amy Garvey Hall, which the cooperative uses for both its economic and political activities. But the meeting was for all wanawake wavujasho, meaning all working women, or more evocatively, all “women who sweat”. It brought together not only the urban-based petty traders of UWAWAMA but a group of rural small-scale farmers, women members of the Tanzania Network of Small-scale Farmer Organisations (MVIWATA).  Other groups with representatives at the meeting included HakiArdhi, JULAWATA, Kilosa Land Movement, and underground hip hop groups like Watunza Misingi, among others.

As with previous UWAWAMA gatherings marking International Women’s Day, this year’s meeting was a chance for women to unite, organise, and articulate their demands. The women who participated in the day’s discussions summed up these demands in a declaration, part of a “struggle to remind society that women’s demands differ depending on class” and to explicitly define these demands “for working women.”

In the spirit of International Women’s Day, and to “remind society” beyond Tanzania, here is an English translation of the declaration. The original Swahili version is available here.

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Six abiding demands from working women for Women’s Day

We working women, urban and rural, including small business operators and smallholder farmers, have come together in solidarity to celebrate International Working Women’s Day today, 8 March 2022, in Amy Garvey Hall, Manzese. As women who face a variety of challenges under all oppressive systems, we realize that our interests are different from the interests of upper class women. Therefore, we decided to establish our alternative forum to celebrate Women’s Day. After a lengthy debate through this forum, we declare the following six abiding demands for working women.

1. Full economic freedom

Despite there being many campaigns for women’s economic empowerment, like microfinance initiatives, a large group of working women have ended up the slaves of financial institutions. Instead of being empowered, we are chained by debt that exacerbates our poverty. This is because the solutions offered to tackle women’s poor economic conditions do more to entrench an oppressive economic system than to liberate women.

Many initiatives for women’s economic empowerment benefit financial institutions more than they liberate us. Through these campaigns, we are encouraged to take out exploitative loans, and then to become selfish to the extent that we will do anything to pay them back, including exploiting and oppressing other women.

We working women are tired of being slaves. We no longer want deceptive empowerment initiatives that are useless to us. We have unanimously decided that we will continue to fight for full economic independence, and we want it to be known that such freedom will not be achieved if a large group of women continue to be enslaved by financial institutions. So we will continue to fight against oppressive financial institutions and against all systems of class exploitation until all women and all working people are free.

2. Freedom to own land and protection from land-grabbing

We working women are the major producers given that a large percentage of rural smallholder farmers and urban small business operators are women. Land is our main source of livelihood. Yet the patriarchy deprives us of our right to own land because of our gender, and the capitalist system robs us of that right along with working men because of our economic class. Because of capitalism, neo-colonialists have been given the name of investors and are protected by the state when they plunder our land.

Every time the government announces the arrival of investors in our areas, we are filled with grief and anxiety because, in our experience, we can expect nothing aside the loss of our homes and our productive areas. We are always told that investors are coming to bring us prosperity, wellbeing and development, but reality and experience have shown that they come to destroy us by depriving us of our land, which is the main means of production, and by turning us into labourers in their fields or factories.

Others come as investors then plunder our land. Yet later they end up fencing off that land without even using it for any productive activity. Whether in rural areas where our fields are stolen or in cities where our businesses are evicted, the cry of all working people is the same.

We unanimously say that we are tired of being turned into serfs on our own land, and of becoming producers without food or other basic necessities because our land is stolen. For us, land is our identity, our heritage, and our life. There is nothing more important than fighting for our lives. There is no greater right to defend than the right to life, and to separate us from our land is to rob us of our lives. Therefore, we will continue to claim that right and to fight land-grabbing in all its various forms.

3. Free social services

In this unjust system, everything is turned into a commodity for sale, including important social services like health, education, clean and safe drinking water, and more. Since the system itself has created classes of the haves and have-nots, the vast majority of the have-nots cannot afford such services due to lack of money.

When it comes to discrimination in these services, we working women are the main victims. We are the ones who lose our lives by failing to access quality health care during childbirth because we cannot afford the high cost in hospitals that provide good care, many of which are private. Even when we go to government hospitals, we still need to purchase medical equipment for maternity care, which are also sold at a high price. Maternity services start at a cost of TSh75,000 (US$30) rising to TSh200,000 (US$90) and up to Tsh3,000,000 (US$1300) depending on the type of hospital and the type of delivery, natural or caesarean section. These costs are in addition to the cost of purchasing medical equipment. In short, in this system where we are forced to purchase essential health care, working women are at greater risk of losing our lives or those of our children during childbirth.

The health sector is just one facet that shows how we live in a society that degrades human dignity by selling services. Since without these services we cannot live nor safely bring a new life into the world, for us women, our rights cannot be realized if the right to access these essential services discriminates against us and the whole class of working people. We are tired of living in fear of losing our lives and the lives of our children. Thus, we want a system in which our human dignity is given priority over money.

4. The right to the city for all, without discrimination

In urban areas, we working women earn our living by running small businesses in the middle of the city. Our dependence on such businesses stems from being the victims of an economy that fails to protect our livelihoods while concentrating the means of production in the hands of the few.

The economy fails to focus on production and thus ends up creating a nation of informal traders. Among us, there are victims of land grabbing that deprived us of our farms as well as a large group that could work productively in factories but that remains unemployed because there are no factories. Thus, our only option is the business of petty trading, and we cannot operate in areas where there are no customers as all our needs depend on this business.

In addition to relying on our businesses, we are also major service providers for people of all classes in the city. We are the cleaners and cooks in offices and other urban areas. In short, all the activities of upper-class people in the city depend in every way on our services. Yet, whether we can live and earn a livelihood in the city is at the mercy of the state and not a recognized or respected right. We working women – as well as men of the working class – have been called derogatory names to justify the abuse, humiliation and theft inflicted on us, including the brutal evictions from urban areas.

Since cities are built with our sweat and through our taxes, we want our right to remain and do our business in the heart of the city. We are tired of being harassed and robbed of our property under the pretext of sanitation and urban planning. We do not accept to be second class citizens in cities that thrive on our sweat and our labour. Thus, we want the relevant authorities to plan cities based on the needs of all citizens without discrimination. As the main victims of urban planning that discriminates against the majority of urban residents, we will continue to fight for a “right to the city” for all without exception until a revolution to establish a fully equal system is achieved.

5. Decent jobs for all

We working women recognize that the employment problem is systemic, and that it is not due to individual laziness or lack of ingenuity as we are told. We recognize that relations of production have been engineered such that a large group of able-bodied people are unemployed and turned into the slaves of a small group that monopolises the means of production. And that slavery thrives even more where the numbers of unemployed grow larger.

As working women, we are also affected by this problem, as we are educating our children with difficulty through our small businesses and farming. Sometimes we must sell everything we own to afford their schooling, which is also commodified in this system. Yet even after all that, our youth come back home and continue to be our dependents because there are no jobs.

As victims, we oppose all misleading ideologies that try to cover up these systemic weaknesses. We reject all ideologies that blame the victims for failing to find employment when it is the unjust system itself that has failed to create jobs. In solidarity with our children, we will continue to fight for decent jobs and to wish that all workers enjoy the fruits of their labour.

6. An end to gender-based violence in all its forms

We working women are the biggest victims of gender-based violence. Due to the patriarchal system, we have grown up experiencing beatings and harassment, among other forms of abuse. We recognize that all women go through this ordeal, but it is indisputable that we are the biggest victims. Due to the hardships caused by capitalism, working women are vulnerable to violence as they are victims of men’s stress and anger resulting from the cruelty of life. And since everything costs money, our economic situation deprives us of access to justice when we experience violence.

Given this reality, we will continue to fight to end gender-based violence, and beyond that, for full gender equality, which we believe will only be achieved when all oppressive systems are broken and a fully equal society is established, one that respects the dignity of each person.

Thus, we have decided:

(a) All of us present today will continue to create alternative organisations uniting working women wherever we are, raising our voices together to fight for these demands.

(b) We will continue to use these organisations to reach out to other working women and to encourage them to join forces and fight for our demands.

(c) We will continue to educate ourselves and to build class consciousness between us and working men to create strong solidarity that will enable us to bring about a revolution in the system and build a society with dignity, justice and prosperity for all.

This is a struggle to remind society that women’s demands differ depending on class. These six abiding demands are for working women and all working people, and we, working women, will continue to fulfil our revolutionary duty by leading the struggle for these demands.

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Introduction and translation from Swahili by Michaela Collord. Collord teaches politics at the University of Nottingham and is active in labour organising both in the UK and in East Africa.