Five years apart, France (in 2018-19) and Kenya (in 2024), experienced spontaneous nationwide social movements, the magnitude of which led to major political crises. Through a powerful coordination and communication on social media, “leaderless” groups of demonstrators took to the streets of their countries’ main cities to oppose policies they denounced as antisocial.
While very different in their economies, demographics and political cultures, the two countries were faced with similar policies that led to similar phenomena. In both cases, freshly elected populist and neoliberal leaders bypassed or altered a set of intermediary bodies that ensure the interface between the rulers and the ruled. With fewer or no platforms on which they could convey their grievances, French and Kenyan demonstrators embarked on a new kind of mobilisation.
Quick summary of the events
On 17 November 2018, nearly 300,000 demonstrators occupied 3,000 different sites in France, organising mass blockades of roundabouts. They all wore the distinctive bright yellow vest every car owner is required by law to keep in their vehicle for emergencies. United by their motorist identity, they all voiced the same concern, repeated in the previous weeks on Facebook: they wanted President Emmanuel Macron’s government to cancel a scheduled hike of a tax on petroleum products in a context of already high inflation. A majority of the demonstrators were from rural and semi-urban areas, where the lack of public transportation makes car ownership essential.
Even as Macron remained firm on the planned tax hike, demonstrations of varying size and intensity took place every Saturday. While roadblocks continued to be erected everywhere in the country, Paris became the centre of growing attention, with protesters taking to the capital’s symbolic Avenue des Champs Elysées – the “most expensive” street in the world – on 24 November and the following week. Borrowing from the language of theatre, the demonstrators labelled each of their protests as “Acts” – increasingly tense confrontations with the security forces that had been heavily deployed.
The 1st of December 2018 marked a turning point, with a series of outbreaks of violence on the Champs Elysées and the storming of the world-famous monument, the Arc de Triomphe. On that day, 263 people were injured, including 81 members of the security forces and 182 demonstrators, some critically wounded by rubber bullets. In Marseille, an 80-year-old woman was hit in the face by a teargas grenade while closing the window of her fourth-floor apartment. She passed away the following day, sparking a wave of emotion throughout the country. In the average-sized city of Le Puy-en-Velay, the préfecture – the main government building – was set on fire.
Freshly returned from a G20 summit in Argentina where he said he would “never accept violence”, Emmanuel Macron tasked his prime minister to summon the main political forces and the “representatives” of the Yellow Vests.
On 5 December, Macron cancelled the scheduled tax hike, contradicting his prime minister who had declared the day before that it would be “suspended” for six months along with other proposed increases. Coming after three weeks of protests and growing resentment due to the unprecedented levels of police violence, Macron’s decision was considered belated and the Gilets Jaunes mobilisations continued over the following weeks. The scope of demands grew to include calls for greater social justice and the reinstatement of a tax on wealth abolished by Emmanuel Macron shortly after he was elected. Other claims also focused on accountability, as demonstrators demanded reforms to allow for citizen-led referenda to impeach elected leaders. The next few days of mobilisation tested the government even further: it was revealed that for the December 8 demonstrations, a helicopter would be on the ready to fly the president out of the Elysée presidential palace should his safety be threatened.
Emmanuel Macron’s first official address since the beginning of the crisis took place two days later, on 10 December, where he announced a raft of further concessions – worth €10 billion to the Yellow Vests – including a bonus increase for workers on minimum wage. These measures did not suffice to appease the movement, which continued to mobilise hundreds of thousands of demonstrators in the first Saturdays of 2019. The continued police violence – which resulted in some demonstrators losing limbs or eyes due to injuries from rubber bullets – raised concerns from Amnesty International and the Council of Europe, while the United Nations called for a probe into the actions of the police. The force itself became increasingly targeted by some protesters, together with symbols of luxury such as Fouquet’s (the restaurant of choice of former president Nicolas Sarkozy, nicknamed “president of the rich”) which was set ablaze. The National Assembly also came under attack.
As the mobilisation continued into the first half of 2019, Macron embarked on a four-month nationwide tour – referred to as “the Great National Debate” – to engage with citizens. Millions of online and written submissions were also collected from citizens, a measure that echoed the cahiers de doléances (complaints books) that were set up by the waning French monarchy in the first months of the 1789 Revolution. As a figure widely rejected by the Yellow Vests, President Macron’s initiative did not manage to fully tame the protesters’ claims, as they organised their own debates leading to proposals towards more social justice and accountability. After surviving at a lower scale, the movement, which had been gradually declining, came to an end in early 2020 with the lockdown and the regulations on public assemblies imposed by the government following the outbreak of COVID-19.
The above sequence of events presents glaring similarities with the social movement unfolding in Kenya since June prompted by the proposed Finance Bill 2024 which initially included a raft of tax hikes on essential commodities, including bread. Similar to France, an organic social movement quickly took shape to reject controversial tax increases in a context of high inflation. The Kenyan movement was championed by a variety of young demonstrators – some of whom belonged to Generation Z, the generation born between the mid-1990s and the early 2000s – who were not affiliated to any official structure. Both movements started without the backing of any political party nor trade union, which are usually key actors of social movements previously observed in both countries. A first march, on 18 June, gathered unusual crowds in Nairobi’s Central Business District, prompting President William Ruto to announce, on the evening of the same day, the removal of contentious dispositions contained in the proposed bill, such as planned increases in mobile money transfer fees, or VAT on bread.
As was the case in France, Kenyan protesters were not satisfied with this first concession, as the death of two protesters killed by the police on the first day and the injuries and abductions of dozens of others raised more concerns. The following week, protesters took to the streets across the country, gathering in front of centres of power such as the parliament in Nairobi – which was set on fire on 25 June – and came face to face with unprecedented levels of police violence. No less than 41 protesters died from live bullets on that day, while President Ruto claimed the protests had been “hijacked” by “organised criminals”.
Ruto’s six-minute speech was void of any words of compassion for the victims of police violence, dismissing the demonstrations as “treasonous”. His address overshadowed the withdrawal of the Finance Bill the head of state announced the following day, surrounded by parliamentarians of his United Democratic Alliance. Following this initial success, Kenyan demonstrators broadened their discourse to include the fight against corruption and the abolition of symbols of financial mismanagement such as the well-funded Offices of the First Lady and the Second Lady whose combined annual budget is nearly US$10 million.
Following the withdrawal of the Finance Bill, further demonstrations, albeit less attended, focused on symbols such as Nairobi’s main airport, the object of a deal with Indian group Adani that raised concerns about the country’s sovereignty over key infrastructure. Akin to France’s Yellow Vests, Kenyan demonstrators also organised their support for victims of police violence, with a concert organised on 7 July in Nairobi’s Uhuru Park, and fundraisers for the injured or the families of the deceased.
Social media and new technologies have also played an instrumental role in the organisation and coordination of the Gen Z movement. The first critiques of the Finance Bill 2024 emerged on TikTok in May and early June 2024 before spilling over into X (formerly Twitter), where live conversations reached record levels of attendance of up to several hundreds of thousands of people. AI-powered tools were developed by activists to share key information regarding the political situation. For instance, a chatbox named CorruptPoliticiansGPT enabled users to get up-to-date information regarding Kenyan politicians with ongoing court cases. Another creator, Kelvin Ndemo, developed a similar platform, FinanceBillGPT, which provided explanations on every disposition of the Finance Bill 2024.
Just as was the case in France in 2018–2019, the Kenyan movement could rely on volunteers from the medical sector to provide assistance to injured demonstrators at the margins of the protests. A USSD service – a basic application accessible to any phone through the SMS signal – was set up for the users to report and document cases of police violence and locate the nearest medical assistance point. As with the French Yellow Vests, notable charismatic figures stood out during the mobilisation of the protests, in online communications and at blood drives and fundraisers for the victims and their families. Among them were younger Gen Z activists such as journalist Hanifa Farsafi, activist Kasmuel McOure, as well as more experienced and more renowned figures such as Boniface Mwangi (who came to public attention as a photojournalist during the 2007–2008 post-election crisis) and the poet Bryan Ngartia.
Two presidents, one way of governing
While the magnitude of the protests was unexpected in France and in Kenya, they occurred in a fertile ground of discontent, less than two years into the first term of heads of state elected on a promise of radical change.
Like Emmanuel Macron, who was elected at the age of 39 in 2017, William Ruto’s campaign was rooted in the rejection of the old political class. The French leader took over after two one-term presidents whose unpopularity reached an all-time low: Nicolas Sarkozy (2007–2012) and François Hollande (2012–2017). Sarkozy and Hollande’s parties, the then two main groups on the French political scene, were swept away in the ensuing legislative elections, with Macron’s coalition obtaining an overwhelming majority in parliament, controlling 62.5 per cent of the seats at the National Assembly.
The author of a campaign book titled Revolution, Emmanuel Macron branded himself as an outsider in a system he, however, knew well; he was François Hollande’s deputy chief of staff for two years before taking over the ministry of economy between 2014 and 2016. Popular in the corporate world, whose practices he wanted to bring into his government and political party, the then Young Turk studied at Sciences Po University and at the French national school of administration (ENA), two elite schools that have produced most of the political class. Macron sought to break with these elitist aspects with promises of social progress. Shortly after his May 2017 election, he promised that no once in the country would be homeless by the end of that year, a promise he has yet to fulfil.
Macron’s branding strategy, which places him centre stage as the last defender of the republic against “extremist” parties he faced, have led various scholars to define him as a populist. Breaking away from the socialist party-led government he belonged to, he surrounded himself with political newcomers, most of whom came from the private sector or wielded little political influence within their former centre-left or centre-right parties. This reinforced the new president’s influence over his newly created coalition. While he claimed to bring more “horizontality” and “co-construction” to the political debate, his inclination to a rather “Jupiterian” style of governance became rapidly apparent.
Although he was 57 at the time of his election, William Ruto also took advantage of his relative youth compared to his 77-year-old rival Raila Odinga to represent the younger generations. Despite being the outgoing deputy president and a well-known political figure since the 1992 elections, William Ruto styled himself as an outsider, a “hustler” facing political “dynasties” to which belonged Raila Odinga and the outgoing president Uhuru Kenyatta. The political scene had since the country’s independence been shaped by a competition for influence among the leaders of the dominant tribes and Ruto sought to present the 2022 polls as the first issue-based general election. Through his proposal to create a state-backed microcredit fund, he claimed to support his fellow “hustlers”, a group of voters mostly defined by their activities in the informal sector and an ability to innovate their way out of poverty. A very close ally to evangelical churches – of whose pastors he adopted the tone – William Ruto was also labelled a populist for his many promises to the masses.
The populist rhetoric of both leaders put them at the centre of the criticism towards their respective administrations. One of the Yellow Vests’ most common slogans, “Macron démission” – a call for the resignation of the French president – was echoed by Kenyan protesters’ call, “Ruto Must Go”. Both Macron and Ruto were elected during a period when their respective countries were facing a dire social and political situation marked by an increasing rejection of the elites. In 2017 and 2022, the French leader beat the far-right populist leader Marine Le Pen in the second round of voting; Le Pen obtained the highest number of votes her party has ever won. Unemployment was at its peak in 2017 (nearly 10 per cent of the active population), with 14 per cent of the population living in poverty.
In Kenya, the 2022 elections took place in a context of growing inflation following the COVID-19 pandemic and the global consequences of the war in Ukraine. When Ruto was sworn in in September 2022, the year-on-year inflation reached a staggering 9.5 per cent while the underemployment or unemployment rate among the youth – even though difficult to measure – remained high, with estimates ranging between 31 per cent and 65 per cent.
Besides sharing similar characters (and birthdays, ironically), Ruto’s and Macron’s approach to politics may explain why their respective countries experienced similar protests six years apart. While high unemployment and poverty created a fertile ground for contestation to grow under populist rule, the two heads of state also neglected or co-opted their countries’ so-called intermediary bodies, i.e. the formal and informal structures that would help convey the population’s grievances to the country’s rulers: parliament, opposition parties, trade unions, and in the case of Kenya, churches.
Emmanuel Macron’s “vertical”, Jupiterian rule was based on a promise of new practices, thereby avoiding the traditional spheres of political dialogue. The National Assembly, the parliament’s most influential chamber, was the first institution to be neglected: Macron’s broad majority allowed him to easily pass any law. His coalition’s inner rules further transformed the Assembly into a rubber-stamping institution: Macronite MPs were forbidden from voting against any bill proposed by the majority, and were not allowed to vote for any text emanating from the opposition either, risking expulsion from the caucus were they to do so. The parliament was further neglected as the president issued a record number of executive orders – decrees that do not require legislative approval – compared to all his predecessors.
Some of these decrees were aimed at reforming the labour market and reducing social safety nets for unemployed workers. While doing this, Emmanuel Macron quickly lost the confidence of the trade unions, a major actor in the social dialogue, that he accused of “being too political” and “not representing the general interest”. The reforms he carried out as minister for the economy and president were aimed at reducing the influence of trade unions in negotiations on labour regulations, leading the main trade unions to criticise the president’s attitude towards them.
Too weak in parliament, and divided over their possible participation in Macron’s majority, the political opposition also entered the year 2018 in tatters. Despite qualifying to go to the second round of the 2017 presidential election, the far-right leader Marine Le Pen failed to exploit the momentum, and her party only gained a meagre eight seats in the National Assembly. This was mostly due to the two-rounds electoral system used for legislative elections, which allowed most of the other parties to coalesce and form a “republican front” to block the election of candidates from a party with fascist roots. Arriving fourth in the 2017 presidential election with a solid 19 per cent of the votes, leftist leader Jean-Luc Mélenchon also failed to bring his weight to bear on the political stage: his party obtained a paltry 17 seats (out of 577) in the National Assembly. The opening of an investigation into his party’s funding in October 2018 triggered a memorable confrontation between him and the police that led to a 3-month suspended jail sentence.
A rubber-stamping parliament, weakened trade unions, and a missing political opposition: this was the exact same situation prevailing in Kenya in June 2024 at the beginning of the Maandamano (demonstrations). Although Ruto’s majority in parliament was much narrower than Macron’s in 2017, various media outlets reported a continued practice of buying MP votes: a dissident from the ruling party, member of parliament George Koimburi alleged that his fellow parliamentarians were offered KSh 2 million each to vote in favour of the highly unpopular Finance Bill 2024. Although the allegation was refuted by the Deputy President, it echoes a similar accusation that was voiced last year by a member of the majority during the vote of the Finance Bill in 2023. While doubts remain regarding the use of such a carrot, the stick remains: Koimburi testified about being threatened by members of the majority for opposing the bill. With their high revenues – among the highest globally – and material advantages, MPs remain unpopular in Kenya where in 2021 81 per cent of voters expected them to monitor the president’s actions according to a 2023 Afrobarometer study.
Opposition parties are also not perceived to be a viable counter-power in Kenya. The same survey found a drop in the share of the population reporting a close affinity with a political party – from 65 per cent in 2014 to 49 per cent in 2021. While Raila Odinga was the main leader of a series of demonstrations against the Finance Bill 2023, he has since warmed up to his former rival: Raila has been campaigning to become the Chairman of the African Union Commission since February 2024 with the backing of the Kenyan executive. This has curtailed his leverage: although he criticised the Finance Bill 2024, he did not call for demonstrations against it but called on parliament to amend it. Unlike in 2023, Raila did not personally take part in any of the marches that were organised once or twice a week between mid-June and mid-July, and his insistence on “dialogue” with the government was criticised. On 18 June, an opinion poll found that 81 per cent of Kenyans were in favour of the “Gen Z” movement, with the highest rates to be found among Raila voters. Together with the former opposition leader and Ruto himself, many politicians from both the majority and the opposition saw their phone numbers and private details outed on social media for campaigns of “kusalimia” (“greeting”, in an ironic way), with voters calling their MPs to ask them to oppose the Finance Bill 2024.
Where trade unions were ignored in France, the main trade unions in Kenya were co-opted when Ruto took the presidency; he received the support of Francis Atwoli, the leader of the country’s Central Organization of Trade Unions (COTU) who, although he had backed Raila Odinga’s 2022 presidential bid, was quick to warm up to Ruto, asking voters from his region in Western Kenya to “work together” with the new administration. Atwoli also claimed to have told Ruto to support Odinga’s candidacy for the Chair of the African Union Commission, strengthening his position as a political power broker more than as a trade unionist. Since then, the head of state and Atwoli have often appeared together, such as at the 2024 Labour Day celebrations, where the president was the chief guest. A critic of the Odinga-led 2023 demonstrations, Atwoli did not take part in this year’s movement, focusing his message on the need for the government “to listen” to the unemployed youth.
Another intermediary body that lost its weight in Kenya during this movement were the churches, which were criticised by demonstrators for their proximity to the government, particularly the evangelical churches who have been Ruto’s main allies; Ruto’s ascension in leadership started with a stint as chair of the university Christian Union. Since his election, the ties between the president and churches have become even closer, with Ruto attending Sunday services throughout the country. While prayers now precede most official events (officiated by “official” pastors tied to the government), Ruto has also mobilised the state to organise religious events, such as the national prayers held in 2023 to pray for rains following years of drought.
Although Kenya’s secularity is enshrined in the country’s constitution, which states that “there shall be no State religion” (Chapter 2, article 8), evangelical pastors have become frequent visitors at State House, raising speculations over the brown envelopes they are sometimes seen carrying while leaving the place. Besides taking to the streets, the demonstrators also took their protests to the churches, demanding that politicians stop taking to the pulpit to make political speeches as has become common since the end of Daniel Arap Moi’s rule, when churches were seen as a rare space for freedom of speech.
Finally, the media became increasingly threatened; because he perceived most media houses to have been supporters of his rival’s election bid in 2022, William Ruto was quick to sharply reduce state advertising for outlets that had been critical of his candidacy. The blow was severe, as it occurred in a context of inflation, particularly in the price of paper. The Standard Media Group, which is owned by the family of former president Daniel arap Moi – whose relations with William Ruto became tense in the mid-2000s – announced a redundancy scheme in October 2022, which was followed by a more massive one in 2024. The Aga Khan-owned Nation Media Group, which edits the widely read Daily Nation, also followed the same route, with two successive layoff and restructuring plans in 2022 and 2024. Mediamax, a major media house belonging to former president Uhuru Kenyatta, also faced financial headwinds. Although no redundancies were announced, workers denounced a growing backlog of unpaid salaries, still unresolved to date. The last nail in the coffin of legacy media was the announcement, in January 2024, that the My Gov publication, which lists all government adverts, would only be released through The Star newspaper whose holding, the Radio Africa Group, had warmed up to Ruto’s administration, making the daily a de facto government-affiliated media.
A growing accountability deficit
Bypassing these intermediary bodies and counterpowers heightened the sense of injustice and impunity in both countries. Shortly before the Yellow Vests movement began, a parliamentary committee set up to investigate Emmanuel Macron’s private bodyguard who had been accused of beating up demonstrators was rapidly scuttled by the majority’s heavyweights. They ensured that no report would be released by the committee, which led to the less powerful opposition-controlled Senate setting up its own committee. The affair led to the resignation of the minister for internal affairs Gérard Collomb in October 2018, just weeks before the beginning of the Yellow Vests protests.
Other scandals also rocked the French cabinet before the protest movement began. François Bayrou, the minister for justice and one of the rare political heavyweights in the Macron administration, resigned in June 2017, less than two months after his appointment, following accusations of misuse of European funds for the benefit of his party. The then minister for public finance, Gérald Darmanin, who was to become minister for internal affairs in 2020, was accused of rape and sexual harassment in 2017 but was cleared of the accusations in 2024. In May 2018, Emmanuel Macron’s chief of staff, the all-powerful secretary general of the Elysée, Alexis Kohler was also investigated for a potential conflict of interest concerning decisions he may have influenced regarding his previous employer. In September 2018, the minister for sports, former fencing champion Laura Flessel also resigned “for personal reasons”, shortly before an investigation was announced concerning potential undeclared revenues. The resignation in September 2018 of the then massively popular minister for environment, Nicolas Hulot, who publicly denounced the lack of progress in the government’s environmental policies, added to the criticism facing the administration.
Similarly, William Ruto’s administration also faced political scandals in the months preceding the June 2024 movement, which also generalised an atmosphere of impunity. Then Cabinet Secretary (minister) for agriculture, Mithika Linturi was criticised for subsidising imports of substandard fertiliser, which he initially denied. Despite the public uproar regarding the matter (it is worth noting that William Ruto’s main campaign promise was agricultural development), Linturi refused to resign and the parliamentary committee voted against his impeachment, fuelling the defiance towards the National Assembly. At the same time, the health sector also faced a crisis of significant magnitude, with medical personnel demonstrating and striking for eight straight weeks against a plan to reduce the salary of interns by 80 per cent, and making demands that a 2017 agreement be implemented. Health Cabinet Secretary Susan Nakhumicha faced multiple calls to resign and a motion of impeachment was filed against her at the National Assembly.
Nakhumicha’s Education counterpart, Ezekiel Machogu, also became increasingly unpopular for failing to postpone the reopening of schools in April following devastating floods that killed more than 300 people across the country. Machogu ended up announcing the measure at 1 a.m. the night before schools were due to reopen. Other scandals that could be mentioned include the repeated nationwide power blackouts that the country has experienced since August 2023, which drew criticism for the Energy CS, Davis Chirchir, a close ally of the president. The unprecedented outages lasted for hours and did not spare crucial infrastructure such as hospitals and airports. The outages came in the wake of other controversies linked to the energy and petroleum sector, such as the mysterious oil shipment that arrived in Mombasa in October 2023 whose funding was unclear and whose ownership was claimed by a little-known businesswoman, Anne Njeri, who was accused of being a proxy for more powerful actors. Calls by the opposition and civil society organisations for the resignation of those involved in these scandals went unanswered: the most controversial CSs were sacked after the June 2024 demonstrations in a cabinet reshuffle that saw five members of the opposition join the executive.
Apart from the scandals, the perceived arrogance of government officials also fuelled the wrath of protesters in both Kenya and France. Emmanuel Macron’s controversial declarations were often recalled by the Yellow Vests, such as his advice to a job seeker to just “cross the road” and find work, or his heated arguments with factory workers who were told “to work” to buy themselves a suit like the one the then minister for economy was wearing that day in 2016. Some of his ministers also had their fair share of backlash, such as interior minister Christophe Castaner, who was seen kissing a young woman that was not his wife in a night club in March 2019, on the evening following a particularly tense day of demonstrations.
In early July 2024, William Ruto had himself to apologise for the “arrogance and opulence” of the ruling class that the demonstrators rejected. The signs of opulence included the use of high-end cars and helicopters to attend functions, which became an even more burning topic following the death of the country’s Chief of Defence Forces in a chopper accident in April. In addition to raising doubts about the army’s procurement policies, the crash was explained by the Defence CS to be the result of undue use by politicians of military helicopters at the expense of military leaders, left with lower-tier aircraft. The figure of David Ndii, the presidency’s chief economist, also became one of the most rejected by the demonstrators whom he had labelled “digital wankers” at the beginning of the movement. Some of his comments also caused outrage for their lack of compassion, such as the harrowing “people die all the time” comment he posted to say that floods would be “the new normal”.
As their policies undermined intermediary bodies, both presidents Emmanuel Macron and William Ruto tried to find support in alternative spheres. The French president redirected his attention towards the mayors of the 35,000 city councils of the country, who are among the most respected elected leaders in the country. This last-minute rapprochement was not successful, however. When the Yellow Vests crisis started, mayors were deploring a top-down, centralised decision-making process where most policies were designed in Paris with little consultation. Moreover, the crisis started just months after a brutal decrease of the budget allocated to local governments, which contributed to undermining local public services, and fuelled the protests.
For his part, William Ruto sought advice and support from traditional chiefs. Shortly after June 25 demonstrations, Africa Intelligence (of which one of the authors of this story is a correspondent) revealed that Ruto had travelled to the rural West Pokot County to meet with Pokot elders. Shortly thereafter, he met with elders of the Talai – a clan of the Kalenjins, William Ruto’s community – who are believed to wield mystical powers and whose blessing has been essential to all the Kenyan presidents since the country’s independence. Both groups performed rituals to protect the Head of State, and gave him advice that he followed, such as the dissolution of the cabinet and the opening of dialogue with the protesters. Since July, Ruto has embarked on a nationwide series of town hall meetings, applying a blueprint similar to Macron’s during the Yellow Vests crisis.
Same policies produce the same results
The parallels between France and Kenya, and between Emmanuel Macron and William Ruto, lead us to question what fundamental trends brought both countries to experience quite similar crises, to which both leaders responded in a similar way. The two men are close: in less than two years as counterparts, they have met at least six times, the latest meeting being on 14 June 2024 at the G7 summit in Italy, even as the movement against the Finance Bill was already gaining momentum. Political sources also confided that a certain level of communication occurred between officials from the two administrations – at an unspecified level, however – as the Kenyan movement was getting underway. When asked by a Nation journalist about the Kenyan crisis at a function for the opening of the Olympics in July 2024, President Macron expressed his hope that the “demonstrations will end soon”. For such a popular event, William Ruto’s absence at the Paris Olympics was noticeable, and also suggests some exchanges between the two administrations to explain the Kenyan president’s cancellation of his trip; Ruto did not officially leave the country during the duration of the crisis.
Stronger forces are at play, however. Besides the similarities in their character and political ethos, the two presidents have implemented policies that mostly follow the neoliberal playbook, leading to a reduction of public expenditure, with priority being accorded to the private sector. In the same way that President Ruto praised the figure of the Kenyan “hustler” and promised to facilitate their endeavour through the “Hustler Fund”, Emmanuel Macron’s poster child was the self-entrepreneur, labelled “startupper”. During the time Macron was minister for the economy, some of his landmark policies were aimed at encouraging job seekers to found their own companies with an “autoentrepreneur” (self-entrepreneur) status, which is criticised by the left for its precariousness. The promoter of France as a “startup nation”, Macron’s measures accelerated the “uberisation” of the economy by shrinking the public benefits job seekers are entitled to and nudging them into accepting part-time jobs with little social protection.
The same neoliberal dynamics pushed both the French and Kenyan administrations to significantly reduce the capacity of the state, conceding lower or stable tax rates to the higher classes in a context of growing inequalities. At the peak of the Yellow Vests crisis, Emmanuel Macron was planning to privatise the state-owned Aéroports de Paris company that generates hundreds of millions of euros in yearly profits, as well as the country’s lottery agency (La Française des Jeux), which is also significantly profitable. These plans were deeply unpopular – a petition gathering a million signatures asked for their withdrawal – and were finally abandoned.
Setting aside a series of more temporary social policies during COVID-19, other measures, including the attempt to push the minimum retirement age to 64 years, were also inspired by this priority to stabilise social expenditure. To match his campaign promise of saving up to €60 billion during his term, Emmanuel Macron’s first budget, in 2017, saw an unprecedented level of tax cuts for the richest households coupled with a drastic reduction of public expenditure, despite a concerning social crisis. These austerity measures did not concern the French presidency, however, whose budget skyrocketed in 2018 due to Emmanuel Macron’s multiple travels abroad and other more controversial expenses, like the First Lady’s hairdressing costs.These budgetary priorities mirror William Ruto’s presidency. While he claimed to be constrained by a growing debt servicing burden, the State House budget went into overdraft by KSh900 million (US$7 million) in 2024, partly due to multiple travels worldwide and the costly refurbishment and extension plans of the presidential residences across the country. At the same time, social safety nets, such as subsidies on fuel and unga (maize flour) were sharply reduced or abolished, while dozens of state corporations were slated to be privatised. Strongly defended by William Ruto and his advisers, this policy also followed the guidelines and the so-called good practices of multilateral lenders such as the International Monetary Fund (IMF), which greenlit the controversial Finance Bill 2024 shortly before its removal and soon after reaching an agreement for new funding. While he defined his policy as a sovereign choice, William Ruto paradoxically accused the movement against his government of being supported by external forces, such as the American Ford Foundation – which had provided funding for some civil society organisations supporting the demonstrations. Ruto’s spokesperson also blamed unnamed “foreign powers” that would be disapproving of Kenya’s support for Ukraine.
Conclusion
Behind these neoliberal injunctions lies a certain vision of societies focused on an individualistic, rather than a holistic, approach. The onus is put on one’s personal responsibility – glorified through “hustler” or “startup nation” narratives – to navigate an increasingly deregulated environment where unequal opportunities are justified as the result of unequal entrepreneurial talent.
Most intermediary bodies that are perceived as an expression of the masses, such as trade unions and political parties, tend to be ignored or neutralised through co-optation. In France as in Kenya, political parties became mere vehicles for the ambitions of leaders embarked on a narrative focusing on the exceptionality of their person, obfuscating most notions of social classes and groups.
Combined with growing inequalities and policies reducing the size of government and social spending, the neglect or co-optation of intermediary bodies brought millions of demonstrators to the streets without the support of any external forces. The logic at work is not exclusively French and Kenyan; it is global. The removal of intermediary bodies provides relief to the governing elites, giving them a sense of omnipotence when it comes to implementing their policies. But that relief is temporary: we are witnessing more and more unexpected, massive, organic and sweeping social movements across the world, be it in Nigeria, Sri Lanka or Bangladesh. The last two cases set a defining precedent: disconnected ruling elites were chased out of power.
