Africa Up Close

This article is based on a study[1] for Mercy Corps’ Umoja Kwa Amani (“United for Peace” in Swahili), a 12-month election violence prevention and mitigation program whose goal was to “promote peaceful elections in Kenya by strengthening stakeholders’ capacity to prevent and mitigate election violence and contribute to a peaceful political transition around the August 2022 elections.” The use of technology was a key pillar in the Umoja Kwa Amani (UKA) program in mobilizing community capacities for peacebuilding, conflict mitigation, and civic education, as well as improving coordination and collaboration between and among community, county, and national-level stakeholders in early warning and early response mechanisms. To complement UKA, Mercy Corps implemented a program christened Mitigating Election Violence through Social Media Micro-Influencers, whose goals are to mitigate the potential of social media to incite conflict, promote the digital space as a forum for non-violence discussions, and build evidence around the effectiveness of social media influencers as tools for promoting peace and mitigating conflict.

Local fishermen at Lake Victoria, Kenya. Photo courtesy of Ryan Harvey via Flickr Commons. 

Migingo, an island roughly the size of a football pitch on Lake Victoria, has been a site of contention between Kenya and Uganda, due to the large fish population found in the surrounding freshwaters. As populations increase, environmental degradation and pollution put pressure on the flora and fauna in the lake basin, creating a natural resource conflict time bomb. East African countries, especially Kenya and Uganda, are witnessing diminishing returns in fish and related products, leading to rising competition for the increasingly scarce natural resources.

Orange democratic movement supporters in Kenya. Photo courtesy of DEMOSH via Flickr Commons. 

Politics is indeed a tricky affair judging from the recent “Golden Handshake” between political giants and arch-rivals, with Uhuru Kenyatta and Raila Odinga marking the end of the prolonged electoral crisis in the country. The newfound friendship has rebounded the stock exchange, revamped tourism, and excited foreign investors who are now optimistic of rainy days ahead.[1]  However, will the gesture provide an impetus for the much-needed constitutional democracy, and guarantee civil rights and liberties in a way that will lead Kenyans to Canaan?[2]

Downtown Nairobi. Photo by ND Strupler, via Flickr. Creative Commons.

There is an emerging trend of female violent extremism in Kenya, embodied by three women who botched an attack on the Mombasa police station on September 15, 2016. To say the least, the attack was publicly shocking, as Kenya has never witnessed anything like it before, in terms of women’s direct involvement in terrorism. This incident points to a worrying trend of female violent extremism, but scholarly inquiry is required to fully make out what it means.

The Nairobi railway station. Photo by Xiaojun Deng, via Flickr. Creative Commons.

On September 11, 2016, three women bluffed their way into Mombasa’s police station before stabbing an officer, setting off a petrol bomb, and being shot dead in the ensuing firefight. One of the women was wearing a suicide vest that did not detonate. The attack, which has been widely covered in Kenyan media, serves as an excellent test case for the kind of reporting required on issues of extremism and terrorism in Africa, particularly terrorism carried out by women. It was a perfect laboratory to begin bisecting the salience of Africa-centric methodologies of reporting terrorism that I have argued for.

Terrorists rely on publicity and news coverage of their actions, and the kind of reporting we have witnessed in the local and global media time and again in the aftermath of terrorist attacks in Kenya and elsewhere, only works to create fear, anxiety and hysteria. That is why it is important to deny terrorists the publicity they seek.

A screenshot of the front page of the Daily Nation’s website on December 18, 2016.

When terrorists attacked the Westgate Mall in Nairobi, Kenya, on September 21, 2013, the country was shocked and the media was confused. The Sunday edition of one of the leading mainstream newspapers, the Daily Nation, was caught up in the confusion by publishing bold headlines and gory close-up images of a woman in pain with a blood-covered face. That coverage might have sold well, but it provoked questions on the ethics of journalism in Kenya. On social media, anger at the gory, sensationalistic coverage manifested in a campaign with the hashtag “#BoycottDailyNation.” Soon after, the Nation Media Group’s CEO Linus Gitahi apologized to the nation via Twitter and on Nation Television (NTV) for the newspaper’s poor judgment in using the photos.

Men and boys read the Quran in a mosque in Mogadishu, Somalia. Countering violent extremism has to start with engaging youth. Photo by AU UN IST PHOTO / ILYAS A. ABUKAR, via Flickr. Creative Commons.

Kenya is in many ways on the frontlines of the “war on terror” in East Africa. The 2015 attack on Garissa University College and the 2013 attack on Westgate Mall are well-known, but the past six months have also seen smaller-scale attacks and the proliferation of arms through Somalia and along the Indian Ocean coast. The cities of Nairobi and Mombasa are hotbeds of youth radicalism too. The country was a fitting host, then, for the 3^rd Annual Islamic Conference in Nairobi this March, dubbed the “Journey of Faith,” where the theme was countering violent extremism.

Somali youths in Kismayo with a load of charcoal. Countering radicalization has to start with youth engagement and opportunities.
Photo by Stuart Price / AU-UN IST PHOTO, via Flickr. Public Domain.

It appears al-Shabaab’s assault on innocent Kenyans and Kenya’s political economy is taking its toll. Al-Shabaab seems prepared to fight a long war, perhaps for many years or decades. As a group motivated by religious beliefs, they have won sympathizers at home and abroad. Kenya went into Somalia under an operation dubbed Operation Linda Nchi looking for a quick-fix solution to a complex asymmetric conflict. Confounding the expectations of experts and observers, that operation is now sailing into its fifth year, which begs the question—are Kenyans prepared to fight in Somalia for decades, as al-Shabaab is?