George Musengi Saitoti remains one of the most consequential figures in Kenya’s post-independence political history, yet also one of its most elusive. For more than thirty years, he moved quietly within circles where men rarely survived long. He managed to navigate a political landscape designed to crush dissent, bury rivals, and reward blind loyalty. And … Read more
The history of the Kenya Police is a story of an institution created for one purpose and forced to serve another. Formed in the early 1900s to secure the interests of the British colonial state, the force was built around surveillance, labour control, and the suppression of resistance. Its uniforms, ranks, vehicles, and training all … Read more
A Visual History of Power, Propaganda, Protest, and Everyday Survival 1978 – The End of One Era, the Beginning of Another Nairobi entered 1978 in mourning. Jomo Kenyatta’s death triggered a carefully orchestrated state funeral that drew presidents, princes, soldiers, and crowds that stretched across the city. The ceremony was as much about grief as … Read more
A Historical Exhibition 1. Ruring’u Stadium, Nyeri – Early 1963 Supporters of the Kenya African National Union (KANU) gather after a symbolic gesture of surrender at the end of the Mau Mau Emergency. The ritual attire and dramatic hair crests reflect attempts at communal reconciliation after years of insurgency and detention. The event marked a … Read more
Kenyan politics has never really been about ideology. It has been about access. Access to the state, to contracts, to protection, to networks. Political parties, in this context, are not movements built around ideas. They are vehicles built around people. They exist to capture, negotiate, and distribute power. To understand Kenyan parties, you don’t read … Read more
Since independence, Kenya’s presidency has been the most powerful institution in the country, shaping governance, the economy, public expectations, and the balance between state and citizen. Each administration altered the political architecture it inherited—sometimes strengthening institutions, sometimes bending them, often redefining them entirely. This analysis traces how Kenya’s heads of state used power, responded to … Read more
Since independence in 1963, the National Treasury has been the quiet engine of state power. It has shaped Kenya’s development, funded its politics, fuelled its scandals, and determined the opportunities—or crises—faced by each generation. To follow the Treasury is to follow the true story of Kenya: the hopes of independence, the patronage networks of the … Read more
Since independence in 1963, the Office of the Vice President—now the Office of the Deputy President—has been Kenya’s most delicate seat of power. Created to symbolise national balance, it has instead become the frontline of political mistrust, sudden dismissals, unexpected alliances, and dramatic successions. To follow the history of Kenya’s vice presidents is to follow … Read more
The Empire’s Steel Dream In the late 19th century, British colonial planners set their sights on a grand infrastructure project that sounded like pure madness to many: a railway from the Indian Ocean coast deep into the East African interior. The idea was born from imperial ambition during the Scramble for Africa, as Britain vied … Read more
Before the name Mau Mau was ever whispered, before colonial forts rose above Kikuyu ridges, there was Waiyaki wa Hinga — chief of Southern Kiambu and one of the first Kenyans to confront empire head-on. A Warning in the Highlands By the late 1880s, caravans under the Imperial British East Africa Company were pushing inland, … Read more