As Kenya marks the first anniversary of the uprising that shook the nation on 25 June 2024, Abdirashid Diriye reflects on the pivotal role played by Generation Z. He explains how the youth’s defiance, creativity, and digital savviness fuelled a powerful anti-IMF, anti-austerity, and anti-Ruto protest, ultimately compelling President Ruto to amend significant portions of the Finance Bill.
On 17th June 2025, yet again, Kenyan youths demonstrated against police brutalities and broken political promises amid harsh economic conditions and unemployment. As protestors and security forces engaged in running battles in Nairobi, a video circulated on social media platforms depicting police shooting at close range a bystander face-mask vendor. Is this Kenya’s Tunisia-2011 moment? Tensions are already high in Kenya, as this month marks the first anniversary of the Gen Z-led revolt that shook the country in 2024. 25th June 2024 marks the day young Kenyans stormed parliament to challenge the political class’s ineptitude, and police brutality and rejected IMF-induced taxes and austerity measures.
2024 will go down in the history of African political resistance as the year when Generation Z in Kenya took to the streets, utilising protest songs, hashtags, memes, and a strong resolve to reclaim their future. This was a revolt and an uprising against a global economic system, represented by the International Monetary Fund (IMF), that had subtly influenced the nation’s fiscal policy for decades with disastrous social repercussions, not just against an unpopular finance law or onerous taxes presented then in parliament.
The Kenya Finance Bill 2024 was the spark that ignited the demonstrations. The bill imposed a number of additional taxes, including a 16% Value Added Tax (VAT) on bread, levies on digital content, and taxes on eco-friendly cars, all of which were billed as a necessary fiscal adjustment to meet the budget shortfalls and soaring debt. This was just another chapter in the lengthy history of neoliberal structural adjustment for many middle-aged Kenyans. However, this was the last straw for Gen Z, the so-called “Hustler Nation,” born into a world of smartphones and TikTok.
The Spark: #RejectFinanceBill2024
Online platforms were where the resistance, discussions and mobilisations started. Using the hashtag #RejectFinanceBill2024, young Kenyans flooded X (previously Twitter), Instagram, and TikTok with serious threads detailing Kenya’s involvement with IMF loans, funny skits ridiculing government leaders, and infographics analysing the bill’s ramifications on the working class and the poor. Using their platforms, digital activists such as Hanifa Adan, Allan Ademba and TikTok influencer Mungai Eve mobilised widespread dissatisfaction by frequently elucidating economic ideas in terms of popular culture.
Despite lacking a leader, this movement had a purpose. This protest was organic, decentralised, and very personal, in contrast to previous ones that were controlled by political groupings and opposition political parties. Young Kenyans who saw no future in the economic policies of an elite political class that was increasingly perceived as disconnected from reality, including unemployed graduates, student leaders, informal labourers, and freelance creatives, were its main drivers and mobilisers.
The IMF’s Invisible Hand
We have to follow the money—to the boardrooms of the IMF and Washington, D.C.—to comprehend this uprising. By 2023, Kenya’s national debt had grown to unmanageable proportions, and debt payment accounted for almost 70% of its income. The IMF forced Nairobi to make difficult budgetary changes in return for bailout funds and Extended Credit Facility agreements, including removing subsidies, expanding the tax base, and raising domestic revenue.
Ordinary Kenyans, however, were most severely affected by these policies, which were frequently put into place with little consideration for public involvement. The cost of food skyrocketed. The price of fuel soared. Bills for electricity were intolerable. At the same time, elected leaders kept up their extravagant lifestyles, purchasing new fleets of high-end vehicles and flying private aircraft, which the brandished in social media. The youths’ anger was palpable.
The IMF became a symbol of elite capture and a neo-colonial tool for Gen Z Kenyans, who had grown up under a neoliberal environment that promised economic freedom but instead produced inequality and unemployment. Their demonstration was anti-austerity, anti-exploitation, and anti-IMF in addition to anti-Ruto.
Street Meets Screen: A New Political Grammar
By the middle of June 2024, the fury on the internet had spread to the streets. In Nairobi, Kisumu, Mombasa, Nakuru, and Eldoret, thousands of young Kenyans staged nonviolent rallies in defiance of police coercion and tear gas. These demonstrations, which were coordinated through encrypted messaging applications and organized through Telegram groups, took inspiration from the Arab Spring, Nigeria’s #EndSARS, and Hong Kong’s Umbrella Movement.
They carried signs that read, “Ruto Must Go,” “IMF Go Home,” and “Tax the Rich, Not the Hustlers.” DJs used Gengetone tracks to remix protest cries, songs and poems. Messages were spray-painted on city walls by graffiti artists. To make sure that everyone was watching, protesters live-streamed their run-ins with the police. It was deeply civic, innovative, and defiant.
Crucially, these demonstrations weren’t merely reactionary. Alternative visions were presented by young Kenyans. They called for social welfare programs, progressive taxation, funding for healthcare and education, and increased openness in the administration of public debt. They suggested a “People’s Budget” that prioritizes human dignity over economic orthodoxy and demanded a nationwide audit of all IMF and World Bank loan agreements.
Repression and Resilience
The government’s response was heavy-handed and typical of Kenya’s history of police violence. Police tried to penetrate internet organizational hubs, used rubber bullets and water cannons, and arrested scores of demonstrators. Former populist, President Ruto called the demonstrations foolish and asserted that the Finance Bill was necessary for economic recovery.
But resistance was only strengthened by suppression. Regional student unions, labor organizations, expatriate Kenyans, and even some members of the Churches and Mosques joined the movement. For the young people who had been arrested, civil society organizations like the Law Society of Kenya and Amnesty International Kenya provided legal assistance. The world’s media started to pay attention.
The strength of communal memory during moments of political upheavals was something that the Kenyan government undervalued. Generation Z having seen their parents go through decades of deprivation, dishonesty, broken promises and ethnic-driven politics. They decided to tackle head-on the pillars and norms of Kenyan politics. They were aware that opposing IMF-driven austerity was a generational problem as well as a policy one.
A Turning Point?
The government was compelled to change significant portions of the Finance Bill by July 2024 due to growing pressure. A parliamentary committee started examining the IMF’s involvement in Kenya’s public budget planning, and taxes on necessities were halted. It wasn’t a total win, but it was a significant compromise. Gen Z was not returning to indifference after experiencing the power of group action and mobilization.
The insurrection in Kenya in 2024 is a reflection of a larger Global South reckoning. Young people from Argentina to Sri Lanka are dispelling the misconception that the only way to achieve fiscal stability is through austerity. They are calling for a new economics based on sovereignty, sustainability, and fairness.
Africa’s New Political Vanguard
The Gen Z uprising in Kenya in 2024 is not a singular incident. African politics is being redefined by a broader generational trend. These are radical Democrats with facts, memes, and fire in their bellies—not passive citizens hoping for prosperity to trickle down. They are calling for economic systems that serve people, not profit, and opposing the donor-state consensus that has devastated Africa for so long.
African countries have been pigeonholed to enact unpopular IMF policies for too long. However, Gen Z in Kenya has cut through that barrier. Their message is unambiguous: they will encounter opposition from a generation that will not be offered as a sacrifice on the altar of austerity, as well as from activist online and in the streets, if the IMF fails to respect democratic sovereignty.
The revolution will be livestreamed, hashtagged, and shared around the continent, even though it won’t be broadcast on television in the conventional sense. And the message is the same from Nairobi to Lagos, Cairo to Johannesburg, Tunis to Lusaka: not only is it feasible, but another future is required.
This article was written in memory and solidarity for the Kenyan youths who were killed, injured, arrested and all those who marched, tweeted, and stood up for justice in 2024. History will remember you.
Abdirashid Diriye Kalmoy is a PhD candidate in Sociology at Ibn Haldun University, Istanbul. His work has been featured in Daily Sabah, The Elephant, Africa Is a Country, and Modern Diplomacy. He is the author of the forthcoming book Hopes in Transition: An Ethnography of African Migrants in Istanbul (Ibn Haldun University Press).
This article was first published in the Review of African Political Economy.
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