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Protesters in Kenya have launched nationwide demonstrations amid increasing anger over the government’s plans to raise more than $2bn in new taxes.
The rallies started on Tuesday as lawmakers held a final vote on President William Ruto’s finance bill, which seeks to tax a range of items from bread to sanitary pads. The move, which follows a string of other levies in the previous budget, has particularly angered young Kenyans who are organising on social media.
East Africa’s most advanced economy has been hit by a wave of protests over the past week — spearheaded by young people, many of them jobless. Two demonstrators were killed by security forces, according to human rights groups, with hundreds injured.
The proposed tax increases aim to bring in an additional $2.3bn of revenue in the fiscal year that starts next week. Ruto wants to reduce the budget deficit from 5.7 per cent of GDP in the current financial year to 3.3 per cent of GDP in the next as he tries to improve Kenya’s fiscal position, partly to comply with an IMF programme that requires Nairobi to increase revenues.
Thousands of protesters poured on to the streets last week, holding placards bearing slogans such as “We ain’t IMF bitches” and livestreaming the demonstrations on their phones. The police cracked down brutally with tear gas and live rounds, according to the Kenyan Human Rights Commission. The organisation also said security forces had “abducted” prominent critics of the tax proposals, seizing many from their homes under cover of darkness.
Treasury secretary Njuguna Ndung’u has warned that failing to push through the tax increases in the bill risked creating a $1.5bn hole in the budget. The government has proposed to cut back spending, including slashing government support to a school feeding programme and the lossmaking flag carrier Kenya Airways if the bill fails.
Ruto, a self-styled “hustler” with a rags-to-riches story, took office in 2022 vowing to ease the financial burden on Kenyans. But he has faced mass protests after removing fuel subsidies and levying new taxes — earning him the moniker “Zakayo”, the Swahili name for the biblical tax collector Zacchaeus.
After protests first broke out last Tuesday, when the bill was tabled in parliament for debate, the government yielded to public pressure, promising to withdraw planned taxes on bread, cooking oil, locally made nappies and other products. But by Thursday the protests had spread to almost half of Kenya’s 47 counties.
“With a brief respite before the next round of protests, the country stands at a crossroads,” said Irungu Houghton, executive director at Amnesty Kenya.
As lawmakers were debating on Tuesday, police used tear gas to disperse protesters in central Nairobi. Their “occupy parliament” campaign is calling for a “total shutdown” of the country and demanding that Ruto completely drop the finance bill, saying it will make it even harder for Kenyans to make ends meet.
“I am protesting against the finance bill because it is going to hurt the common mwananchi [Swahili for citizen],” said Malaika Agunda, a 21-year-old nursing student who said she “hustles” to survive on campus. “Now the cost of living is high but if this bill passes it will be even higher and life therefore very hard,” she added.
Kenya has been grappling with liquidity challenges, with interest payments on debt eating up almost 38 per cent of revenues, according to the World Bank. Last week’s protests came as it paid off the remaining portion of its $2bn Eurobond, which was due this month after an initial buyback in February, allaying investors’ fears that it might follow defaults by Ethiopia, Ghana and Zambia.
In January, “in light of ongoing balance of payments pressures”, the IMF said, it gave Kenya an additional $941mn loan, part of a $3.9bn bailout that started in 2021, when Ruto was deputy president. Officials at multilateral lenders say they are willing to continue extending credit to one of Africa’s more pro-business countries, provided it continues its fiscal consolidation and increases revenue collection.
Jacques Nel, head of Africa macro at Oxford Economics, a consultancy, wrote in a research note last week that the Kenyan government had been “forced to backtrack on some of the more controversial tax increases” tabled in the finance bill.
“President Ruto now has to tread a tightrope, appeasing both the IMF, which essentially bailed out the country, and the Kenyan populace, who voted him into power,” he wrote.
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