Nairobi’s streets are fizzing with violence – and I’m glad to be home

Nairobi, Kenya

Parliament and City Hall were burning under great columns of smoke and clouds of tear gas hung over Nairobi’s crowded streets fizzing with violence, flying rocks and gunshots. Speeding along the expressway looking down on these running battles, I thought, as I always do, it’s so good to be home in Kenya. Judging from comments under articles about Africa in The Spectator, I know that readers don’t have much hope for this continent. In recent days my country has been in the news again, this time because dozens have been killed or abducted in riots against taxes and misrule by our government.

Early signs of economic crisis could be seen in the shortening of the presidential motorcade to 50 vehicles

It all looks like a familiar African story. When our new President, William Ruto, was elected in 2022, the problem his cronies faced was that their ambitions (whether noble or, as some fear, to steal as much as possible) were met by the mountain of debt, corruption and inefficiency hanging over from their predecessors in Uhuru Kenyatta’s administration. For years money appears to have been siphoned from overpriced contracts with the Chinese to build infrastructure that soon began crumbling because it was badly done. A railway supposed to extend from Mombasa to Uganda ran out in the bush on the floor of the Great Rift Valley. Theft by public servants ballooned and nearly £5 billion was being stolen annually. Today, apparently 70 per cent of our taxes go towards servicing debt. We are in the hands of the IMF.