The 24-year-old set the world record in Chicago in October before his death in a car accident this month.
Marathon world record holder Kelvin Kiptum, whose dreams of breaking the race’s two-hour barrier were ended by a fatal car crash this month, has been remembered for his talent and humility at a funeral in western Kenya.
The service on Friday in his hometown, the Rift Valley village of Chepkorio, was attended by hundreds of mourners, including political and sporting dignitaries like President William Ruto and World Athletics President Sebastian Coe.
The 24-year-old Kiptum had run only three international marathons, but each was among the fastest seven ever recorded. He set the world record in Chicago in October in two hours and 35 seconds, shaving 34 seconds off his compatriot Eliud Kipchoge’s mark.
Anglican Bishop Paul Korir, who presided over the service, emphasised Kiptum’s humility and ties to the local community, where he had worked as a livestock herder and trained as an electrician before becoming a professional runner.
“He dined with the high and mighty, and at the same time, he came to play pool at Chepkorio,” Korir said.
His sudden death has left Kenya and the wider athletics community reeling.
“He was a real superstar whose path was on a spectacular upward trajectory,” said Jack Tuwei, president of Athletics Kenya. “All indications were he was going to beat the two-hour barrier.”
“Fare thee well champ,” was the front-page headline of Kenya’s leading Daily Nation newspaper on Friday.
A woman mourns after viewing Kiptum’s body [Reuters]
Mourners, including 1,500-metre record holder Faith Kipyegon, started arriving for the funeral at dawn, some wearing black T-shirts with a picture of Kiptum on the front. They viewed the body, laid out in a half-open coffin on a red carpet as a choir sang religious songs.
Four giant screens streamed the service for the many villagers gathered outside the venue.
Kiptum will be buried later on Friday in a family plot near the city of Eldoret, where the government is now building a house for his wife and two children.
His widow, Asenath Cheruto, said she and Kiptum, who had a traditional marriage in 2017, had planned to hold a “colourful wedding ceremony” in April. “You have been the best husband and father to our children,” she said, breaking down into sobs.
Kiptum had hoped to break two hours at a marathon in Rotterdam in April and was also expected to make his Olympic debut in Paris this year in what could have been his first head-to-head match-up with Kipchoge. He and his coach Gervais Hakizimana, a 36-year-old Rwandan, were killed when the runner lost control of the vehicle he was driving.
Nairobi, Kenya – As people around the world mark Valentine’s Day with flowers and chocolate, Kenyan women are mourning. Hundreds of them donned black outfits and held lit candles and red roses at a vigil in honour of more than 30 women who have been murdered in the country in 2024.
Wednesday’s vigil in Nairobi – which featured impassioned calls to action and musical performances – was organised by the End Femicide Kenya Movement, a collective of more than 1,000 organisations and individuals. “Dark Valentine” vigils were also held in six other cities amid rising cases of femicide, which have captured national attention.
“Flowers are not beautiful on a casket,” says a message in Swahili on a shirt worn by many of the mourners in Nairobi.
The vigils aim to pressure the government to address the demands of the movement, which include declaring femicide and violence against women as a national emergency and establishing a commission to eliminate both.
Organisers say they planned the events on Valentine’s Day to draw attention to “the dark realities” of gender-based violence and women being killed by those they love.
“The tragic toll of women killed by their partners or family members [are] turned into sensationalised media headlines,” a statement from the movement reads.
According to End Femicide Kenya, responses to these murders by authorities and politicians “focus [on] victim blaming” and are “filled with misinformed advice urging women to be careful not to meet with strangers”.
Figures from the Africa Data Hub reveal that husbands and boyfriends – not strangers – are the perpetrators of two-thirds of murders of women in Kenya.
“It leaves many of us asking, ‘Where do we go when home is where we … could be killed?’” the End Femicide Kenya Movement statement reads.
The vigils follow nationwide marches in January in which 20,000 Kenyans took part to demand government action on preventing and prosecuting cases of sexual and gender-based violence and femicide, which they say are often neglected. Advocates continue to raise awareness and lobby for legislative change and in light of what they say are challenges in navigating the criminal justice system.
The event, held at the University of Nairobi campus, was organised by the End Femicide Kenya Movement [Edwin Ndeke/Al Jazeera]
A tedious process
According to Njeri Migwi, executive director of Usikimye, an organisation that rescues survivors of gender-based violence, they often cannot access justice because of various barriers, including lack of awareness of their rights. Survivors also face frequent refusal of police officers to investigate intimate partner violence, which “they consider to be a nuisance”, she tells Al Jazeera.
For individuals living in poverty, pursuing justice can be costly too, Migwi explains. These costs include taking public transportation, obtaining medical paperwork and potentially paying bribes to obtain a police report (about 200 shillings, or $1.25).
As part of filing a police report, survivors of sexual assault must obtain a physical examination from a doctor and a form confirming they have been assaulted. This form costs either 1,500 or 2,000 shillings ($9.80 or $13) to obtain, depending on the survivor’s location. According to Usikimye, many survivors are unable to afford this fee and thus cannot document their cases.
These costs worsen an already cumbersome process that requires survivors to go back and forth multiple times between a police station and approved gender-based violence clinics or hospitals to fill out paperwork before police may open a file to begin an investigation.
“The process is very tedious … especially for people in low-income areas and informal settlements. Most people don’t know what justice looks like,” Migwi says.
The first step, however, requires police cooperation, according to Tracey Lichuma, legal counsel at the Federation of Women Lawyers in Kenya, which provides legal aid services to women and trains authorities on how to respond appropriately to gender-based violence.
“I ask [clients] if they reported to police, and they say, ‘I went to the police, and they refused to give me a form or [case] number.’ Without a police abstract, there is nothing that can be done, even if we [lawyers] want to move heaven and hell,” Lichuma tells Al Jazeera.
Her clients report that police often invalidate and dissuade them from filing reports in cases of sexual and gender-based violence. “You’re pregnant now. How will you expect this man [the accused] to support your child if he’s in jail?” an officer may ask.
A police spokesperson did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
Once survivors obtain a police report, they must navigate Kenya’s criminal justice system, which, according to Lichuma, is underresourced, resulting in backlogs. During this time, she says, survivors lose hope and, together with witnesses, are routinely intimidated, blamed and shamed by the accused and other community members, so the survivors refuse to testify in court or drop the charges.
In 2023, Kenya commissioned 12 sexual and gender-based violence courthouses, which exclusively deal with these criminal cases. While this move has been widely hailed, activists like Migwa say the courts are already overwhelmed and they are not gender-sensitive and trauma-informed, which can harm survivors.
A representative for the newly commissioned courthouses was unavailable for comment. However, their website states that judicial officers at the court have been trained “on the intricacies related to SGBV [sexual and gender-based violence], including survivors’ needs and are equipped to handle the complexities of such cases with utmost sensitivity”.
According to Lichuma, many survivors are unaware of reporting requirements, such as needing to be medically examined immediately following an assault and proving their case “beyond a reasonable doubt”. Additionally, numerous survivors say perpetrators bribe their way out of criminal charges.
“There are those who get headway with the justice system, and there are those who are failed,” Lichuma says.
With flowers in hand, hundreds of mourners gather at the Dark Valentine vigil held on February 14, 2024 [Edwin Ndeke/Al Jazeera]
‘We know the system’
There are multiple examples of a pattern of neglect and denial of justice to victims and survivors of sexual and gender-based violence, activists and analysts say.
In 2013, a 16-year-old girl walking home from her grandfather’s funeral was gang-raped by six men, severely beaten and left for dead after being thrown into a 3.5-metre (12ft) latrine.
The rapists were ordered to mow a lawn for a few weeks, triggering widespread outrage, protests and international condemnation, which eventually led to 15-year prison sentences for three of the men. However, the verdict and sentences were both successfully appealed, and the men did not serve prison time.
Connie Muuru has little trust in authorities after spending years seeking justice for the 2016 murder of her 29-year-old daughter, Julie Sharon Muthoni.
According to Muura and numerous media reports, Muthoni was taken to the hospital as she was on the brink of death by her boyfriend, who had allegedly beaten her beyond recognition. Muura rushed to the hospital, but when she arrived, her daughter was already in the mortuary.
Since then, Muura has sought justice, following up with police relentlessly after officers told her the boyfriend had fled the country.
“I suspected that the police perhaps helped him escape,” she says. “He didn’t have time to reach that place [Uganda, where authorities claim he is] because I reported it within hours.”
Battling severe depression, Muura prioritised her health and stopped following up with the police. She heard about cases in which survivors of gender-based violence or their family members die by suicide due to hopelessness. In response, she started a support group of 10 other women, all mothers of murdered children.
“We know the system,” Muura says. “We see that police always ignore cases when it comes to women and girls abuse and murders.”
Famous women are also part of the saddening statistics. When world-renowned Olympic runner Agnes Tirop was stabbed and beaten to death in 2021, her partner was the only suspect. While awaiting trial after two years in prison, he was released on bail in late 2023 due to good behaviour.
With cases such as these and on the heels of marches, memorials, and media attention surrounding femicide, advocates are hoping to leverage momentum to enact change.
Migwi is one of them. She says Usikimye is currently seeking a lawmaker willing to introduce a bill that, according to the movement, would help tackle the “institutional tolerance that is allowing femicide to take root”.
Six people died in the disaster and 280 others were injured in Thursday’s explosion in a Nairobi residential area.
Kenyan police on Tuesday said they had arrested the main suspect in a deadly gas blast that triggered a huge fireball in a densely populated area of Nairobi last week.
Six people died in the disaster and around 280 others were injured when a truck loaded with gas canisters exploded in the Embakasi neighbourhood of the city, late Thursday.
Kenya’s Directorate of Criminal Investigations (DCI) said in a statement on X that its investigators have arrested the “prime suspect” who rented the gas depot where the blast occurred.
“To ensure that justice has had its way, the DCI teams that are investigating the dreadful incident have so far arrested main suspect Derrick Kimathi alongside three NEMA officials who were found culpable,” it added.
Officials from the National Environment Management Agency (NEMA) have been accused of wrongly giving a licence for the LPG filling and storage plant in such a densely populated area.
“Five other suspects are still at large and are wanted by the DCI to answer to their crimes that have caused untold physical and emotional suffering to fellow Kenyans,” the DCI statement said, accompanied by photographs of the suspects.
These include the manager of the site, another two NEMA employees, a truck driver, and another driver, it said.
On Tuesday, Nairobi Governor Sakaja Johnson ordered the closure of all gas businesses operating in residential areas across the city.
President William Ruto, without mentioning NEMA, said at the weekend that licences had been wrongly issued for gas installations in residential areas “because of incompetence and corruption”.
Ruto said those responsible should be sacked and “prosecuted for the crimes they have committed”.
NEMA had said on Saturday that a company, Maxxis Nairobi Energy, had obtained a permit to operate a gas plant at the site in February last year. It said it had suspended four of its employees.
The huge inferno left a trail of destruction in the residential and industrial area, destroying vehicles, business premises and residential homes.
Embakasi has a population of about one million according to the 2019 census, and lies close to Kenya’s international airport.
Naivasha, Kenya – Caroline Njau comes from a family of farmers who tend to fields of maize, wheat, and potatoes in the hilly terrain near Nyahururu, 180 kilometres (112 miles) north of the capital Nairobi.
But Njau has chosen a different path in life.
These days, the 30-year-old lives in Naivasha, a scenic town at the centre of Kenya’s flower industry and midway between Nyahururu and Nairobi. Seated in her living room with a cup of milk tea, she labels data for artificial intelligence (AI) companies abroad on an app. The sun rises over the unpaved streets of her neighbourhood as she flicks through images of tarmac roads, intersections and sidewalks on her smartphone while carefully drawing boxes around various objects; traffic lights, cars, pedestrians, and signposts. The designer of the app – an American subcontractor to Silicon Valley companies – pays her $3 an hour.
Njau is a so-called annotator, and her annotation of data compiles the building blocks that train artificial intelligence to recognise patterns in real life, in this case, with self-driving cars.
“My parents have not fully embraced technology because they find it hard to learn. But I always loved science. Data annotation creates opportunities, and you do not need a degree to do this – just your phone and an internet connection,” says Njau who studied teaching but has been annotating since 2021.
Kenya is emerging as a hub for such online work, rising to compete with countries like India and the Philippines. The birth of tech start-ups since the late 2000s, followed by the entry of tech outsourcing companies, along with business-friendly policies, skilled labour and high-speed internet have all led to an economy where digital jobs are the bread and butter for a large portion of the youth. In 2021, a survey by Kenya Private Sector Alliance (KEPSA) showed that at least 1.2 million Kenyans are working online, most of them informally.
But Nairobi’s data annotators have recently revealed a less rosy side to this industry. In a Time article from last year, workers at an outsourcing firm in Nairobi described the “torture” they went through while labelling pieces of texts drawn from the darkest corners of the internet – all in a quest to make OpenAI’s ChatGPT able to recognise harmful content. According to the piece, the workers were paid less than $2 an hour to do this.
In Kenya, most data annotators are freelancers, often working from their homes. Riziki Ekaka, 45, labels data for an American AI company in her bedroom. Her young daughter looks on while playing with a feature phone [Anne Kidmose/Al Jazeera]
AI in the countryside
Despite these stories, the annotation industry has continued to spread far beyond the cramped office spaces in Nairobi.
In mid-January, when Kenya’s President William Ruto launched a government-sponsored tech hub in Kitale – an agricultural town near the border with Uganda – a young ICT student explained how he had earned $284 in three weeks by training AI for Silicon Valley companies. He had been using Remotasks, an American website where freelancers get paid for labelling data.
The video clip from the tech hub – one among a series of facilities designed to equip learners with marketable tech skills – spread like wildfire on social media and made young Kenyans rush to create Remotasks accounts.
“Many young people are jobless. Even people who graduated in computer science cannot find jobs. The government is doing right by helping young people access online work,” says Kennedy Cheruyot, 24, a recently graduated nurse from Eldoret in western Kenya.
He opened a Remotasks account in 2021 and has continued to work online while looking for a job in hospitals. Some of his friends have entirely left other careers to focus on digital tasks.
“Previously, boys in our culture were supposed to go to the farm, herding the cattle. Now, they stay inside to do online work,” Cheruyot says when we meet at a cafe overlooking Eldoret’s business district. Hardware and agricultural supply stores blend with bright yellow signs advertising internet cafes, so-called “cybers”.
Although Cheruyot’s dream is to own a ranch “like in the Western movies”, he currently spends most of his time looking for more online gigs to pay for rent, food, electricity, water and transport.
Commodity prices in Kenya have soared since 2022, attributed to a prolonged drought that year and the Russia-Ukraine war. Meanwhile, the Kenyan shilling has continued to depreciate due to demand for dollars from the energy and manufacturing sectors. As the shilling weakens, import prices increase and with them the cost of goods for consumers like Cheruyot.
He expects that, should he land a job as a nurse, he will continue to work online in his spare time, earning from $5 to $20 an hour depending on the task.
“I do not care if the AI companies in the West grow rich because of our work. As long as we are paid. It may not seem like much, but it goes a long way in Kenya,” he says.
A new generation of scientists
But for Njau, the monotonous online tasks are a gateway to something bigger.
“Right now, Kenyan annotators water someone else’s garden. The flowers begin to bloom, but we are not even there to see it,” she says, gesturing towards the green grass outside her brick house.
“I do not want to stay in data annotation, my goal is to advance in technology. I want to know where the data go and how AI is programmed. Technology is taking over whether we like it or not, and us Kenyans should become data scientists,” says Njau who has already trained people with disabilities and young women in data annotation together with the Nairobi-based non-profit Next Step Foundation. Recently, she was awarded a scholarship in AI and data science by the Ministry of Investments, Trade and Industry.
Programmes like these aim to make Kenya a frontrunner in the technological revolution, explains Nickson Otieno, training manager at Next Step Foundation.
“I will not be surprised if a Kenyan comes up with the next big AI invention. We have an innovative generation and there are many problems to solve. For example, how can AI be used to inform Kenya Power and Lighting Company about blackouts by feeding it with complaints about power cuts posted on social media?” asks Otieno.
Still, there are bumps on the road to make Kenya – and other African countries – stand out as AI innovation hubs. According to Professor Tshilidzi Marwala, a South African scholar of AI and the Rector of the United Nations University, the education systems need an overhaul.
“Africans often receive quite specialised education, which is the case in countries like Kenya and South Africa that have British-oriented education systems. However, specialised education is outdated in a multidisciplinary world,” he argues and brings up an example: to create an AI platform that analyses x-ray images, one must master both medical and computer science.
Much of the conversation regarding AI, such as OpenAI’s ChatGPT, has focused on the human jobs that risk redundancy, and this is also a real concern in African countries. Marwala, however, believes that many people have “overplayed the significance of AI and confused it with normal automation”. Furthermore, AI might help small-scale businesses thrive.
“If a flower farmer in South Africa uses AI to analyse the soil quality using a camera rather than paying a scientist to do it, this could make the flower production cheaper for the farmer. I foresee AI providing much more efficiency and cost reduction,” he says.
AI apps that rely on data labelled by Kenyans, such as the chatbot ChatGPT, are already popular with young people like Njau and Cheruyot. He finds it “really useful” when in need of recipes or travel itineraries. But it cannot do his work for him.
Incident took place in the Embakasi district of Nairobi late on Thursday night and firefighters were still trying to douse the flames at dawn.
At least two people have been killed and hundreds injured after a gas explosion triggered a massive fire in Nairobi, Kenya’s capital.
The fire broke out on Thursday night in the Embakasi neighbourhood, government spokesman Isaac Maigua Mwaura said on social media platform X.
“One Lorry [truck] of an unknown registration number that was loaded with gas exploded, igniting a huge ball of fire that spread widely,” he wrote, adding that vehicles, businesses and residential homes had been consumed by the flames.
“A good number of residents [were] still inside as it was late at night,” he said.
Wesley Kimeto, commander in charge of police in Embakasi, was quoted saying on The Standard newspaper’s X account that at least two people had been confirmed dead in the incident.
The Kenyan Red Cross said it had taken some 271 people to health facilities around the capital and 27 were treated on site.
Firefighters were still working to bring the fire under control at about 6:30am local time (03:30 GMT), according to the AFP news agency, and large columns of black smoke were seen rising into the air on the outskirts of the city.
Thousands of people have gathered to protest in cities and towns in Kenya against the recent slayings of more than a dozen women.
The anti-femicide demonstration on Saturday was the largest event ever held in the country against sexual and gender-based violence.
In the capital, Nairobi, protesters wore T-shirts printed with the names of women who became homicide victims this month. The crowd, composed mostly of women, brought traffic to a standstill.
“Stop killing us!” the demonstrators shouted as they waved signs with messages such as “There is no justification to kill women.”
The crowd in Nairobi was hostile to attempts by the parliamentary representative for women, Esther Passaris, to address them. Accusing Passaris of remaining silent during the latest wave of killings, protesters shouted her down with chants of “Where were you?” and “Go home!”
“A country is judged by not how well it treats its rich people, but how well it takes care of the weak and vulnerable,” said Law Society of Kenya President Eric Theuri, who was among the demonstrators.
Kenyan media outlets have reported the slayings of at least 14 women since the start of the year, according to Patricia Andago, a data journalist at media and research firm Odipo Dev who also took part in the march.
Odipo Dev reported this week that news accounts showed at least 500 women were killed in acts of femicide from January 2016 to December 2023. Many more cases go unreported, Andago said.
Two cases that gripped Kenya this month involved two women who were killed at Airbnb accommodations. The second victim was a university student who was dismembered and decapitated after she reportedly was kidnapped for ransom.
Theuri said cases of gender-based violence take too long to be heard in Kenyan court, which he thinks emboldens perpetrators to commit crimes against women.
“As we speak right now, we have a shortage of about 100 judges. We have a shortage of 200 magistrates and adjudicators, and so that means that the wheel of justice grinds slowly as a result of inadequate provisions of resources,” he said.
Paul Mackenzie and 94 others charged over deaths of followers whose bodies have been exhumed from the Shakahola forest.
A Kenyan court has charged cult leader Paul Mackenzie with “terrorism”-related crimes over the deaths of 429 of his followers.
The self-proclaimed pastor was charged along with 94 others on Thursday over the deaths of followers whose bodies have been exhumed from the Shakahola forest near the Indian Ocean.
Mackenzie was arrested last April after the bodies began being discovered.
The charges, announced during an appearance before a court in the southeastern city of Mombasa, are the first to be brought against him.
Mackenzie and his co-defendants denied the charges during their appearance before the judge, Joe Omido. They are due back in court on February 8 for a bond hearing.
Authorities allege that Mackenzie, the head of the Good News International Church, incited his acolytes in southeastern Kenya to starve themselves and their children to death so they could go to heaven before the world ended.
The bodies of the victims were uncovered over months of exhumations across tens of thousands of acres of forest.
Autopsies revealed that the majority had died of hunger. But others, including children, appeared to have been strangled, beaten or suffocated.
‘Organised criminal group’
Court documents cited by the APF news agency described Good News International Ministries as “an organised criminal group (which) engaged in organised criminal activities thereby endangering lives and leading to the death of 429 members and followers”.
Mackenzie was also charged with “organised criminal activity”, AFP reported, and he and the other suspects pleaded “not guilty” to charges of radicalisation.
Mackenzie’s pre-trial detention in Mombasa was extended on several occasions as the prosecution asked for more time to probe the case.
But last week a court warned the authorities that it would release the former taxi driver unless charges were filed within 14 days.
On Wednesday, a judge in a different court in the coastal town of Malindi ordered that Mackenzie and 30 of his associates be taken for mental health evaluations before being charged with murder in connection with 191 deaths.
Prosecutors in Mombasa and Malindi say they will also charge the 95 people on counts of manslaughter and torture.
The grisly case, dubbed the “Shakahola forest massacre”, prompted Kenya’s government to flag up the need for tighter control of fringe denominations.
The cult leader had been arrested before in 2019, also in relation to the deaths of children, but was released on bond. The cases are still in court.
Nairobi, Kenya – In the past week, Kenyan President William Ruto has been locked in a row with the judiciary, threatening to disobey court orders restricting his flagship policies and accusing judges of corruption.
Speaking at a public function on Tuesday, Ruto said some unnamed judges are working with the opposition to delay key government projects like a housing fund and universal healthcare initiatives.
“It is not possible that we respect the judiciary while a few individuals who are beneficiaries of corruption are using corrupt judicial officials to block our development projects,” Ruto said.
The government suffered a major setback in November when a High Court in Nairobi declared a housing levy Ruto introduced unconstitutional.
According to the judges, the plan to raise taxes to construct affordable homes was unconstitutional and discriminatory, a declaration that angered the executive.
“We are a democracy. We respect, and we will protect the independence of the judiciary. What we will not allow is judicial tyranny and judicial impunity,” Ruto said on Tuesday, triggering a wave of outrage from Kenyans and judicial circles.
His remarks were the second time in three days that he commented on judicial decisions. In a national address in the final hours of 2023, he threw jabs at the judiciary, accusing it of making decisions against state policies at the expense of the public interest.
Here’s all you need to know about the unfolding situation:
A riot police officer fires tear gas at protesters during a rally in Nairobi called by opposition leader Raila Odinga against the high cost of living on March 27, 2023 [Patrick Ngugi/AP Photo]
How did it come to this?
The housing initiative was introduced by Ruto’s predecessor Uhuru Kenyatta at the beginning of his second term in 2018 as part of much-touted economic reforms.
Like Ruto, Kenyatta faced legal challenges after proposing to tax Kenyans to fund the project. A court blocked this bid in 2018, prompting him to partner with financial institutions and private developers.
By 2021, Kenyatta’s government said it had constructed about half of the projected 500,000 homes.
Since he took office in August 2022, Ruto has proposed several sweeping reforms. One was changes to the Employment Act to allow deductions of 1.5 percent of employees’ basic salaries and matching amounts by employers to fund low-income housing. Ruto planned to build up to 200,000 homes every year as part of the project.
Several Ruto reforms – including fuel subsidy cuts, planned privatisation of state assets and tax schemes – have met with legal challenges as Kenya struggles under the weight of crushing debt and a cash crunch.
Then there were the protests called by opposition leader Raila Odinga from March to July over the new taxes and soaring cost of living. Even today, Kenyans still complain.
Wilson Omondi, a 31-year old accountant in Nairobi, told Al Jazeera that tax deductions from his salary have become too much. “There are things I expect from the government like affordable quality healthcare, … but a house is not one of them, … [and] if the government wants to create jobs, let it build industries and improve the business environment. I don’t want to pay a housing levy for a house me or my children will never live in.”
All of this has frustrated the president, and the November ruling halting the implementation of the housing levy appears to have sparked his outburst.
Chief Justice Martha Koome listens as hearings commence on petitions challenging the result of the 2022 presidential election at the Supreme Court in Nairobi, Kenya, on August 31, 2022 [File: Ben Curtis/AP Photo]
The president’s remarks have raised fears among Kenyans of a return to the dark days of dictatorship with some even directly comparing him to his former mentor, ex-President Daniel Arap Moi.
Under Moi, who was president from 1978 to 2002 in what was for years a one-party state, extrajudicial killings were the order of the day. Ruto – whose favoured “safari suit”, beloved by past dictators, has only fuelled more comparisons to autocrats – began his political career as a youth leader in a group within the then-ruling party.
“The attacks by President Ruto towards the judiciary … bring back memories of the Moi era, where the president called the shots and he was the judge, jury and executioner – all powerful and controlling all arms of government,” Bravin Yuri, a political scientist told Al Jazeera.
There has also been opposition to Ruto’s reaction from Odinga, Chief Justice Martha Koome, the Law Society of Kenya (LSK) the Judicial Service Commission.
In a statement on Wednesday, Koome warned of a risk of anarchy if the judiciary’s independence is not respected. “When state or public officers threaten to defy court orders, the rule of law is imperiled setting stage for anarchy to prevail in a nation,” her memo said.
The LSK called on its members to participate in a peaceful nationwide protest next week as its president, Eric Theuri, said Ruto, as “the foremost custodian of the rule of law”, should use the courts to challenge legal decisions.
The president, Theri added, ought to remember that he was a beneficiary of the judiciary’s rulings after the 2022 presidential election.
Odinga called Ruto’s attacks on the judiciary unacceptable and said his rival has crossed a line.
What happens next?
According to Faith Odhiambo, LSK vice chairperson, if the president has serious allegations against the judiciary, he should present them to the Judicial Service Commission to investigate
“The president’s remarks were suspicious, especially coming at a time when the Court of Appeal was hearing the case of the housing levy that [the executive] had appealed,” she said. “So it’s an act of intimidation to the judges who will be hearing those matters. What we are telling the president is that he should follow due process in this matter.”
She added that in addition to the planned protests, her organisation is considering suing Ruto.
In response to the criticism, presidential spokesperson Hussein Mohammed said on Wednesday that the president had promised to crack down on corrupt judicial officers as a believer in the constitution.
The statement did not clarify whether the president will respect orders already given by the courts.
Meanwhile, the appellate court on Thursday ruled that the government may continue collecting the levy until January 26 when the courts are to decide whether to grant a further extension or end the collection.
Garissa, Kenya – In January 2020, one of the biggest locust plagues to hit the Horn of Africa in 70 years landed in Garissa, a remote town in northeastern Kenya near the Somali border. The region is honeycombed with small-scale croplands growing mostly maize and an array of produce – tomatoes, watermelons, bananas, lemons – belonging to farmers such as Mohammed Adan.
As millions of locusts descended, devouring all living flora in sight, Adan and his fellow farmers were horrified. This region is no stranger to locusts––the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) even has a designated Desert Locust Control Committee (DLCC) to mitigate periodic damage from locusts. Still, mayhem ensued during the plague.
The FAO spearheaded a “Desert Locust” campaign with a budget of more than $230m, in partnership with the World Bank and World Food Programme. Together, they aided Kenya’s Ministry of Agriculture in spraying a cocktail of pesticides across 100,000 hectares (250,000 acres) of land, home to 26,650 households.
Adan, responsible for a family of 11, was relieved to receive such support, as were his neighbours. After a rushed, impromptu workshop hosted by a government agricultural extension officer, where they learned how to mix the pesticides with water to fill knapsack sprayers, the farmers set off to save what was left of their crops. But the farmers say they were not briefed on what kind of chemicals they were given, nor provided with any protective gear.
Amidst the frenzy, Adan sloshed some of the concoction across his torso. He did not think much of it at the time. It was hours before he rinsed himself off with water, and weeks before he started feeling really sick with abdominal pain, nausea, and an inability to pass urine. Thus began a long journey of being shuttled in and out of hospitals. Now, three years later, he is facing the possibility of a sixth surgery.
“It’s hard to calculate how much the damages came to,” 28-year-old Abubakar Mohammed (Abu), one of Adan’s sons, tells Al Jazeera. “A lot of it can’t be [quantified].”
Mohammed Adan in his grove of mangoes at his Garissa farm. Despite selling most of his camels to cover his medical bills for six surgeries, he is not sure that his health will ever be the same after chemical poisoning from pesticides [Kang-chun Cheng/Al Jazeera]
Bureaucratic aftermath
The Ministry of Agriculture has denied issuing pesticides to farmers; Ben Gachuri, a communications officer in Garissa told Al Jazeera by telephone that it was “impossible that farmers could have been instructed to spray [pesticides] themselves” and that in the “three years since the final spraying, no one has ever come forward with complaints about suffering effects from the pesticides”.
FAO representatives declined to publicly release reports about documented user errors and exact pesticide makeup information, or their procurement procedure. The East Africa regional office emailed a statement downplaying FAO’s role in selecting products – authorised or not. They also denied the possibility that untrained community members were involved, insisting that only “well-trained/properly equipped teams undertake controls, not communities or farmers”.
In March 2023, the DLCC hosted a meeting in Nairobi to tout its success in salvaging northern Kenya’s food security. The meeting, according to Christian Pantenius, a former FAO staff member who attended, failed to address multiple errors internally admitted by the FAO as part of their 2020 spraying campaign in Kenya and Ethiopia.
“I was so, so disappointed,” Pantenius, who worked as an independent consultant coordinating the campaign, told Al Jazeera. “It was a massive missed opportunity.”
Farmers in Garissa, Kenya stand on the banks of the Tana River, which they pipe water from for their crops [Kang-chun Cheng/Al Jazeera]
Of the 193,600 litres (51,000 gallons) of pesticides the FAO procured for the Kenyan government, 155,600 litres were organophosphates such as fenitrothion and chlorpyrifos. These chemicals have been banned for use on food or feed crops across most Western countries for their proven neurological toxicity to humans and ecological devastation.
Still, the FAO procured and distributed them to untrained community members against the advice of its own independent advisory body, the Locust Pesticide Referee Group (LPRG).
In a 2021 report, the LPRG expressed uneasiness about FAO’s choice of outdated chemicals: “In view of increasing concerns about the use of synthetic insecticides and the absence of new products evaluated for locust control, emphasis should be given to the least toxic compounds already evaluated in relation to human health and environmental impact.”
“If countries decide to use pesticides that are not supported by the FAO, such as carbofuran, they are within their rights. The FAO will just not use them in campaigns it runs itself,” said James Everts, an ecotoxicologist with the LPRG, in an email interview with Al Jazeera. “A compound like fipronil – banned in the UK, approved in the US, Australia, Belgium, and the Netherlands – is extremely effective against locusts. However, large-scale, long-term observations have shown that there is a long-term threat to ecological key organisms.”
The FAO’s East Africa office dismissed these concerns from its own advisory body and has insisted all pesticides were procured through official channels and are technically legal, according to Kenya’s Pesticide Control Board listing.
An internal report dated September 2020 that Al Jazeera obtained from sources at the Ministry of Agriculture showed that the FAO did not conduct required environmental and social impact assessments as per Kenya’s environmental laws. The report condemned the lack of communication with communities on the ground regarding when the pesticides were sprayed.
In northern Kenya’s Samburu County, fenitrothion – banned in New Zealand in 2016 – was found to be used by “non-trained personnel” wielding motorised and knapsack sprayers. The rate of application was also dangerously high: 34 litres per hectare, far more than the recommended rate of 1 litre per hectare. Spraying had also been done on a rainy day, spiking risks of chemical run-off. High honeybee mortality was observed shortly afterwards.
Mohammed Adan has scars from multiple surgeries in the attempt to address urinary tract infections, incontinence and abdominal pain [Kang-chun Cheng/Al Jazeera]
Section head
All this has happened, experts say, despite the availability of a more environmentally friendly alternative, Metarhizium acridum, also known as Novacrid.
Novacrid trials were carried out in northern Kenya’s Turkana and Marsabit counties in 2020 to great success: an estimated 90 percent of locusts were eliminated from the test trials. The LPRG described this biopesticide as the “most appropriate control option … despite its higher cost”.
Yet it is unlikely that Novacrid will ever be adopted and used on a large scale. “Biopesticides in locust control don’t serve economic interests,” explains Pantenius. “That’s why there’s no interest in seriously using biopesticides for pest control. It’s a matter of political will.”
Since biopesticides like Novacrid – designed to target desert locusts – cannot be used for other pest control, unlike their more noxious organophosphate counterparts, the pesticide industry cannot rely on them, he explains. “Locusts come and go. That’s the biggest obstacle in introducing this strategy.”
Local governments feel similarly, Pantenius continues, but institutions such as the FAO should be advocating for stricter accountability, he said.
“We [the FAO] should be communicating to governments that we want to help them, but that we can’t supply them with toxic chemicals,” he says. “It’s also important for donor countries, the EU, World Bank, USAID to put more pressure on [governments] next time.”
Paul Gacheru, a programme manager at Nature Kenya – East Africa’s oldest natural history society – is sympathetic to the complex tradeoffs governments and institutions alike face, especially in times of emergency. Still, he believes there needs to be a stronger sense of environmental integrity – especially from global institutions such as the FAO.
“There’s a loophole available in the law,” Gacheru explains. “Global or international institutions might take advantage of less-developed countries with less strict processes and policies. It’s what you can call the dumping of chemicals.” A European country may have an insecticide that it has produced but is now banned and rendered obsolete in its own country, he continues, but needs to sell it off.
But Adan simply wants to return to some semblance of a normal life. He is not even necessarily seeking compensation from the government for his injuries. “It would be nice to have the bill costs covered,” he adds as an afterthought.
Kiplagat’s body was found with a knife wound to his neck, suggesting he was murdered, according to the local police.
Ugandan athlete Benjamin Kiplagat has been found dead in Kenya, police say, with Uganda’s Daily Monitor and other media outlets in Kenya reporting he had been stabbed to death.
The Kenyan-born Kiplagat, 34, had represented Uganda internationally in the 3,000-metre steeplechase, including at several Olympic Games and World Championships.
His body was discovered in a car on the outskirts of Eldoret, a town situated in the Rift Valley, on Saturday night.
Eldoret is known for being home to numerous athletes who undergo training in the high-altitude region.
“An investigation has been launched and officers are on the ground pursuing leads,” local police commander Stephen Okal told reporters in Eldoret on Sunday.
He said Kiplagat’s body had a deep knife wound to his neck, suggesting he was stabbed.
‘Shocked and saddened’: condolences pour in
“World Athletics is shocked and saddened to hear of the passing of Benjamin Kiplagat,” the global athletics governing body said in a statement on X, formerly Twitter.
“We send our deepest condolences to his friends, family, teammates and fellow athletes. Our thoughts are with them all at this difficult time.”
Peter Ogwang, state minister for sports in Uganda, expressed similar sentiments on X.
I am saddened to hear about the death of our athlete, Benjamin Kiplagat who was reportedly murdered in Kenya. I send my deepest condolences to his family, Ugandans, and the entire East Africa for the loss of such a budding athlete who has on several occasions represented us on… pic.twitter.com/yX29cBnAl3
“I send my deepest condolences to his family, Ugandans, and the entire East Africa for the loss of such a budding athlete who has on several occasions represented us on the international scene,” he said.
Media reports said Kiplagat had been training in the Eldoret area before going to Uganda to participate in athletics competitions.
Still struggling to come to terms with it. Former 3000m steeplechase runner Benjamin Kiplagat was murdered earlier today in western Kenya. His neck was cut with a knife. He represented Uganda at 3 @Olympics & 6 @WorldAthletics Championships. Won 2008 world junior silver in Poland… pic.twitter.com/tclMqs2k0D
Kiplagat, whose running career spanned about 18 years, won the silver medal in the 3,000-metre steeplechase at the 2008 World Junior Championships and bronze at the Africa Championships in 2012.
He made the semi-finals of the event at the 2012 Olympic Games in London and competed in Rio in 2016.
His death follows the killing in October 2021 of Kenyan distance running star Agnes Tirop, who was found stabbed to death at the age of 25 in her home in Iten, a training hub near Eldoret.
Her husband, Ibrahim Rotich, went on trial for her murder last month. The 43-year-old has denied the charge against him and was freed on bail just before the trial opened.
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