As Kenyans have taken to the streets, week after week to call for change, videos have been shared on social media showing a section of Kenyans living abroad holding their own demos.
Some have marched to the Kenyan embassies, while others taking to the street to first call for the rejection of the Finance Bill, and now an end to corruption and austerity measures.
Some of countries where Kenyans have participated in protests include parts of the US, UK, Germany, Australia, France and the Netherlands.
However, what do the protests mean to Kenyans living abroad? Why are they taking to the streets?
These are some of the questions that were answered during a Citizen Digital X Space discussion on Tuesday evening on the impact of the anti-Finance Bill protests.
Speaking on how Kenya found itself in the current situation, Mudge Rulf, a Kenyan living in Germany and the CEO of the Diaspora Network Hub, said that majority of Kenyans living abroad would like to retire back home, but the situation in terms of high taxes and corruption makes it a bleak option.
“If you take the example of overtaxation, when you increase the taxes back home but you’re not providing an enabling environment and people are jobless, you are indirectly increasing the black tax in the diaspora,” she said.
“People cannot even start up their businesses. So that is impacting us directly. Another thing that is impacting the diaspora directly is lack of a proper functioning statutory health insurance like the NHIF that’s currently now being transferred to another program and we’ve seen there’s a lot of corruption going on. When this system is not functioning, then the diaspora have to pay for their sick relatives in private hospitals. And that is to the tune of sometimes Ksh. 1 million per month, especially if, the people are say in ICU. And for ICU, the hospital beds at the public hospitals are not easy to get. They’re always just reserved.”
On his part, Prof David Monda, a professor in political science and researcher, put the current challenges facing the country in three categories: the crisis of legitimacy, the mismatch between domestic needs and international ambitions on the part of the government, and the issue of fiscal autonomy.
He said, “Under crisis of legitimacy, issues like fiscal mismanagement, questions of corruption, failure of the Kenya Kwanza administration in terms of campaign promises, taxation and the IMF are some of the issues. There are questions about exactly who wrote this bill and for what reasons.”
Monda pointed to the anger over extrajudicial abductions and the deployment of the Kenya Defence Forces (KDF) on the ground.
He spoke to the question of President William Ruto’s recent visit to the US.
“His administration wants to punch way above its weight in terms of pleasing the US, getting into alliances with, Western partners. And we see that in terms of, the correlation, the associations, and partnerships with the IMF, but also with, our police who are being sent to Haiti. And that ties in with the domestic because when we think about Kenya police being sent to Haiti, this is very much tied with the Biden administration’s plan for global governance. But it directly affects Kenyans in terms of our national security because we have gaps in security. We have many areas of Kenya, which, you are very insecure,” Monda said
Touching on the issue of austerity or lack thereof, Monda said the government’s borrowing has implications. “There are no free lunches in international affairs,” he said.
“I think this is really creating a lot of the challenges we have on the streets in Nairobi because this Chinese and American debt has to be paid somehow. How does that happen? You raise taxes and you cut services. And this is also very problematic… So I think there’s a there’s a very interesting correlation here between what’s happening abroad, what William Ruto is trying to do, and his image abroad.
The speakers also brought out the challenge of many Kenyans going to work abroad in jobs that are below their training.
“We don’t want Kenyans coming here to start harvesting strawberries,” Rulf said.
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