A poster keeps surfacing in my feed. It asks, simply, whether you know what it’s like for your rights to be up for debate every time there’s an election. I imagine it is a profound privilege to never have that thought cross your mind. For millions of minoritized and marginalized people across Kenya and Africa, this is not a hypothetical question. It is our lived reality.
As Kenya moves into the campaign period ahead of the 2027 general election, I began to notice a quiet but consequential shift in the news reaching my screen from around 2025. There was a sudden increase in reports highlighting violent crimes and tying them to “foreign nationals.” Social media became a conveyor belt of allegations against Kenyans of foreign origin. Then came the reported attacks on sexual- and gender-minoritized individuals and groups. The pattern is familiar: manufacture a threat, redirect public frustration, and transform an election into a referendum on who truly belongs.
I keep coming back to four interlocking tactics that repeatedly surface in these periods. They do not merely harm the communities directly targeted; they erode the constitutional promise of a Kenya proud of its diversity.
1. Shift in Language to Galvanize Support: “Us” vs “Them”
Campaign language in Kenya has always been forceful, but something shifted in the early run-up to 2027. By March 2026, news reports were already documenting that “sharp rhetoric, often bordering on vulgarity, is being deployed as a tool to energize bases and dominate headlines,” with civil society and political analysts warning that the trend risked “increased polarization and conflict”. Speaking to the press, Amnesty International Kenya’s programmes director Victor Ndede cautioned that such language “polarizes the country … polarizes certain ethnic communities” and runs against Chapter 6 of the Constitution on leadership and integrity. This is more than incivility. It is the deliberate construction of an “us” and a “them,” where “them” is presented as an existential threat.
This language does not remain abstract. It lands in real communities, often with violent results. In June 2025, elders in the North Rift embarked on a peace mission after a wave of banditry attacks in the Kerio Valley left at least 30 people dead since the start of the year. The government itself put politicians in Marsabit County on notice, warning against early campaigns that border on hostile activities. By January 2026, the National Cohesion and Integration Commission (NCIC) had raised fresh concerns over “rising ethnic rhetoric by political leaders and escalating violence across the country,” specifically citing violent clashes in Marsabit, Samburu, Tana River, Narok and Turkana that had led to loss of life and displacement of families. These are not spontaneous eruptions. They are the harvest of political language that tells communities their neighbours are enemies.
Meanwhile, xenophobic rhetoric on social media has grown louder and more coordinated. In January 2026, former Deputy President Rigathi Gachagua made public statements linking Somali-owned businesses to foreign fraud, insinuating that their success was inherently suspect. A column in The Star responded bluntly: “When political speech paints an entire community with the brush of criminality, it crosses from critique into incitement”. The phrasing is deliberate and dangerous. It mirrors the playbook South Africa has witnessed for years – Operation Dudula, “Put South Africans First” slogans, and violent scapegoating of African foreign nationals. A comparative analysis in Africa Arguments captured the growing unease, asking pointedly whether Kenya was importing South Africa’s xenophobic template. When politicians and online influencers declare that certain Kenyans are not genuinely Kenyan, they are not engaging in hyperbole. They are paving a road to exclusion that history has already shown us leads to violence.
2. Diversionary Tactics That Scapegoat Groups: Shifting Attention from Major Issues
When the rising cost of living threatens to crush Wanjiku, and we have more CVs in the cloud than there are jobs on the market, political actors face a choice: address structural failures, or find a scapegoat. In the past year, we have seen too many choose the latter.
As parents grappled with prioritizing food or fees, a different story was elevated. By March 2026, opposition leaders were accusing the government of orchestrating a scheme to rig the 2027 elections through the “illegal issuance of Kenyan identity documents and passports to foreign nationals”. The allegations were thin on evidence but heavy on consequence: they handed ordinary Kenyans a target for economic anxiety that had nothing to do with governance failures. Achieng Achoki of the Kondele Social Justice Centre observed that, since late 2025, “public discourse has increasingly been shaped by political alignments, personality-driven narratives and rhetoric centred on ethnic configurations rather than service delivery,” warning that this “not only polarizes communities but also diverts attention from critical governance issues, including resource allocation, public service delivery and integrity in public office”.
The LGBTQ+ community recognises this script all too well. After Kenya’s July 2025 vote to renew the mandate of the UN Independent Expert on protection against violence and discrimination based on sexual orientation and gender identity (SOGI), Homa Bay MP Peter Kaluma denounced the decision as a “betrayal of Kenya’s cultural and moral fabric”. In the months that followed, the Family Protection Bill, a proposal that sought to increase already-harsh penalties for same-sex relations and impose new restrictions on LGBTQ+-inclusive education and freedom of expression, re-emerged as a campaign-trail pledge. That bill was never primarily about morality. It functioned as a distraction device. While legislators competed to be seen as the strongest defenders of “family values,” fewer questions were asked about why youth unemployment figures had barely moved. As the Kondele Social Justice Centre statement made plain, when the political elite keep Kenyans fighting among themselves, no one is watching the collapsing economy.
3. Leveraging Transitions in Leadership to Roll Back Gains
Political transitions create windows of unpredictability for communities whose rights have been recently or partially secured. Gains that appear settled can be swiftly reopened.
On 5 February 2025, President Ruto signed a Presidential Decree in Wajir, effectively abolishing a decades-old security vetting process that had disproportionately impacted Kenyan Somalis and other border communities seeking national identity cards. It was a genuine victory for equal citizenship. Yet within weeks, the same decision was being condemned as an electoral scheme. Some politicians brandished it as evidence that the government was “issuing IDs to foreigners to create a voting bloc.” A subsequent analysis by the Social Science Research Council captured the tension in its very title: “President Ruto’s decision to scrap National ID vetting for Kenyan Somalis – A right to citizenship or political expediency?”. The answer matters because what one leader grants with a signature can be reframed as a grievance by the next.
The LGBTQ+ community experienced a parallel dynamic. The Institute of Development Studies’ 2025 rapid scoping review of Kenya documented a socio-political environment presenting “significant challenges for women’s rights and lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, queer, intersex, and more (LGBTQI+) rights,” and found that organizations were having to employ multifaceted strategies “to counter the rollback of women’s rights and LGBTQI+ rights”. The 2025–26 period offered a stark irony: a moment of international solidarity at the UN was met with a domestic backlash so fierce that Pride-related events were moved to undisclosed locations for safety reasons. Gains are rarely institutionalized beyond the reach of political convenience. Every new alliance, every scramble for a voting bloc, can become an occasion to bargain away the dignity of a minoritized group.
4. The Role of Media in Shaping the Narrative
Media does not simply report on elections; it shapes the terms on which they are understood. In the hands of political actors, both mainstream and digital platforms become amplifiers of division.
Kenyan scholar Jacinta Mwende Maweu, in her 2022 book Media, Ethnicity, and Electoral Conflicts in Kenya, demonstrated how politicians in deeply divided societies use mainstream and digital media “to weaponize ethnicity as they invoke issues of belonging, inclusion, and exclusion”. In late 2025, the effect was visible in real time. The Africa-based disinformation tracker ADDO identified a coordinated online campaign under the hashtag #DogsOfWar that pushed pro-government narratives of foreign interference and regional de-stabilization, generating 32.7 million views and 943,959 engagements on X. The operation cast civic activists as foreign-funded agents and sought to paint any critical voice as un-Kenyan. The distance from digital propaganda to physical harm is notoriously short.
Mainstream media, too, has struggled to resist the frame. A Media Observer editorial from August 2022, whose diagnosis remains uncomfortably current, acknowledged that too many journalists continue to see elections as tribal contests, adding: “This is what politicians do best, dividing up electorates and rallying them around the herd identity, instead of platforms of objective interests”. The problem compounds when hateful speech becomes viral content, rewarded with engagement metrics and front-page placement. A study by OdipoDev and Tribeless Youth, based on over six million posts on X, documented a “sharp rise in ethnic rhetoric online,” driven largely by political actors who manufacture outrage for attention. Daily mentions of ethnicity surged from approximately 6,000 in 2024 to nearly 10,000 in 2025, with nearly half of all such posts carrying a hostile tone. When a newsroom publishes a headline such as “Somali businessmen accused of fuelling real estate bubble”, devoid of data or context, it performs the scapegoating work on behalf of the politician who first spoke the falsehood.
So…What now?
What I have described is a pattern, not a destiny. It is a set of choices – by politicians, editors, platform companies, and us. Choices are not concrete; they can be challenged, and they can be undone. This is not a call out. It is a call in. An invitation to every institution, platform, community, and individual with a stake in Kenya’s constitutional promise.
- To the National Cohesion and Integration Commission and the Director of Public Prosecutions: the law has already given us tools. Section 13 of the NCI Act makes it illegal to use threatening, abusive or insulting words or materials liable to stir up ethnic hatred; Section 62 outlaws speech intended to incite feelings of contempt, hatred, hostility, violence or discrimination on the basis of ethnicity or race. These provisions are clear. What we need now is the courage to use them; consistently, visibly, and without partisan selectivity. Selective enforcement erodes public trust. Swift, even-handed accountability for incitement restores it. We are asking you to show us that these laws are not just ink on paper.
- To our media houses: you have the power to set the terms of public debate. We invite you to step away from the business model that depends on outrage for engagement, and to cover this election as a contest of ideas, not tribal arithmetic. Let every candidate face questions about how they will address poverty, not simply which ethnic alliance they command. This is not about censorship. It is about editorial integrity and the courage to frame elections differently.
- To the social-media platforms operating in Kenya: we see the role you play, and we are asking you to come to the table. Fund meaningful content moderation in accessible language. Make your takedown data transparent. Show us that you are committed to the safety of the communities that use your platforms, not just to the traffic they generate.
- To civil society and community leaders: the work you are already doing is among the most important defences we have. We invite you to deepen it. Build citizens’ forums that centre service delivery. Lead civic-education initiatives that name diversionary scapegoating for what it is. Offer moral leadership, across faith and cultural boundaries, that steadfastly refuses to be recruited into any “us versus them” project. Your voices are essential, and we need them now more than ever.
- To the millions of Kenyans who belong to minoritized communities, whether by ethnicity, origin, faith, sexuality, or gender identity: this is your country, and your participation is non-negotiable. Verify your voter registration. Speak in your local baraza. Report hate speech where you encounter it. Support the organizations that monitor these patterns. The most radical response to exclusion remains stubborn, visible, collective presence.
We break the cycle of our rights being placed on the auction block every five years only when we collectively refuse to treat human dignity as a matter for electoral debate.
The 2010 Constitution invites us into a nation “proud of our ethnic, cultural and religious diversity, and determined to live in peace and unity as one indivisible sovereign nation.” The 2027 election will test whether we have accepted that invitation. The machinery of scapegoating is already in motion. The question for all of us is whether we will let it keep running.
The Author is a gender justice expert.