These are the women breaking new ground in Kenya’s politics. From the youth to the grassroots, they’re building movements in their communities to demand change.
For all of its early promise, Kenya began its democratic revolution under the shadow of Kenya’s worst election fraud and a brutal and brutalizing insurgency.
At the climax of Kenya’s first democratic revolution, in 2007, things were so bad, it was said that elections were not worth the paper they were written on. But now, democracy itself is a distant memory for Kenyans, as the country waits for a new, real democracy to begin.
This is the story of the women who took the risks, the ones willing to take political risks to get their voices across and make change. Here, along with a new generation of young women who are taking the risks that we all know, are the women who will lead Kenya into a new era, and they are here to fight for a new vision for our country.
From the youth to the grassroots, we have broken through the barriers, breaking new ground in our community and our nation, to make change.
This is what the women in Kenya will do, in the years to come.
Shireena Karim
Shireena Karim doesn’t care who wins. The president or the opposition. Elections in Kenya is just a nuisance. A waste of time. This is the reason she doesn’t vote.
Growing up in Kibera, it was not uncommon for her to go without eating for two or three days. Her food was often stolen. That’s why she is so active in the community, she says, because she knows what it’s like to experience hunger, to not be able to leave the house for days at a time.
In 2005, as she was preparing to enter law school, her life took a turning point.
“My father had emigrated from Tanzania with a small shop in Kibera, and that shop was closed. He opened a shop in a community called Gashaka, but he was only a petty shopkeeper, and he was unemployed. I was 13 when my mother filed for divorce because he left. That was