Category Archives: Kenya

From criminal to ‘teacher’: the ex-gangster tackling crime in Nairobi

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One of the city’s most wanted, Peter Wainaina was given a second chance and used it to turn his life around and help others find different path out of poverty

At the entrance of Kibagare, a slum in Nairobi’s outskirts, boots of dead gangsters dangle from electricity wires that hover over ramshackle homes of wood and iron sheets.

With little state protection from crime, angry local people will often take the law into their own hands and beat an offender who is caught in the act, sometimes to death.

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Engineering the future: meet the Africa prize shortlist innovators

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Turning invasive plants into a force for good and powering healthcare with solar – here are three of the 2022 nominees

From a solar-powered crib that treats jaundiced babies to fibre made from water hyacinth that absorbs oil spills, innovators from nine African countries have been shortlisted for the Royal Academy of Engineering’s 2022 Africa prize.

This year half of the shortlist of 16 are women, and for the first time it includes Togolese and Congolese inventors. The entrepreneurs will undergo eight months of business training and mentoring before a winner is chosen, who will receive £25,000, and three runners-up, who win £10,000 each. All the projects are sustainable solutions to issues such as access to healthcare, farming resilience, reducing waste, and energy efficiency. The Guardian spoke to three of the shortlisted candidates.

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‘We don’t have a limit’: Yasuyoshi Chiba – agency photographer of 2021

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Yasuyoshi Chiba has been chosen by the picture desk as its agency photographer of the year. We hear from the AFP photojournalist

In 2021 Yasuyoshi Chiba’s work consistently stood out to the Guardian picture editing team. From his coverage of the elections in Uganda at the start of the year, through to his images from the Kimana Sanctuary in Kenya and the harrowing work in the Tigray region of Ethiopia.

Yasuyoshi Chiba

The year has been a reminder that my work is dealing with an unexpected future. Thanks to the delivery of the Covid-19 vaccines, the world has slowly resumed, and I also again feel the value of being in the field for photography.

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‘All I can think about is the children’s future’: drought devastates Kenya

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Nomads’ herds are dying along with rare wildlife as the longest dry spell in memory edges pastoralists ever nearer starvation

Dahabley smells of rotting flesh. Bodies of starved cows lie in various stages of decomposition, after being dragged to the outskirts of the village in Wajir county, north-east Kenya. They are added to on a near-daily basis and fester in the heat amid multiplying flies.

North-east Kenya is well used to spells of drought, but it is experiencing the worst in living memory. As the region’s short rainy season, which starts in October, draws to an end, parts of Wajir have only seen small showers and other areas have had no rain at all for more than a year.

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Six dead giraffes: Kenya drought horror captured in single picture

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Aerial shot shows devastating effect of drought that has left people and animals without water

Six dead giraffes lie in a spiral on the dry earth, their bodies emaciated and interwoven. The aerial shot, taken by the photojournalist Ed Ram, shows the devastation of Kenya’s drought, which has left people and animals struggling for food and water.

Already weak, the animals had died after they got stuck in the mud, according to Getty Images. They were trying to reach a nearby reservoir, although it had almost dried up, the agency reported.

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How Nairobi’s ‘road for the rich’ resulted in thousands of homes reduced to rubble

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40,000 people in one of the largest slums in the Kenyan capital have had their homes demolished to make way for works for a Chinese-backed toll road, with some asking: ‘this is development for who?’

About 40,000 people have been made homeless by demolition works for a major Chinese-backed toll road in Kenya’s capital, Nairobi.

Amnesty International Kenya says it believes the roadworks have created a humanitarian crisis, as schools, businesses and 13,000 homes spread across nearly 40 hectares (100 acres) of the Mukuru Kwa Njenga slum have been demolished since October, clearing land for a link to the Nairobi expressway.

A girl stands among the rubble of Mukuru Kwa Njenga slum, Nairobi, where 13,000 homes were razed to the ground

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Kenya: more than 20 drown as bus is swept away in flooded river

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Vehicle travelling to wedding keels over and sinks in fast-flowing waters in Kitui County

More than 20 people drowned on Saturday when a bus travelling to a wedding in Kenya was swept away by fast-flowing waters as it tried to cross a flooded river.

Onlookers screamed as the yellow school bus hired to take a church choir and other revellers to the ceremony in Kitui County keeled over and sank as the driver tried to navigate the surging waters.

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‘She didn’t deserve to die’: Kenya fights tuberculosis in Covid’s shadow

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For the first time in a decade deaths from TB are rising, with the curable disease killing 20,000 Kenyans last year. Now testing ‘ATMs’ and other innovations are helping to find ‘missing cases’

One day in May last year, Violet Chemesunte, a community health volunteer in Kibera, the largest slum in Nairobi, got a call from a colleague worried about a woman she had visited who kept coughing.

She asked if Chemesunte could go round and convince the 37-year-old woman, a single mother to three young children, to seek medical help. She suspected tuberculosis (TB), and feared it might already be too late.

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Camels bearing healthcare deliver hope in Kenya – photo essay

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When the roads are not up to it, a mobile clinic on hooves brings family planning and other medical supplies to remote communities. Photographer Ami Vitale visits Lekiji to see how the villagers have reaped the benefits

Thirteen camels amble their way across the dusty, drought-stricken landscape, accompanied by seven men in bright yellow T-shirts and three nurses. The camels are loaded with trunks full of medicines, bandages and family planning products. It’s a mobile health clinic on hooves. When the camels arrive at their destination, men, women and children form a line as they wait for the handlers to unload the boxes and set up tables and tents.

Among those waiting is Jacinta Peresia, who first encountered the health visitors six years ago after she nearly died giving birth to her 11th child, a daughter called Emali.

No roads, no problem. Communities Health Africa Trust (Chat) delivers health care to hard-to-reach areas of Kenya

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Pandemic hits mental health of women and young people hardest, survey finds

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Survey also finds adults aged 18-24 and women more concerned about personal finances than other groups

Young people and women have taken the hardest psychological and financial hit from the pandemic, a YouGov survey has found – but few people anywhere are considering changing their lives as a result of it.

The annual YouGov-Cambridge Globalism Project found that in many of the 27 countries surveyed, young people were consistently more likely than their elders to feel the Covid crisis had made their financial and mental health concerns worse.

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Kenyan police launch investigation into death of British BBC employee

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Kate Mitchell’s body was found shortly after an emergency alarm was activated in her hotel room

A murder investigation has been launched in Kenya into the death of a British woman who worked for the BBC’s international development charity.

The body of Kate Mitchell, a senior manager at BBC Media Action, was found on Friday in the capital Nairobi shortly after an emergency alarm was activated in her room. Police in Kenya said the window to her eighth-floor hotel room had been broken and the body of a man Mitchell had been with earlier was found on the ground below.

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Kenyan police officers jailed for manslaughter of British aristocrat

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Alexander Monson was found dead in police cell in May 2012 after arrest in beach town of Diani

Four police officers have been jailed after Kenya’s high court found them guilty of the manslaughter of Alexander Monson, a British aristocrat who was found dead in a police cell in the beach town of Diani in 2012.

Two reports by government pathologists concluded that Monson, who had moved to Kenya in 2008 to live with his mother, had died after suffering a traumatic blow to the head.

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Military chief pledges UK cooperation with Kenya in Wanjiru case

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Gen Sir Nick Carter says alleged murder of Agnes Wanjiru by British soldier was ‘truly shocking’

The head of the British armed forces has said the military will be working with Kenyan authorities to bring those accused of killing a young woman in the east African country to trial.

The body of Agnes Wanjiru, 21, was found in 2012 after she reportedly went out partying with British soldiers at the Lions Court hotel in the central town of Nanyuki, where the UK army has a permanent garrison.

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Community-led upgrade to a Nairobi slum could be a model for Africa

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Mukuru, one of Kenya’s largest informal settlements, has cleaned up its act with improved water, roads and sanitation

The people who live in Mukuru, one of the vast, sprawling “informal settlements” in Nairobi, used to dread the rains, when the slum’s mud-packed lanes would dissolve into a soggy quagmire of sewage, stagnant water and slimy rubbish.

But a few years ago, things began to change. On a newly paved road Benedetta Kasendi is selling sugar cane from a cart. It gives her a clean platform, somewhere she can keep her wares tidy. Her biggest challenge now is what to do with the sugar-cane waste as she does not want to clog up Mukuru’s revamped sewers.

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Family of Kenyan woman allegedly murdered by UK soldier to sue MoD

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Agnes Wanjiru’s family instruct law firm to demand answers over her death

The family of a young Kenyan woman allegedly murdered by a British soldier almost a decade ago plans to sue the Ministry of Defence to demand answers over her death.

The body of Agnes Wanjiru, 21, was found in 2012 after she reportedly went out partying with British soldiers at the Lions Court hotel in the central town of Nanyuki, where the UK army has a permanent garrison.

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‘She did not deserve to die like this’: family seeks justice for Kenyan woman allegedly killed by UK soldier

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Reports that British soldier confessed to Kenyan woman’s murder in 2012 have deeply affected relatives in Nanyuki

A vibrant sisal plant in a public cemetery on the outskirts of Nanyuki in Kenya marks the grave of Agnes Wanjiru, the woman allegedly murdered by a British soldier in March 2012.

It is easy to miss the grave due to heavy undergrowth in the unkempt cemetery.

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Kenya’s water crisis leaves villagers at risk of violence and disease – in pictures

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As rivers run dry, the desperate search for water has led to a rise in domestic abuse, conflict and illness

All photos by Cyril Zannettacci/Agence Vu for Action Against Hunger

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The British army has serious questions to answer about the alleged killing of Agnes Wanjiru | Gaby Hinsliff

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When the Kenyan woman died nine years ago, the army closed ranks – it’s time to find out what happened and why

The last time 21-year-old Agnes Wanjiru was seen alive in public, she was leaving a hotel bar with two soldiers.

Her body was found by a hotel worker two months later, stuffed into a nearby septic tank, naked but for her bra. The mother of a five-month-old baby, Agnes was a hairdresser who turned to sex work to support herself and her daughter, and had gone to the hotel expecting it to be full of partying British soldiers. An inquest later concluded that one or more of them must have killed her.

Gaby Hinsliff is a Guardian columnist

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‘We run from men only to meet crocodiles’: Kenya’s drought is deadly for women

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As poverty and lost livelihoods fuel threats in the home, those who have found refuge still risk their lives walking miles in search of water

The setting sun brings a warm glow to the huts in the village of Umoja in Samburu county, Kenya. Christine Sitiyan sits outside her home with her beadwork, carefully running the thin thread through tiny bead holes, hoping she can finish the colourful belt she is making before darkness sets in. The traditional belt can fetch 3,000 Kenyan shillings (£20), enough to cover her needs for a month.

This tranquil scene is very different from her troubled past. Like many girls in her community, Sitiyan never finished school but was married off as a young teenager. Seven years later, with two children, she left her husband, unable to endure the beatings from a man she says could no longer fend for the family in an increasingly harsh environment.

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