Category Archives: Kenya

Major aid donors found to have funded ‘conversion therapy’ clinics in Africa

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Investigation finds UK Aid and USAid money linked to centres where ‘condemned’ practice is routinely offered to LGBTQ+ people

The UK government is among major aid donors to have funded clinics in Uganda, Kenya and Tanzania that offer so-called “conversion therapies”, which pressurise gay people to “quit” same-sex attraction, an investigation has found.

In a six-month undercover investigation of the centres, reporters from global news website openDemocracy were told being gay is “evil”, “for whites” and a mental health problem. Among them were facilities linked to some of the world’s biggest aid donors, including USAid and the British government’s fund, UK Aid, run by organisations such as UK-based MSI Reproductive Choices (formerly Marie Stopes International) and Swiss-based Global Fund.

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Sadia Hussein: the FGM survivor who is saving girls from the knife

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Being cut, aged 10, led to extraordinary pain and complications in childbirth. Now Hussein’s campaign to end mutilation has led to a staggering change in attitudes

Sadia Hussein had been in labour for three days when she felt she could take no more. She could hear her mother crying in the distance, pleading with God to save her daughter’s life.

But even though things were clearly not progressing as they should have been, the women in her small Kenyan village were resistant to the idea of sending her to hospital. Her mother told her that doctors would “tear her apart” with a pair of scissors; that, at home, they could at least use a razor. “So now, on top of the overwhelming pain of labour, there was this continuous cutting,” Hussein recalls.

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Migrant guards in Qatar ‘still paid under £1 an hour’ ahead of World Cup

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Promises of better working conditions ring hollow for tens of thousands of security guards, who say they still work long hours for low pay

Every day at 5pm, Samuel boards the company bus that takes him to his night shift as a guard at a luxury high-rise tower near Qatar’s capital, Doha. When his shift ends 12 hours later, he says he will have earned £9, just 75p an hour.

Samuel, who is from Uganda, says he almost never has a day off. “You have to tell lies, like ‘you are sick, you’re not feeling good’, so that you get a day off,” he says.

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I Am Samuel: the film aiming to ‘change the narrative’ on being gay in Kenya

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The young star of Peter Murimi’s intimate documentary is as poor, religious and conservative as his peers – and fearful of a violent backlash, he says

Samuel Asilikwa grew up in rural Kenya. There was a strict template for masculinity, informed by centuries of tradition – and intolerance. In a new documentary about his life, we see his father, a pastor, question Asilikwa about why he is yet to find a wife. We then watch as he relocates to Nairobi in search of work and adventure. He finds community, friendship and intense romance with a man called Alex.

Peter Murimi’s film I Am Samuel, shot verité-style over the course of five years, is at its most powerful contrasting city and countryside. Kenya’s farmland, clay roads, shrubbery and corn fields are evidence of a still, yet cyclical, pattern of life compared with the infinite noise and claustrophobia of Nairobi. But it is also a film about a shifting political landscape, where “carnal knowledge against the order of nature” is punishable by 14 years’ imprisonment.

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Kenya’s high court overturns president’s bid to amend constitution

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Judges rule that Uhuru Kenyatta, who claimed BBI plan was to end country’s cycle of post-election violence, overstepped his authority and can be sued

The high court in Nairobi has overturned the president’s three-year quest to amend Kenya’s 11-year-old constitution.

In a ruling heavily critical of President Uhuru Kenyatta, five judges said he had no authority to bring forward plans to create more executive positions and parliamentary constituencies.

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Green growth: the save-the-mangrove scheme reaping rewards for women in Kenya

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A community project on the Lamu archipelago trains women in preserving this vital ecosystem and provides business loans

Kenya’s mangroves have been harvested for centuries, the timber used in shipbuilding and for ornate doors and furniture as well as shipped across the Indian Ocean and around the world.

The Lamu archipelago accounts for more than half of Kenya’s mangrove forests. But across the country an estimated 40% of this precious commodity has been degraded, as more mangroves have been cut to provide construction materials and charcoal for cooking, and oil leakages from cruise liners and ships that pass along the coast kill off young saplings. The area has become one of the most degraded marine ecosystems in east Africa.

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UK must reverse aid cuts ‘as soon as possible’ to help educate girls – Julia Gillard

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Former Australian PM wants Boris Johnson to make ‘ambitious pledge’ to support girls at Kenyan summit

The former Australian prime minister Julia Gillard has called for Britain to return its aid budget to pre-cuts levels “as soon as possible”.

Gillard, who now campaigns for education in lower-income countries as chair of the Global Partnership for Education (GPE), said she wanted the British government to step up with an “ambitious pledge” for global education when it co-hosts the G7 summit next month.

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Rights group fear for migrant activist ‘disappeared’ in Qatar

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Malcolm Bidali, a Kenyan who blogged about migrant workers’ plight, detained by Qatari security services

A Kenyan security guard in Qatar who has written about the plight of migrant workers has been “forcibly disappeared”, human rights group say.

Malcolm Bidali was detained by the Qatari security services over a week ago and is being held in an undisclosed location, according to a coalition of rights groups, which include Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch.

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Kenya debates lowering age of consent from 18 to 16

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While some point to the number of teenage boys jailed for consensual sex, others fear gender equality gains could be lost

Kenya’s judges and child welfare organisations are embroiled in a fresh debate on whether to lower the age of consent.

Some members of the judiciary believe the age of consent should be lowered from 18 to 16 for heterosexual acts (gay sex is criminalised at any age, punishable by up to 14 years in prison) because boys and girls have “reached the age of discretion and are able to make intelligent and informed decisions about their lives and their bodies”.

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‘Shortsighted’: UK cuts aid to project preparing cities for natural disaster

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From Quito to Kathmandu, millions will be endangered by cuts affecting planning for floods, earthquakes and fires, experts say


UK aid cuts to a programme working to reduce the disaster risk to poor communities around the world could endanger millions of lives and slam shut a brief window of opportunity to build safer cities for centuries to come, experts have warned.

Professor John McCloskey, from Edinburgh University, said the 70% cut to this year’s budget for the Tomorrow’s Cities project was an act of “vandalism” that had wrecked the past two years of collaboration with scientists, NGOs, authorities and communities in Ecuador’s capital Quito, Nairobi, Kathmandu and Istanbul.

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UN outlines plan to close camps housing 430,000 refugees in Kenya

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Proposals follow Kenyan government’s ultimatum to UN refugee agency to close Dadaab and Kakuma camps

The UN refugee agency has given the Kenyan government “sustainable and rights-based” proposals for the closure of Dadaab and Kakuma refugee camps.

The response follows a 14-day ultimatum issued by the Kenyan government for the UN high commissioner for refugees (UNHCR) to come up with a plan for closing the two camps, which are home to some 430,000 refugees and asylum seekers from more than 15 countries.

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Kenya issues ultimatum to UN to close camps housing almost 400,000 refugees

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Threat to shut Dadaab and Kakuma settlements comes amid row with Somalia and prompts alarm about risks during pandemic

Kenya has once again threatened to close two huge refugee camps in the country, in a move that has alarmed the UN refugee agency (UNHCR) and donor organisations.

A tweet from the ministry of interior gave the UNHCR a “14-day ultimatum to have a roadmap on definite closure of Dadaab and Kakuma refugee camps”.

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‘Reclaim These Streets’ and rubber duck rallies: human rights roundup – in pictures

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Coverage on recent struggles for human rights and freedoms, from Cardiff Bay to Thailand

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Covid third wave may overrun Africa’s healthcare, warns WHO

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Leap of 50% in cases in three months and just 7m jabs across continent ‘infecting 11 health workers an hour’

Rising cases of coronavirus in Africa threaten to overrun fragile healthcare systems and test the continent’s much-touted resilience to the disease, according to the World Health Organization’s regional office for the continent.

The global health body stated that infections were on the rise in at least 12 countries in Africa including Cameroon, Ethiopia, Kenya and Guinea.

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Harry Lewis obituary

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My father, Harry Lewis, who has died aged 93, was a carpentry and joinery teacher who spent many years working abroad, first as a Christian missionary in Malawi and then in government teaching posts there, and in Lesotho and Kenya.

Harry was born in London to Minnie Lewis, a housemaid. He never knew his father, and at the age of two he was put into the Farningham Home for Little Boys in South Darenth, Kent. His time there made him strong and resilient, and it also gave him a great appreciation of life.

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Kenyan police officers to go on trial accused of British aristocrat’s murder

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Alexander Monson, son of Lord Monson, died in 2012 after allegedly being beaten in a police cell

Four Kenyan police officers will stand trial for murder after a judge ruled they had a case to answer in the death of the British aristocrat Alexander Monson, who died in 2012 a day after allegedly being beaten in a police cell.

The ruling, handed down by a high court judge in Mombasa, follows a years-long legal battle by his family after the 28-year-old died after he was arrested outside a nightclub at the Diani beach resort on suspicion of smoking cannabis.

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Tanzania’s Covid-denying president, John Magufuli, dies aged 61

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Leader’s death follows two-week absence from public life that prompted rumours he had virus

Tanzania’s president, John Magufuli , one of Africa’s most prominent Covid-19 deniers, has died after a two-week absence from public life which prompted speculation that he had contracted the disease.

Related: Tanzania’s missing president is in Kenya with Covid, says opposition leader

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‘Ecological island’: as Maasai herding lands shrink, so does space for Kenya’s elephants

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The collapse of ecotourism during the pandemic and moves to lease land to big farms threaten vital conservation corridors

Kenyan elephants risk a slow extinction in a bleak, ever-shrinking “ecological island” in one of the country’s most picturesque and photographed landscapes, according to a government report.

The animals face a grim future as habitat loss is exacerbated by the pandemic’s impact on tourism, which is pushing landowners to sell off areas for development, and a growing trend towards a sedentary lifestyle among the pastoralist Maasai people, says the new 10-year management plan.

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