A finance bill was the trigger, but the backdrop is government debt and blinkered interventions from western institutions

There is as yet no resolution after an unprecedented week in Kenyan politics. What began as protests against a rushed-through finance bill has revealed a crisis of legitimacy within the executive, the legislature and the police that were sent to do the government’s bidding. And while the protesters have been very clear about their demands – reject the finance bill – outsiders who are accustomed to simplistic narratives about African politics have been scrambling and failing to understand what these events really mean.

Kenya is experiencing a polycrisis of sorts. The finance bill is the immediate trigger: an annually produced document that lays out the government’s fiscal strategy, and which normally passes without much comment. But this year it attracted an unprecedented level of attention because it contained several proposals for the taxation of everyday goods, including bread, sanitary towels and more. Kenyans were already struggling with the effects of a collapsing currency and the aftermath of the Covid-19 crisis. However, the government was not merely looking to meet its financial obligations but to increase year-on-year spending from the last finance bill, which had already introduced a number of new taxes.

Nanjala Nyabola is a writer, political analyst and author of Digital Democracy, Analogue Politics: How the Internet Era is Transforming Politics in Kenya

Themes of displacement and diaspora explored in collaborative textile project as part of The Spirits of Maritime Crossing exhibition in Venice and Bangkok

The Koung Jor refugee camp on the Thai-Myanmar border is just three and half hours from Jakkai Siributr’s home in Chiang Mai. But it was only during a visit in 2019 that the Thai textile artist learned about the ordeals of the Shan refugees living there.

That visit inspired a collaborative embroidery project, with participation from 20 girls and women from the Shan ethnic minority living in the camp in northern Thailand, who were invited to sew images and words of their choice.

The PM’s unbending belief in Britain as a meritocracy blinded him to the realities of race, class – and his own flawed project

In Nairobi’s industrial South B district stands the Highway secondary school, alma mater of Rishi Sunak’s father. It was established for Asian boys in 1962, one year before Kenya’s independence, during a time when there were separate schools for whites, Asians and black Kenyans.

Days after Sunak became prime minister, the principal told the Kenyan press that his premiership was “an indication that with determination and focus, one can be anything in this world. We are not limited if the example of the UK premier is anything to go by.” The celebration reflected an aspirational approach to life, emerging from deep within the postcolonial experience, that conceives of the world in terms of centre and periphery, and in which success is defined by proximity to that centre. “Endeavour to excel”, the Highway school motto, is hand-painted neatly on a blue sash on its walls.

President’s decision to drop finance bill after deadly violence leaves protesters divided over how to achieve broader goals

Kenya’s youth-driven, leaderless protest movement finds itself at a crossroads this weekend, buoyed up by President William Ruto’s surprise decision on Wednesday to abandon a finance bill containing planned tax rises even as it mourns those killed in deadly violence the day before.

The movement that brought thousands of people out on to the streets in recent weeks, against the backdrop of a cost of a living crisis that has left many young people feeling hopeless, has little precedence in Kenya where protests are traditionally elite-led.

Every year, hundreds of Kenyans head off to study at elite universities in the US and UK. On graduating, many find themselves in a strange position: unable to fit in abroad, but no longer feeling like they belong back home. By Carey Baraka

The Pulitzer winner’s third novel My Friends is based on an event from 1984, when officials opened fire on protesters at the Libyan embassy in London

Pulitzer prize winner Hisham Matar has won this year’s Orwell prize for political fiction for his third novel My Friends, which follows three Libyan exiles in London.

Matthew Longo won the nonfiction counterpart – the Orwell prize for political writing – for The Picnic, about a group of Hungarian activists who staged a pan-European summer party near the militarised Austrian border in August 1989. During the picnic, 600 East Germans breached the border unhindered by guards – an event which came to be seen as a catalyst for the fall of the Berlin wall.

William Ruto says he has listened to the people of Kenya, who gathered across the country to oppose the law

The Kenyan president, William Ruto, has withdrawn a bill to raise taxes a day after violent protests erupted around the country following its approval by parliament.

Ruto’s surprise decision not to sign the finance bill came after violent clashes between police and protesters at the Kenyan assembly and across the country left at least 23 people dead and scores wounded, according to medics.

Kenya is in shock after unprecedented scenes in Nairobi left parts of parliament ablaze and gutted, as protests over proposed tax hikes turned deadly, prompting the government to deploy the military