Rhetoric, reality, and re-membering: Reflections on Kenya’s knowledge ecosystem following the June 2024 maandamano

On June 25, 2024, thousands of Kenyans took to the streets across the country protesting against proposed legislation that sought to raise taxes. The protests, termed maandamano in Kiswahili, enabled citizens to forcefully give voice to their questions about wasteful or questionable use of public monies, while exposing weak and corrupt leadership, and dysfunction in multiple sectors (education, mining, agriculture, food security, etc). This essay focuses its argument on contradictions between the rhetorical and lived expressions of aspects of the Kenyan knowledge ecosystem, as set against the backdrop of this historic 2024 citizen protest. Through a textual analysis of purposively selected legislative, policy, and media texts, the article posits that there has been a re-positioning of the citizen away from peripheral to central actor in Kenya’s knowledge ecosystem.