Nairobi’s streets are fizzing with violence – and I’m glad to be home

Parliament and City Hall were burning under great columns of smoke and clouds of tear gas hung over Nairobi’s crowded streets fizzing with violence, flying rocks and gunshots. Speeding along the expressway looking down on these running battles, I thought, as I always do, it’s so good to be home in Kenya. Judging from comments under articles about Africa in The Spectator, I know that readers don’t have much hope for this continent. In recent days my country has been in the news again, this time because dozens have been killed or abducted in riots against taxes and misrule by our government.

It all looks like a familiar African story. When our new President, William Ruto, was elected in 2022, the problem his cronies faced was that their ambitions (whether noble or, as some fear, to steal as much as possible) were met by the mountain of debt, corruption and inefficiency hanging over from their predecessors in Uhuru Kenyatta’s administration.