The Elephant

Kenya is in political angst. Public confidence is at an all-time low. Political violence is spreading. Youth frustration is growing. Those entrusted with leadership are detached from the daily struggles of ordinary people. In such moments, society inevitably turns to one institution that has historically spoken when other voices fell silent: the Church. Yet a debate has emerged. Some politicians, like Hon. Nelson Koech, MP, insist that the Church should stay away from politics and focus on prayer.

In June 2026, Burkina Faso’s Transitional Legislative Assembly passed a law giving the state new powers to license and monitor religious worship. Weeks later, Captain Ibrahim Traore told Burkinabe students studying Sharia in Saudi Arabia that they need not come home, framing the choice of what to study abroad as a question of national loyalty.

“The Church must not move so close to the state, because you can get burned. The state is like fire. But the Church must also not stay very far from it, because you might feel a lot of cold.” That warning was passed down to Bishop Charles Ong’injo, of the Anglican Church of Kenya’s Maseno South Diocese, by a former archbishop. Balancing that closeness is difficult, he told me. But he was clear about where the danger has historically come from.

“Between religion and my black skin there shall be a sky’s distance until the day I hear the call to atonement.”-Yvonne Adhiambo Owuor, The Dragonfly Sea I feel like a fraud writing about religion. I feel so because I am an African who was Christian, yet I know very little about African Christianity. My (initial) faith was mostly informed by Western Christianity. It was embedded in the Seventh Day Adventist Church.

Sexual and Reproductive Health and Rights (SRHR) encompasses human rights relating to sexuality, reproductive health, and bodily autonomy. In this episode, our guest outlines the core components of SRHR span universal health coverage, personal freedoms, and global development frameworks. Michelle Oyuga, a human rights lawyer and gender justice advocate, talks to The Elephant.

Religion has never been peripheral to Kenyan politics. Churches have provided welfare, organized communities and challenged governments; they have also offered political leaders networks of influence and a language of moral legitimacy. The relationship has never been straightforward. Religious authority has, at different moments, been used to reinforce political power and to confront it.

What does faith have to do with identity? This is what I asked when I was invited to give a keynote lecture on 18 September 2025 at a workshop held at the Centre for Interfaith Studies in Africa at the Hekima University College in Nairobi. The theme of the workshop was “Law, Education and Interfaith Relations in Kenya”. I will again begin my reflections with this question: What does faith have to do with identity? My answer today, although I might change my mind later on, is going to be provocative.

What does faith have to do with identity? This is what I asked when I was invited to give a keynote lecture on 18 September 2025 at a workshop held at the Centre for Interfaith Studies in Africa at the Hekima University College in Nairobi. The theme of the workshop was “Law, Education and Interfaith Relations in Kenya”. I will again begin my reflections with this question: What does faith have to do with identity? My answer today, although I might change my mind later on, is going to be provocative.

Since the “Occupy Churches” mobilisations of 2024, religious institutions across Kenya have come under intensified public scrutiny, not merely over doctrine, but over power, money, and accountability.

The paradox of press freedom in Rwanda is that despite the advent of alternative media, younger journalists are more controlled than their older counterparts. “Today’s generation? Yeah, they’re getting more fear than we used to,” 47-year-old Rubens Mukunzi said in a phone interview. Rubens has experienced a Rwanda before Kagame’s 26-year presidency. He was 15 when the genocide that killed at least 800,000 Rwandans happened. The same year that 32-year-old Samuel Baker Byansi was born.