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Supported by the Heinrich Boell Foundation and coordinated by Nani Croze of Kitengela Glass, the Kenya Arts Diary has become a popular annual art exhibition in Nairobi, Kenya and identified with the Heinrich Boell Foundation. The diary has built a new physical but portable space whose multi-functionality allows local artists to display their craft, advertise their skills, join a regional network, and find belonging.

First published in 2011, the Kenya Arts Diary is a catalogue - complete with descriptors - of photography, installations, oils, acrylics, patch-work quilts, wood, cement and scrap metal sculptures, some from “stitched found objects”. The Diary also carries artists’ bios and a directory that provides artists’ contacts and announces the range of collectives and studios where contemporary artists pursue their passions.

Gender

Female Genital Mutilation and The Dilemma of Consent

Every year approximately 3 million girls undergo female genital mutilation globally according to the statistics by the World Health Organization (WHO). What this essentially means is that parents of more than three million girls allow their daughters to undergo female genital mutilation (FGM) in order to conform to social traditions. Individual families who opt not to have their daughters undergo FGM, risk stigmatization and social exclusion, particularly in communities where the practice is rampant. Globally, it is estimated that around 200 million girls and women alive today have undergone some sort of Female Genital Mutilation.

Kenya Appeal Court Rules to End Forced Examinations of Men Suspected of Being Gay

On Thursday 22nd March 2018, a three judge bench handed down a ruling in a case appealing the state’s cruel and degrading treatment of two Kenyan men while under arrest in 2015. The men were arrested in Kwale County, on assertion that they were gay.

Democracy

Highlights from the Somali Heritage Week 2018

Event report

It is becoming clear that in order to build communities that are successful at improving conditions and resolving problems, we need to understand and appreciate different cultures, establish relationships with people from cultures other than our own, and build strong alliances with different cultural groups.

Kenya Arts Diary 2018 Arts Exhibition

The Kenya Arts Diary exhibition ran from 25th October - 4th November 2017, profiling some of the works featured in this year's edition of the diary.

Welcome to Somali Heritage Week 2017

Somali Heritage Week is back this year with the theme being Enhancing Inclusivity. The event will run from 5th October to 8th October 2017 at Kenya Cultural Centre. Doors open at 9:00am till 7:00pm every day. Entry is free for all audiences.

Environment

Anti-Coal Demonstrators in Kenya March to Deliver Demands to Parliament and the President

In commemorating World Environment Day on 5th June 2018, anti-coal activists across Kenya including from Lamu and Kitui held the #CoalNiSumu (Coal is Poison) demonstration in Nairobi, Kenya. About 250 people participated in the peaceful march through the Central Business District.

It was the first anti-coal demonstration in Nairobi, but just the latest action by the deCOALonize movement (www.decoalonize.org).

Listen to the latest Podcast (http://www.otherwisepodcast.com/episodes/episode-55-decoalonize/)

This Nairobi event follows a peaceful anti-coal demonstration in Lamu two weeks ago, in which two activists were arrested for public assembly and face possible charges.

deCOALonize movement

Podcast

The Big Bad Fix – The Case Against Climate Geoengineering

The “Big Bad Fix” provides policy makers, journalists, NGO activists, social movements, and other change agents with a comprehensive overview of the key actors, technologies and fora relevant in the geoengineering discourse. It delivers a sound background analysis of the history of geoengineering, the various vested interests shaping it, and case studies on some of the most important technologies and experiments.

International Dialogue

New Website Documents Extrajudicial Executions in Kenya

Article

Missing Voices is an effort by Heinrich Boell Foundation and lobby groups under the Police Reform Working Group to track and document all extrajudicial killings and disappearances and follow cases that are in court. The website is a one-stop database of all extrajudicial killings and enforced disappearances that happen in Kenya; it explains the circumstances under which the victims were killed and/or disappeared.

Celebrating Whispers 15 Years On: How Satire Can Further Civic Discourse

This year, 2018, marks 15 years since the death of Wahome Mutahi (1954 – 2003), who was one of Kenya’s most prolific fiction writers, as well as a playwright, columnist, political satirist, pundit and public opinion leader. He was popularly known as Whispers after the name of the column he wrote for The Daily Nation from 1982 to 2003, offering a satirical view of the trials and tribulations of Kenyan life. According to George Ogola in The Idiom of Age in a Popular Kenyan Newspaper Serial, at a time when the state had all but monopolized public sites of expression in the country, Whispers kept the Kenyan popular media porous, opening up spaces for the discussion of social and political issues that could otherwise only be ‘whispered’. It became the most visible site of social, cultural and political expression for the last two decades at a time when freedom to such expression was highly constrained by the state.

Twaweza Communications

Newest Publications

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Publication

Whereas the momentum of economic development in the 20th century depended on abundant fossil fuels and centralized electric power, countries are now revisiting their energy strategies to reduce the risks of unpredictable climate change. Our countries are not exempt from this dilemma. Should they continue to power their transition from agricultural to industrial societies by exploiting fossil fuels and centralized power? Or is a different energy system possible? Which investments will get priority? Who will benefit from whatever energy system is put into place, and who will be the biggest losers?

Produced by the S ociety for International Development (SID) with the support of Heinrich Böll Stiftung, East and Horn of Africa Regional Office, this booklet presents and explores possible scenarios that could unfold in four Eastern African countries. The analysis and three stories presented imagine practical future scenarios for energy and how these would affect energy poverty in Kenya, Ethiopia, Uganda and Tanzania.

Ocean Atlas

The Ocean Atlas illustrates the important role played by the ocean and its ecosystems – not only for people living on the coasts but for all of us. It aims to give a current insight of the state and the threat of the seas, that are our livelihoods.

Latest Publications

Catch up with all our latest publications.

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The Hollywood action movie Black Panther captured the imagination of audiences around the globe. In several African countries, it quickly became the highest grossing film of all time. The tale is set in Wakanda, a technologically advanced African kingdom that avoided the shackles of colonialism and slavery by isolating itself behind a guise of poverty and deprivation. Although what it presents as “African”, in terms of narrative and images, is far from uncontested, the film catapulted Afrofuturism – a discipline or aesthetic that enlists science fiction and technology to imagine black identities and futures unconstrained by past and present circumstances – from the avant-garde circles of artists and intellectuals into the mainstream.

Somali Heritage Week 2018

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Heinrich-Böll-Stiftung

The Evolution of Kenyan Art and the Kenya Arts Diary