Civic Spaces

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.
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Projects

Who I Am Who We Are - Art Project on Kenyan Identity

Inspired by the notion that today’s world reacts a reality both multiple and unique, Who I Am, Who We Are aims at creating adequate spaces and conversations for personal reflection on relevant themes about Kenya at 50 - present and future. 

The Two Sudans - Online Film Project

A web documentary, which embarks on a visually and emotionally gripping journey into Sudan and South Sudan shedding some light onto the personal stories of those at ground level.

Our Publications on Civic Spaces

Perspectives

Perspectives #01/2021: African Feminisms Across Generations

New Publication

This special edition of Perspectives reflects on, analyzes and documents the evolution of African feminisms and feminist action that African activists have taken up to address both old as well as persistent and new threats to women’s rights and gender justice. It also reflects on lessons learned from African feminist practices for current and future generations across the region.

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Missing Voices Annual Report 2020 Cover Page

The Brutal Pandemic

Annual Report

Kenya has a long history of police use of excessive force during law enforcement operations, either in informal settlements or in response to demonstrations, often resulting in unnecessary deaths.  Several deaths from police violence were reported in 2020 during the first  days of  Kenya's dawn to dusk curfew imposed on March 27,2020 to contain the spread of  COVID-19.

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No Roses From My Mouth Cover Page

No Roses From My Mouth:Poems From Prison By Stella Nyanzi

New Book

Stella Nyanzi’s No Roses From My Mouth includes 159 poems written in 2019 and 2020 from Luzira Women’s Prison in Kampala, Uganda during a trial and serving time for cyber-harassing and offending the President of Uganda, Yoweri Kaguta Museveni in a poem where she uses his dead mother’s vagina as an image to comment on her son’s "oppression, suppression and repression" of Ugandans. This poetry collection includes poems "written by an activist who uses the space of incarceration and the time of detention to reflect on the conditions of being incarcerated itself", the position of the woman in society, and the political conditions of the Ugandan state.

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The Role of Patriarchy in the Roll-back of Democracy

Challenging Patriarchy

New Publication

This publication not only highlight regression in the various thematic spaces; reproductive health, religion, media, social and political movements as well as the state of constitutionalism, but also recommend interventions and concepts that can gear states towards an inclusive democracy.

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Energy Futures in Eastern Africa

Publication
Published by the Society for International Development (SID) with the support of hbs, Nairobi Office, this booklet 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.
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