Kenya stands on the edge of a breaking point, as nationwide protests planned for June 25, 2025, threaten to ignite a powder keg of grievances that have simmered for far too long. The recent killings of Albert Ojwang and Boniface Kariuki during demonstrations are not isolated incidents—they are flashpoints in a larger pattern of state overreach and institutional deafness. While headlines focus on police brutality and protest management, a more insidious reality demands attention: the sustained economic suffocation of the Kenyan populace. The cost of living continues to soar. Public debt has swollen to KSh 11 trillion. Education remains underfunded, and youth unemployment festers like an untreated wound. Amid this, the government’s focus on force and optics, rather than reform and relief, appears increasingly deliberate. It is no longer simply a failure to act—it is a strategy of distraction, where brute security responses replace dialogue, and public anger is met with tear gas instead of tangible solutions.

This redirection is clearest in the shift from last year’s finance protests to this year’s rhetoric on law and order. After being forced to walk back the 2024 Finance Bill amid massive pushback, the state seems determined to recast the youth-led movement as a public threat rather than a national awakening. But this strategy grossly underestimates the intelligence and resolve of a digitally savvy, politically alert generation. What the state has failed to internalize is that the fuel behind these protests is not a single tax line or budget clause—it is the lived experience of economic abandonment. From unpaid interns to underfunded school programs, from shuttered clinics to inflated basic goods, Kenyans are not protesting a moment—they are protesting a system. When young people march, they are not just asking for change; they are demanding to be seen, to be heard, and to be respected as stakeholders in a country that often treats them as collateral.

That is why June 25 holds more than just symbolic significance—it is a moral crossroads for the nation. One year after the storming of Parliament by a disillusioned youth bloc, the same issues remain unresolved, and in many cases, have worsened. Kenya cannot police its way out of a political and economic crisis. The louder the government beats the drums of security, the more transparent its silence becomes on job creation, education reform, healthcare access, and corruption crackdowns. If this government fails to acknowledge the root causes of unrest, it will find itself chasing symptoms while the disease spreads. True national stability will not come from the barrel of a gun or the lens of a surveillance drone—it will come from confronting the truth with courage. The youth are not the enemy. They are the warning light on the dashboard of a republic veering off course. And unless Kenya listens—and acts—history may remember this moment not as a turning point, but as a missed opportunity written in smoke and silence.

References:

All Africa Kenya Drops Tax Hikes in New Budget, Focuses on Reforms

The Star Factors affecting retail prices in Kenya

The Kenyan Wall Street Kenya’s Public Debt Interest Payments On Pace to Cross KSh 1 Trillion in 2025

Kenya News Agency Kenya launches the 2025 Economic Survey

Citizen Digital A depressed economy? Employment opportunities in Kenya shrink as wages go down

Aljazeera Kenyan police shoot bystander at close range during latest protests