NO. 01
History
Kenya began as a business.
In 1888, a private company — the Imperial British East Africa Company — was granted the legal right to govern the territory we now call Kenya. It had shareholders. It went bankrupt in 1895.
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- NO. 02History
The name changed. The structure didn't.
When the British government took over from the bankrupt company, it kept the same administrative bureaucracy, land laws, and tax system the company had built.
- NO. 03LandHistory
“Unoccupied” was a legal trick.
The Crown Lands Ordinance of 1915 declared all “waste and unoccupied” land to belong to the Crown — even land that was fallow, seasonal, or communally held. Almost any African-held land could be redefined as empty.
Full post coming soon - NO. 04LandHistory
Over 1.1 million people were displaced
…from their land by 1948 to create the White Highlands — fertile territory reserved exclusively for European settlers.
Full post coming soon - NO. 05History
The tax trap.
Colonial Hut and Poll Taxes forced African men to earn cash — and the easiest way to earn it was labouring on the very farms built on land taken from their own communities.
Full post coming soon - NO. 06Rights
Sovereignty belongs to you, by law.
“All sovereign power belongs to the people of Kenya.” — Article 1(1). Not the President. Not Parliament. You.
Full post coming soon - NO. 07Rights
Access to Information is a right, not a favour.
Under Article 35, any citizen can request information held by government — and by law, they must respond within 21 days.
Full post coming soon - NO. 08Rights
Article 43 already promises you
…the highest attainable standard of health, adequate housing, freedom from hunger, clean water, social security, and education. These are rights, not gifts a candidate can “give” you.
Full post coming soon - NO. 09Debt & BudgetsRights
47 counties, 15% of national revenue.
Devolution moved real money and real decision-making power closer to you than at any point in Kenya's history — but only if it's used.
Full post coming soon - NO. 10Debt & Budgets
Debt is not neutral.
In the 1980s–90s, IMF and World Bank loans came with conditions — Structural Adjustment Programs — that shaped Kenya's health and education budgets, decided largely in Washington, not Nairobi.
Full post coming soon - NO. 11Debt & Budgets
“Odious debt” is a real legal concept
…the idea that debt taken on without popular consent, for purposes that harm the population, shouldn't automatically bind the people who come after.
Full post coming soon - NO. 12HistoryRights
The 2010 Constitution didn't fall from the sky.
It was demanded, negotiated, and fought for over more than a decade of sustained civic pressure.
Full post coming soon - NO. 13Organising
2024 proved it still works.
Nationwide protests, organised largely by young Kenyans through social media with no formal leadership structure, forced the government to withdraw the Finance Bill.
Full post coming soon - NO. 14LandRights
The Ogiek won at the African Court
…on Human and Peoples' Rights, which found Kenya had violated their rights by evicting them from the Mau Forest.
Full post coming soon - NO. 15RightsOrganising
You can petition any state organ.
Article 37 gives every person the right to formally petition government — and the National Assembly has a dedicated Petitions Committee to receive them.
Full post coming soon - NO. 16LandThe Living Law
Land was never a commodity in most pre-colonial systems.
Land was relationship — held in trust across generations, not bought and sold like a chair or a cow.
- NO. 17The Living LawIdentity
The Maasai never fully lost this.
Their relationship to land and to their own governance — the age-grade system, the council of elders, the Laibon — was never dependent on the state's recognition.
- NO. 18The Living LawIdentity
“Meeta enkiama nkiri”
A Maasai proverb meaning “the council does not forget.” Community memory outlasts any single colonial regime or government.
Full post coming soon - NO. 19Identity
Ubuntu: “I am because we are.”
Individual rights exist within a web of community obligation — not as something an isolated person possesses alone.
Full post coming soon - NO. 20HistoryDebt & Budgets
Elite capture has a name.
It's when institutions built for public benefit get quietly redirected to serve a small group's private interests — a structural pattern, not just a story about bad individuals.
Full post coming soon - NO. 21Organising
A Sovereignty Circle needs 8–20 people, zero budget, and no registration
…just committed people, a place, and a time.
Full post coming soon - NO. 22LandRights
Community land was legally invisible until 2016.
The Community Land Act finally gave communities a formal legal path to register and protect land held collectively, not just individually.
Full post coming soon - NO. 23LandRights
The National Land Commission
…has a specific constitutional mandate to investigate historical land injustices — and any citizen can engage with that process directly.
Full post coming soon - NO. 24OrganisingRights
A complaint that “goes nowhere” still creates a record.
Filing with an oversight body — even when the immediate result disappoints — builds a documented paper trail that can support accountability later.
Full post coming soon - NO. 25RightsDebt & Budgets
Devolution is subsidiarity in action
…decisions made at the lowest level of government that can effectively make them, closer to the people they affect.
Full post coming soon - NO. 26OrganisingIdentity
The most dangerous idea to any unjust system
…is a population that reads its own constitution, knows its own history, knows its own rights, and organises with its neighbours.
Full post coming soon - NO. 27Organising
No single leader was ever the point.
Distributed leadership — many people capable of leading in their own sphere — is what survives when any one person can't.
Full post coming soon - NO. 28HistoryIdentity
History repeats the pattern globally.
Extraction, manufactured division, and inherited colonial structure aren't unique to Kenya — they're the shape of the same story in dozens of countries.
Full post coming soon - NO. 29Debt & BudgetsRights
Public participation in the budget is a constitutional requirement,
…not a courtesy — and courts have already upheld this right when citizens challenged budgets that excluded genuine public input.
Full post coming soon - NO. 30Identity
Both full books are free to read here, and free to download.
This project belongs to whoever is willing to do the work.
Full post coming soon
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