Social Networking for Change in Kenya
Last weekend I attended the US Diaspora Kenyans for Change (K4C) Leadership Summit in Dallas, Tx. The invitational summit attracted an estimated 30 Kenyans from as far away as Washington and New York states to discuss strategy and identify target areas. K4C was formed after Heb, pictured above, visited Kenya in December 2008.
The group has chapters running in Kenya, South Africa, Canada, India and the UK. Kenyans for Change is an example of mushrooming groups calling for social and political change in Kenya as discontentment with the sitting regime rises. As one attendee intimated:
When I was a kid they told me that I was the leader of tomorrow. I went back to the village (recently) they told me I was the leader of tomorrow. When is tomorrow? I am dying! (and I am still the future leader!)
The Bigger Picture
- The face of political communication in Kenya as we know it is changing.Conveners need not have a physical venue to disseminate political and or social ideas. Days of requiring gathering permits are flying fast and soon protesters may not need to show up on the streets.
- Virtual security creates an almost invisible target. In the age of a pugnacious first lady and an all too trigger-happy police force, this change is timely. The institutional memory of Kenya has vibrant examples of dissidents disappearing into the night and half-burned corpses dropping fom airplanes. Networking for social change allows activists to become somewhat faceless, reducing their chances of become individual political targets. Most networking sites allow users to create accounts without using their real names thereby creating a security blanket. Of course this can also be argued that users with an axe to grind may create accounts with malicious intentions.
- Social networking is finally showing its effect in tangible ways. After eight months on Facebook, Kenyans for Change has an estimated 7,500 members and counting. Social networking is not a new phenomenon. Remember sites like classmates.com or hi5.com? What’s new is that younger Kenyans are finding ways to use various internet sites to further their causes and enlarge membership. Kenya is ranked 7th of the top 10 African countries in internet penetration. Using networking sites to effect change is just a natural by product of wider inernet availability and usage.
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I was fortunate to attend one of the meeting on the last day and that group surely is on to something.
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…then is kenya police state.
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@MUK
Would have loved to put a face to the name
or maybe I already did
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Trust me you already did and chances are you even got my business card
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We are graduates with numerous ‘added advantages’ as they are called here in kenya,business courses and leadership qualities..but corruption wont give us a chance,you get there only if…poor me
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I founded a corporation in Kenya, to help women go into business, we use microfinace as our model. We have had some recent setbacks, due to the recent floods in the area near Uganda, we continue to move in the direction that we charted in May of this year; to date 300 women and one man run a successful business.Nothing has changed, you need to have access to money, otherwise, it is just so much talk.
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I just submitted a comment, and entered the wrong email, I talked about a corporation that was started this year in Kenya.
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