Freedom
Index
The Freedom Index honours over five generations of Kenyan protesters who demanded justice, defended rights, opposed authoritarianism and corruption, and sacrificed their lives or health over the last century.
What is the Freedom Index?
The Freedom Index has been developed by Odipo Dev and Amnesty International Kenya. It is a flagship, data-driven product that tracks, analyses, and communicates the state of the right to peaceful assembly in Kenya as defined under Article 37 of the Constitution, national and international human rights standards.
This resource draws on documented protest events recorded between January 2020 and December 2025. Every chart, counter, and map is generated dynamically from primary research data — nothing is estimated or extrapolated.
Legal Framework
- Constitution of Kenya, Article 37Under the Kenyan Constitution, a protest is legally categorized as the right of every person to peaceably and unarmed, to assemble, to demonstrate, to picket, and to present petitions to public authorities. This is explicitly guaranteed under Article 37 of the Constitution of Kenya 2010. [1, 2, 3]
- ICCPR, Article 21Right of peaceful assembly — international covenant binding Kenya to protect this right.
- African Charter, Articles 10 & 11Freedom of association and assembly — continental framework affirming assembly rights.
- Public Order Act (Cap. 56)Governs how protests must be notified and how police may respond.
Is Kenya a Protest Nation?
Nearly every day in Kenya, a protest unfolds. It may be a few farmers blocking a road in Kirinyaga, students challenging school fees, workers demanding fair wages, or thousands of young people marching through the streets of Nairobi. Sometimes silent, sometimes met with teargas, each protest carries a message.
In a healthy democracy, protest is the pulse of a people. It shows that citizens are awake, alert, and still believe change is possible. But when that pulse beats daily, without pause, it also signals pressure, pain, and systems straining under their own weight.
Our data reveals clear crisis points: major transitions like the pandemic, tense elections, spiking cases of femicide, and contentious budgets which spark waves of demonstrations.
Where Do Most Protests Ignite?
Every dot is a protest. Scroll to advance month by month — use play or drag the timeline.
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What Defines Each Protest Year?
Each year of protests in this dataset carries its own character, shaped by the economy, the political climate, and the widening gap between what citizens are promised and what they receive.
2020 and 2021 protests were defined by labour issues. Nurses, teachers, casual labourers, and security guards took to the streets over unpaid wages, workplace mistreatment, and employment discrimination. Healthcare workers bore the weight of the COVID-19 pandemic and turned it into a demand for protective equipment, risk allowances, and recognition of the danger they walked into every day.
2022 protests were defined by electoral turbulence. Party nomination disputes, a contested presidential outcome, and widespread dissatisfaction with the IEBC's conduct not only in the presidential race but in parliamentary and gubernatorial elections kept Kenyans protesting throughout the year. Democracy was not a single event in 2022. It was a year-long argument.
2023 brought organised opposition onto the streets. Azimio La Umoja, led by Raila Amollo Odinga, launched sustained mass action protests against the Kenya Kwanza government. These were protests with structure, leadership, and a political target. They reflected a country in which the cost of living was rising and faith in the new administration was falling.
2024 was the largest protest year in this dataset and one of the most significant in Kenya's post-independence history. The Gen Z-led anti-Finance Bill movement began online and ended in Parliament. It was leaderless, decentralised, and unstoppable.
2025 was the year of reckoning with abductions, with impunity, and with unfinished grief. State-sanctioned disappearances of activists and critics triggered protests that were unlike any in the dataset. Justice for Albert Ojwang, who died in police custody, became a national rallying point. And on 25th June 2025, exactly one year after protesters stormed Parliament, Kenyans returned to the streets. Not to celebrate. To remind the state that they had not forgotten, and that the dead had not yet received justice.
Five years, five distinct moments. One consistent thread, a country in which the gap between what citizens are promised and what they receive has never stopped generating protest and a state whose response to these protests has grown more costly with every passing year.
Who's Behind The Protests?
Rather than the well-known activist faces, our data demonstrates community residents are the true engine behind protests. Residents and community members organised 361 documented protests between 2020 and 2025, the highest of any group. For a long time, the dominant image of a Kenyan protester was an opposition politician or known activist leading crowds to protest electoral injustice. That image no longer matches the data. The people showing up in the highest numbers are ordinary residents; people protesting what is happening in their neighbourhoods and their daily lives. This is protest as a lived daily experience, not a political performance.
Workers and unions follow closely, grounding protest in wages, livelihoods, and survival. Gen Z stands alongside them, not waiting for their turn, but taking it.
This information gives us a roadmap for engagement. If communities are the largest engine, then strengthen local organising and empower neighbourhood-level dialogue. If workers and unions are mobilising in large numbers, then engage them directly in conversations about economic reform. If Gen Z is rising, then meet them online, stay informed, and act on their grievances.
Why Do They Protest: The Triggers?
Economic freedom tops every other category at 449 protests. Kenyans are not primarily protesting about who is in power but what that power is failing to do, which is to keep food affordable, wages liveable, and public services functional.
Social freedoms represent a growing, if still underrepresented, category. Protests around gender-based violence (GBV) and community rights are slowly, determinedly, finding their voice on the streets.
Protests Targets: Who's in The Crosshairs?
Kenyans are not protesting in the dark. They know exactly where responsibility lies. The data demonstrates Kenya's protesters have a clear target; national leaders stand in the crosshairs of the nation's anger.
County governments follow closely, showing that devolution has not escaped public scrutiny. Police and security agencies also appear prominently, a sign that brutality, impunity, and heavy-handed responses continue to fracture public trust. Private companies and foreign actors are emerging targets too, reflecting frustration with exploitative practices and opaque deals that leave citizens sidelined.
The repeated presence of schools and universities demonstrates children and young people are pushing back against institutional fees, mismanagement, and administrative injustices that are destroying their future. The frequent citation of national and county assemblies as targets for protesters is telling. Lawmakers, once distant figures, are now being held accountable for every bill and every vote.
Protester's Actions: What Do They Do?
Despite the tension, Kenyans overwhelmingly choose peaceful means to make themselves heard showing a population determined to speak with discipline not chaos. That alone is a powerful indictment of any narrative that tries to paint protestors as violent. Road blockages and strikes tell a different story of urgency. When institutions do not listen, citizens disrupt the daily rhythm of the country to make neglect impossible to ignore. Riots and clashes are pressure points, often shaped by state response, frustration, and desperation.
Kenya's protesters are among the world's most creative. Their tactics are intended to catch policy-makers' attention when formal channels fail or do not exist. Protesters use art, music, spoken word, and chanting during their marches, road picketing, strikes, and riots.
How Do The Authorities Strike Back?
While citizens come to the streets peacefully, the state often meets them with force. While Kenya's laws provide for three-day notification before calling any demonstration, increased police refusal to receive notices, cooperate with protest organisers, and facilitate peaceful assembly has turned several protests into chaos and clashes. Our data shows that the primary default of the National Police Service is to dominate and disperse, rather than dialogue. Below this pattern, police crowd management tends to be selective. Some protests are facilitated while others are violently disrupted. The high number of arrests and detentions proves that speaking out in Kenya still carries a risk far greater than it should.
Yet there is another thread running through the numbers. Public protests work. Public outcry and action have pushed institutions to respond. Rather than closing schools, for instance, school management bodies that have dialogued with protesting students and responded to concerns hence minimizing disruption.
The Police Go-To Weapons
Under Police Use of Force and Firearms rules, the Kenyan police must use non-violent, verbal methods like warnings and negotiation before moving to less-lethal means like batons, tear gas, water cannons, and rubber bullets. Firearms must only be allowed to protect life. All force must be lawful, necessary, proportional, and accountable.
The Cost of Suppressing Dissent
Kenya's Protest Capitals: The Top Counties By Ranking
Protests concentrate in urban counties like Nairobi, Nakuru, Mombasa, Uasin Gishu, Kiambu, Kisumu, Kisii and Machakos where dense populations, youth networks, and media presence make mobilisation easier and more visible. Political culture also shapes patterns. Regions with strong opposition tendencies protest more than pro-regime areas. Sparsely populated counties like Samburu, Mandera, Wajir, and Tana River may record fewer protests due to weaker networks, poor media coverage, and tighter state action.
hover a county to see total protests and breakdown by reason category
How was this data collected?
The information referenced in this report was obtained through a systematic mapping of protest events as reported by state, civic, and news media agencies. Among them were the Interior Ministry, Kenya National Commission on Human Rights, the Independent Policing Oversight Authority, members of the Police Reforms Working Group, ACLED, and Kenyan and international media houses, among others.
The search was guided by our working definition of a protest provided within Article 37 of the constitution that states "Every person has the right, peaceably and unarmed, to assemble, to demonstrate, to picket, and to present petitions to public authorities." To ensure consistency and traceability, data was gathered month by month using advanced online search terms used were "protest" and "demonstration" because these appeared most consistently across news reporting on civic actions, public gatherings, and organised expressions of discontent.
Where available, protest locations were identified through direct references in the news articles. It was not possible to geotag or report all protests with precise geographic coordinates. In such cases, the nearest identifiable location, such as a constituency, sub-county, or another recognisable administrative area, was used. Coordinates were then assigned based on these approximated locations for mapping purposes.
For each documented protest, we aimed to identify whether there was any official response from authorities or public institutions. Some protests did not elicit any official response at the time the stories were published. In such cases, the dataset reflects the absence of available responses rather than assuming that none occurred.
Certain protests took place over multiple days, making it difficult to capture exact start and end dates with precision. For these cases, reported timelines were used as faithfully as possible, although discrepancies in reporting styles across media outlets remain a known limitation.
Protests were organised into categories based on the issues, groups, or grievances reported in the news stories. Some protest groups overlapped in membership, themes, or organising bodies. In such cases, the dataset prioritises accurate representation of each protest as reported, rather than enforcing rigid group boundaries.
Want to record a protest for us to consider? Click here and share the date, location, organiser, purpose, and at least two sources of information.
Got suggestions on how we can improve the Freedom Index? Email us team@odipodev.com.
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