Kenya
Featured Publications
Kenya’s Crisis Shows the Urgency of African Poverty, Corruption, Debt
Kenya’s public protests and deadly violence over proposed tax increases this week highlight some of the country’s most serious challenges: high youth unemployment, deepening poverty and the glaring gap between living conditions for the country’s elite and its urban poor. This social crisis is exacerbated by severe corruption, a stifling foreign debt and a too-violent response by Kenyan police, who have a poor record in handling large demonstrations. Steps to calm this crisis are vital to preserve Kenya’s overall stability, its role as an East African trade hub — and its capacity to serve as a leader for peace, which the United States increasing has relied upon in Africa and elsewhere.
America’s Vital 21st-Century ‘Partnership With Africa’ — and Kenya’s Key Role
The state visit to Washington last week by Kenya’s President William Ruto provides a moment in which to assess not simply a major U.S. bilateral partnership in Africa, but the progress of the United States’ declared intent to build a strategic partnership with the continent overall. The U.S. government in 2022 declared that partnership vital to U.S. interests — a recognition of Africa’s rising economic potential and its inevitably central role in all efforts to build global stability and prosperity in this century. Former assistant secretary of state for Africa Johnnie Carson, now a senior advisor at USIP, assessed the visit and the progress in building that new, transatlantic partnership.
Kenya, a Key U.S. Partner, Needs Help to Foster Peace in Africa and Beyond
This week’s state visit to the United States by Kenya’s president — the first by an African head of state in over 15 years — is meant ceremonially to celebrate 60 years of formal U.S.-Kenyan relations. But Kenya’s current importance for America lies in its role as a valued partner, especially on the continent with the world’s fastest-growing population. President William Ruto can underscore both imperatives and opportunities for U.S. roles across the continent that will shape security and prosperity for next generations of Americans and Africans. Urgent issues include averting catastrophic famine in East Africa and activating economic investment to support stability and democratization.
Current Projects
Generation Change Fellows Program
Generation Change works with young leaders across the globe to foster collaboration, build resilience and strengthen capacity as they transform local communities.
Border Security Training Program
USIP’s Border Security Training Program trains police officers from Kenya’s Border Police Unit and General Service Unit who serve along the Kenya-Somalia border. The program increases the capacity of Kenyan police to manage conflicts nonviolently and to effectively partner with communities along the Kenya-Somalia border in order to more effectively interdict terrorist suspects and reduce justice-related drivers of violent extremism in Northeast Kenya.
Participatory Action Research (PAR) Program
Participatory action research (PAR) is an approach to research where embedded, community-based actors use their lived experience and collective knowledge to analyze and address local problems. USIP uses PAR as a peacebuilding tool in our work with youth leaders, where it helps to strengthen their capacities to contribute to positive social change in their own communities. PAR provides participating youth a mechanism through which they can create a claimed space of their own design, guided by their goals for the future, that is also simultaneously grounded in empirical analysis of the present context.