Kenya (MNN) — Riots broke out across cities in Kenya last Monday, but it wasn’t a surprise. July 7 is known as Saba Saba, or Seven Seven, a date associated with civil unrest in Kenya since 1990.
Steve Holman with Kenya Hope explains that authorities saw last Monday coming. “The national government pretty much blockaded and closed down the centers of all those towns, and especially Nairobi,” he says.
The July 1990 protests called for a return to multi-party democracy, according to a report from Al Jazeera. Today’s unrest also reflects anti-government frustration, including deep concern over police brutality, as in the case of Albert Ojwang.
Clashes between rioters and police turned violent, damaging properties, injuring dozens, and resulting in more than 500 arrests. Kenya’s human rights commission reports that 31 people died during the July 7 marches nationwide.
Though the unrest isn’t over yet, Kenya Hope’s Nairobi-based national director, Reuben Kamau, viewed the July 7 riots as one-day events. Holman says Kenya Hope’s work among the Maasai people in Narok State has remained unaffected by events in the capital.
“What happens there (in Nairobi) will not change their life (among the Maasai),” he says. “They’re already [in] a situation where, while money is given and money supposedly sent, the projects that you and I take for granted — like reasonable roads, public water systems, elementary schools — even though the money’s been allocated, it doesn’t reach there because of corruption.”
What Kenya Hope needs these days is more gospel workers.
(Photo courtesy of Kenya Hope)
“We have donations, we have programs ready to go,” Holman says candidly. “We just don’t have enough people to do it well.”
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“This is a new generation, and there’s a lot of university students who don’t have a lot to do, and they’re looking for a cause,” Holman says of the protesters.
Header photo: Nairobi, Kenya July 2025 (Photo courtesy of Story Zangu via Unsplash).
