Freedom House Africa Head on Kenya’s Political Trajectory

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Freedom House, Kenya, NED, Uhuru Kenyatta, Vukasin Petrovic

Petrovic at Left

Things have been getting very hectic with my impending relocation to Liberia (I’ve probably only got a few more posts left in me, although I suspect I’ll continue blogging in Monrovia).  Yesterday, I did stop by the National Endowment for Democracy for part of an event on ‘Kenya after the 2013 Election.’

Vukasin Petrovic, Director of sub-Saharan Africa Programs at Freedom House was one of the two speakers and the only one I heard deliver his full set of remarks.

His main theme was one of negativity.  Petrovic noted that East Africa is one of the least democratic regions on the continent and that Kenya’s governance situation decreased democratically with the election of Uhuru Kenyatta.  Petrovic noted that  Kenyatta has took stops to close ‘operating space for civil society and media’, modeled on Ethiopia’s moves to clamp down on opposition following that country’s 2005 elections.

 

The ‘Entangled Vocabularies’ of Afrofuturism at the Goethe Institute

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Adejoke Tugbiyele, Afrofuturism, Afronauts, Daniel Kojo Schrade, Janelle MOnae, Kenya, Nigeria, Nigeria homophobia, queer Nigeria, Sun Ra, Will Smith

Yesterday evening I went to a very interesting event at the Goethe Institute on Afrofuturism in Short films.  The event served as a sort of launch for a Goethe Institute exhibit on Afrofuturism that is on display for the month of February.  Goethe appears to hold quite an interest in the continent as I have also been there to attend a screening of the African Diaspora International Film Festival.

‘Al-Shabab is Jihadi Darwinism’ – US and EU (or White non-Muslim) Experts on Somalia

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Ahmed Abdi Godane, al-Shabab, al-Shabab in Tanzania, Bronwyn Bruton, Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, Clint Watts, Jihadi Moustapha, Kenya, Mogadishu, Omar Hammami, Somalia, Stig Hansen, Westgate attack

From L to R: Watts, Hansen, the Moderator, and Bruton

Continuing my focus on African security issues this week, I ducked in for the better half of a Carnegie Endowment for International Peace event yesterday on ‘The al-Shabab Threat After Westgate.’  The depth of the analysis was light-years beyond what I heard at the Brookings Institution on Monday (many names that resonated with me only vaguely, if at all, were thrown about).  Two of the speakers indicated that al-Shabab was a spent force, the lone dissenter (and the only non-American on the panel) opined that while al-Shabab is in decline, ‘they still have a potential to be a major threat.’

#WeAreOne: DMV Kenyans Support Westgate Victims – Fundraising Happy Hour

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DC westgate mall fudnraiser, DMV Kenyans, Kenya, Kenya Red Cross, Westgate media coverage

I haven’t blogged much about the recent tragedy at the Westgate mall – I do not mean to be politically incorrect, but the amount of attention the incident has received in the western media does seem disproportionate to me.  Perhaps it is because many in the West, myself included, have been to the Westgate Mall and not to places like the Yobe State College of Agriculture in Nigeria.

Nonetheless, please note that a group of area Kenyans are having a (somewhat expensive) fundraising happy hour for the Kenya Red Cross Thursday evening near Dupont Circle.  Eighteenth Street Lounge is the same venue as many of the YAP events.

 

SAIS Tackles Kenya at 50 – PT 2: Grand Political Narratives

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British Institute in East Africa, Charles Hornsby, Dan Branch, ICC Kenya, John Harrington, Jomo Kenyatta, KANU, Ken Opalo, Kenya, Susanne Mueller, UNIP, William Ruto

Yesterday, I returned to the ‘Kenya at 50’ conference for the last panel of the first day, ‘Politics: The Grand Narrative.’  I’m not sure if it was because it was the end of the day, or the overly broad focus, but I did not find this panel to be nearly as engaging as the first I attended.

The exception was

SAIS Tackles Kenya at 50 – PT 1: Historians’ Perspectives (and a startling claim on Kenyan-Somali Relations)

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Derek Peterson, Emma Hunter, Johnnie Carson, Kenya, Kenyan Somali relations, Kikuyu, Mau Mau, Mozella Brown, SAIS Kenya Conference, Syracuse University, Timothy Parsons, USAID

The ‘Historian’ Panel

As I’ll be presenting on a topic relating to Kenyan history at the 2013 meeting of the African Studies Association in November, I thought it prudent to pop in on the ‘Kenya at 50‘ conference taking place at SAIS today and tomorrow.

I just caught the majority of the first panel – ‘Historian’s Perspective’ (my MA is in history) and hope to make it back to at least one more conference event (hence the part I in the title of this post).