Protesters picket along Kenyatta Avenue in Nairobi on June 25, 2025 during the commemoration of the 2024 Gen-Z protests.
In 2017, Cambridge Analytica charged Uhuru Kenyatta’s Jubilee Party an estimated Sh600 million to engineer his re-election campaign. The British data firm conducted 47,000 surveys to map Kenyan voters’ deepest fears and hopes, then weaponised that intelligence through targeted messaging.
Their managing director, Mark Turnbull, would later boast on camera that they “rebranded the entire party twice, wrote the manifesto, conducted research, analysis and messaging, wrote all the speeches, and staged the whole thing.”
This was the architecture of modern political manipulation, and it was a rich man’s game. Only those with access to millions could purchase the psychological profiling, the micro-targeting, and the sophisticated voter segmentation that firms like Cambridge Analytica offered. The rest of us were merely subjects to be studied, our fears catalogued and exploited.
Today, a university student in Kisumu with a smartphone and an internet connection can access artificial intelligence tools that rival what Cambridge Analytica sold for hundreds of millions. The same capabilities once hoarded by wealthy political establishments are now freely available to anyone who can type a prompt: crafting targeted messages for different voter segments, analysing sentiment across social media, generating campaign content at scale, and understanding what moves people emotionally. The playing field has not merely been tilted. It has been levelled.
Gen Z Kenyans eligible to vote
Consider what Cambridge Analytica’s Sh600 million bought: psychographic profiles based on thousands of data points, the ability to craft messages tailored to specific fears and aspirations, and rapid content generation across multiple platforms. Today’s free AI tools can synthesise information about target audiences and generate persuasive, sophisticated messaging on a massive scale. They can fine-tune communications for diverse voter groups hundreds of times daily. The Brennan Center for Justice, a respected American policy institute, has noted that these tools could “lower financial barriers to entry for first-time and underfunded candidates,” producing content that “rivals the sophistication of big-budget campaigns.”
But the democratisation runs even deeper than AI alone. In her recent book Every Screen on the Planet, investigative journalist Emily Baker-White describes how TikTok’s algorithm represents a fundamental shift in how information moves: the platform’s founder “reshaped the global internet from a place where you searched for information to one where information comes to you.” A political revolution hides in that technological shift. The old model of political communication required resources. You needed money to buy advertising placement, consultants who understood search optimisation, and strategists who could identify and reach target demographics.
Cambridge Analytica’s entire value proposition rested on this scarcity: they could find voters that others could not reach. But when information comes to people based on behavioural signals rather than purchased placement, that gatekeeping collapses. A young person with a compelling message and no budget can reach millions if they understand the platform’s rhythms, the formats that capture attention, the hooks that stop the scroll, and the authenticity that algorithms reward.
According to census projections, approximately 14 million Gen Z Kenyans will be eligible to vote in 2027, representing a 79 per cent increase from 2022. Kenyans aged 18 to 34 will number nearly 18 million voters. This demographic spends an average of four hours and 13 minutes daily on social media, among the highest rates globally. They are not merely users of these platforms; they are natives who understand their grammar intuitively.
The Finance Bill protests
We saw this digital fluency during the Finance Bill protests of 2024. Young Kenyans did not wait for established political structures to organise resistance. They built their own tools: the Corrupt Politicians GPT that exposed graft, the Finance Bill GPT that translated legislative jargon into accessible language, crowdsourced databases of politician-owned businesses, and multilingual TikTok explainers that reached communities across all 47 counties. They also turned their phones into walkie-talkies using apps like Zello to coordinate movements in real time.
The generational advantage runs deeper than technical skill. It comes down to cultural fluency. When older politicians attempt to use AI or TikTok to reach young voters, their efforts often feel manufactured — like a parent attempting slang learned from a corporate presentation. Gen Z can spot inauthenticity instantly, while also producing content that resonates genuinely with their peers. The old guard will inevitably hire consultants and agencies to deploy AI on their behalf. But there is a crucial difference between purchasing a tool and understanding its language. Cambridge Analytica could manipulate voters partly because digital literacy was unevenly distributed. That asymmetry has now collapsed.
However, viral moments do not win elections. Voter registration and candidates are built through ward-by-ward organising. The Finance Bill protests shook the system, but shaking and capturing are different verbs. Movements that fail to convert energy into electoral infrastructure within two years tend to fade. That countdown began in June 2024.
In 2013 and 2017, foreign consultants charged hundreds of millions to manipulate Kenyan voters on behalf of wealthy clients. Today, equivalent power costs nothing. The tools have been democratised. What remains to be seen is whether Gen Z will use them to finally take what has always belonged to them.
The writer is a whistleblower, strategy consultant, and startup mentor
www.nelsonamenya.com
