On July 29, hundreds of mourners, church leaders, and politicians gathered in Limuru, Kiambu County, for the funeral service of Kenyan businessman Paul Gatundu Muthumbi, founder of Mbukinya Bus Services.
Muthumbi, who began selling eggs by the roadside during the colonial-era State of Emergency, remained a famously humble man throughout his life. Speaker after speaker praised his quiet nature and philanthropy.
Though he built one of Kenya's most iconic mass-transit fleets, few passengers across the country ever knew his face or name.
A wealthy entrepreneur who hides his riches is rare enough in this day and age. But equally rare, in a country where high-profile funerals usually turn into political battlegrounds and dramatic arenas, Muthumbi's send-off stood out for an absolute lack of partisan theatre.
Politicians were on their best behaviour, declared a truce, and refrained from trading insults.
The fact that simple decorum feels remarkable reveals how dramatically funerals have shifted across Kenya and much of the continent. Death no longer belongs to the deceased; it serves the prestige, ego, and material ambitions of the living.
Watch an eight-hour funeral unfold in rural Kenya today, and you quickly realise that the deceased receives barely two hours of spotlight. The master of ceremonies spends a quarter of the time announcing financial contributions down to the exact shilling: the local butcher who gave Sh2,500, the area MP who donated Sh50,000, and the bank where the deceased worked, which gave Sh250,000 while paying for the coffin and hearse.
Recognising prominent mourners carries equal weight. There will be public roll calls for in-laws, of course, school headteachers at the primary school he attended 30 years ago, the members of the choir where he played the piano, classmates, village chiefs, county officials, and corporate executives.
Assistants continuously rush to the microphone to whisper late arrivals into the presenter's ear or hand him notes so no influential guest feels slighted by being unrecognised.
Travel distance provides the ultimate bragging rights. "We recognise Juma, who landed at midnight from New York and drove straight through the dark to stand with us today," the speaker booms. Juma then takes the microphone and offers heartfelt condolences on behalf of his family, the New York community, and all Kenyans in America.
By the time the pastor finishes using the pulpit to raise funds for a new church building, the deceased has become a minor character in their own farewell.
How did African society arrive here? Part of the shift stems from economic progress coupled with severe bottlenecks in opportunity.
Rapid educational expansion means thousands of young people are now educated, intensifying the battle for visibility. Decades ago, when only two individuals in a whole district held a master's degree, their families felt no need to shout for attention. Today, with formal employment scarce and degree holders riding boda boda for a living, a lavish funeral transforms into an explicit marketing platform.
Displaying high-status mourners and large cash donations creates social capital that the family can leverage to secure a corporate job or government contract for an unemployed child.
Two other far-reaching, unspoken structural shifts further drive this funeral economy.
First, in countries lacking state safety nets, social insurance, or fair credit, the funeral operates as an informal financial clearinghouse. Some families push for explicit, loud roll calls of donations not out of vanity, but as an economic calculation. Publicly broadcasting cash contributions creates a social obligation for others to chip in. That cash injection subsidises the family's survival, covers medical bills, and funds living expenses long after relatives have lowered the coffin into the ground.
Second, mass urban migration from rural areas has forced millions of citizens into anonymous, transactional lives in cities such as Nairobi, Kampala, and Lagos. The elaborate village funeral serves as an aggressive identity-reclamation project.
By bringing urban associates, high-earning colleagues, and luxury vehicles back to their ancestral homesteads, urban migrants force their rural kin to acknowledge their economic rise. They turn a moment of mortality into a high-production billboard of social arrival.
Critics look at these theatrical send-offs and lament that African society has lost its way and fallen into shallow materialism. Yes and no.
That is because this trend also demonstrates high-level pragmatism and an ingenious collective defence against uncaring capitalism.
Far from surrendering to individualism, African communities have weaponised traditional collectivism to subvert market forces. Instead of allowing commercialism to privatise grief into a Western-style quiet, isolated affair, society forces wealthy elites to pay a steep tax at the graveside. Relatives and powerful figures who spend years ignoring their rural kin find themselves publicly cornered, guilted, and audited before hundreds of witnesses.
Where ancient communalism relied on pooling physical labour to dig graves and feed mourners, modern communalism enforces financial redistribution.
The eight-hour funeral marathon can be cut in half, sure, but it is not just a tragic victory of vanity over tradition; it is a pragmatic, mercenary survival strategy. Society has not lost its soul to the living's ego. It has adapted an ancient institution to ensure the living do not starve after the dead depart.
The author is a journalist, writer and curator of the Wall of Great Africans. X@cobbo3
