Protest movements that erupted in Kenya and Mozambique in 2024 stem from different localised grievances. When Kenya’s president announced a new tax law in mid-2024, it sparked a protest movement against the proposed tax hikes on food, healthcare and fuel that eventually forced the president to scrap the draft law. The outcomes of Mozambique’s October 2024 election, controversially won by Frelimo (Frente de Libertaçao de Moçambique), triggered a youth-driven popular rebellion that the state tried to crush with its iron fist.
However, conditions for the discontent and upheavals in both countries, in the final analysis, can be traced back to decades of atrocities against the poor; atrocities rooted in neoliberal capitalist crises. These and other anti-neoliberal revolts sweeping through the continent provide rich experiences that unfolding emancipatory struggles can build on.
Colonial rule in Kenya and Mozambique ended at least 5 decades ago, paving the way for former liberation movements to seize the helm of government. Freedom from colonial pillage was a hard-fought victory and rightly inspired hopes in a radical renewal of Mozambique and Kenya in the interests of the liberated masses. Sociopolitical equality, land, national unity and anti-imperialism formed the main intersecting axes along which this arduous rebuilding began.
Imperialist plunder and neoliberal capitalist crimes
By the 1990s, socioeconomic crises and hardships had engulfed Kenya and Mozambique, giving impetus to the expanding influence of IMF and World Bank dictates in these countries. Structural adjustment loans and despicable prescripts of IMF and World Bank henchmen enabled corporations based in imperialist heartlands to tighten control over these depressed economies. The collapse of the Soviet Union in tandem with the globalisation of neoliberalism accelerated and intensified the subjugation of Kenya and Mozambique to a new wave of imperialist plunder. Exports of mining and agricultural commodities alongside a soaring foreign debt burden, divert profits to big corporations at the expense of the labouring and poor masses.
Mozambique is a major exporter of coal, aluminium and petroleum gas to Asia (China, South Korea and India) and Europe (Italy) alongside a smaller range of agricultural produce. In addition to titanium ore exports, Kenya’s main exports range from tea to cut flowers and tropical fruits to the United States and the Netherlands. Volatile and sliding prices of these commodities on global markets shrink foreign earnings and magnify the disruption and destabilisation of economies reliant on such exports. British, American, French and Chinese multinationals rank among the dominant competitors that profiteer from control of Kenyan industries, especially in finance, manufacturing and information and communication services. Big South African wholesale and retail companies e.g., Shoprite, accumulate huge dividends from dominating markets for food and basic consumer goods.
MTN and Vodacom, South African telecommunication monopolies, are tightening their control over mobile phone, internet and ‘next generation’ (5G, fibre optics, etc.) networks that render aging fixed-line phone connections obsolete. Vodacom dominates this sector in Mozambique. It has threatened to disconnect customers of Tmcel, the smallest cellphone company in which the Mozambican government has shares, from calls to Vodacom networks for outstanding debt that Tmcel failed to settle. This example of coldblooded privatisation and capitalist greed to which people are subjected to, stretches well beyond the telecoms sector. MTN, Africa’s largest mobile network operation, handsomely profits from Kenya’s telecoms privatisation modelled on World Bank diktats. Through its front company, Bayobab Kenya, MTN is expanding its domination of Kenya’s mobile phone operations into fibre optics. Vodacom’s 35% ownership of Safaricom extends its dictatorial powers into operations of Kenya’s M-pesa digital payments.
Together, the World Bank and Chinese banks hold roughly 50% of Mozambique’s external debt. Kenya’s external and public debt is also predominantly held by Chinese banks, the World Bank and the IMF. Mozambique and Kenya became shackled in a vicious cycle of public indebtedness through all sorts of subtle robbery and trickery intrinsic to finance capital. This debt shackle is made up of debt of defeated colonial regimes, dodgy infrastructure construction schemes, state subsidies to private companies, interest rate manipulation and the plots of rating agencies. Kenya’s government, for instance, is forced to transfer more than two-thirds of its national budget to a clique of finance capitalists in the form of debt servicing. In 2023, debt repayments devoured about 60% of Mozambique’s total national budget, far in excess of the amount the government spent on healthcare.
Extreme weather catastrophes
Mozambicans and Kenyans have also been caught in ecological catastrophes, with the poorest social classes suffering the heaviest burden of the destruction, displacement, death and injuries. The World Resource Institute (WRI), for example, lamented the extent to which the damaging floods that hit Kenya in mid-2024 were underestimated: “Although heavy rains due to El Niño were predicted, the intensity of the storms have far surpassed its projections, demonstrating how climate change can exacerbate extreme weather phenomena.” (https://www.wri.org/insights/rebuilding-kenya-stronger-after-catastrophic-floods) Mozambique has also been at the epicentre of tropical cyclones [Idai and Kenneth in 2019, Eliose in 2021, Chido in 2024] and tropical storms [Chalane in 2020/1]. These extreme weather events amplify the livelihood devastation of capitalist neoliberalism. Independent disaster relief agencies and NGOs that deliver aid to the victims of these catastrophic floods, droughts and heatwaves report that authorities in Kenya and Mozambique downplay early warning signals. Furthermore, the interventions by weakened government agencies are always in step with their too-little-too-late mode of disaster response.