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Paper short abstract

This paper examines how Gen Z in Kenya leverages social media platforms to mobilise, document state actions, and assert political agency. It explores how digital rights struggles reshape youth agency, governance, and development futures in East Africa.

Paper long abstract

Digital spaces are becoming central arenas for negotiating power, citizenship, and development futures in the Global South. In East Africa, the rise of Gen Z–led mobilisations in Kenya demonstrates how young people are using social media platforms, especially X/Twitter, TikTok, and Instagram, to organise, document state actions, and articulate new forms of political agency. These decentralised and networked practices challenge traditional governance structures and offer alternative visions of accountability, transparency, and civic participation.

This paper examines the mechanisms through which digital platforms have enabled the rapid growth of Kenya’s youth-driven movements, focusing on how online narratives, digital solidarity, and crowdsourced information shift the balance of power between citizens and the state. In contrast, the paper analyses Tanzania’s recurring internet shutdowns as a form of digital repression that restricts civic space and undermines constitutional protections of digital rights. These shutdowns highlight the uneven governance architectures shaping who can participate in digital public spheres and whose voices are silenced.

By comparing Kenya’s bottom-up digital activism with Tanzania’s top-down control, the paper explores core questions for the panel: How do digital tools redistribute agency? How do state surveillance and shutdowns shape civic space? And what do these tensions reveal about the possibilities and limits of decolonising digital governance?

The paper argues that the region's political futures are increasingly shaped by contestations over digital rights. Gen Z movements point toward more participatory and justice-oriented digital futures, even as states strengthen mechanisms of digital control.