When Gen Zs filled the streets earlier last year, forcing the government to backtrack on the punitive Finance Bill 2024, many wondered whether Kenya was witnessing the dawn of a new people’s revolution. But soon after, a familiar question resurfaced: Do movements fizzle out once the hashtags stop trending? Or do they simply morph into something new?

History teaches us that social movements rarely “die.” They evolve. From the Mau Mau uprising that shook colonial power, to the Ufungamano initiative that challenged dictatorship, to the Social Justice Centres amplifying community voices, movements across East Africa have shown one truth: when ordinary people organise, they bend the arc of history.

It is against this backdrop that Inuka Kenya Ni Sisi!, in partnership with the Civic voice, gathered today in Mombasa with a vibrant group of young people from the Coast region. The mission? To reflect, learn, and sharpen strategies for reclaiming civic space by forming a MombasaNisisi Chapter

The session opened by tracing the lineage of resistance across the region, Mau Mau in Kenya, Walk to Work and People Power in Uganda, teachers’ and farmers’ protests in Tanzania. Each story carried lessons: how to withstand state repression, the pivotal role of women and faith groups, and the power of youth to spark new forms of organizing. Participants co-created a regional timeline that stitched together these struggles, revealing an unbroken thread of solidarity across East Africa.

Building on history, the conversation turned to the natural lifecycle of movements. They begin in crisis, rise in momentum, contract under pressure, and eventually transform. But participants also confronted uncomfortable truths, internal threats like organiser burnout, elite capture, and NGO-ization that risk stripping movements of their grassroots legitimacy. Through simulations, the youth analysed where their admired movements sit on this compass and brainstormed strategies to sustain their struggles beyond the “peak moments.”
As the day wound down, the spotlight shifted to the power of storytelling. Movements, participants agreed, live and die by their narratives. How do you frame injustice? How do you craft solidarity across class, faith, or ethnicity? And crucially, how do you counter propaganda designed to delegitimize people’s voices?

In a digital age where surveillance is real and online spaces are both battleground and megaphone, the youth explored smarter, safer ways to organise, from secure communication tools to bold but strategic social media campaigns.

Today’s conversations in Mombasa were not just about learning, they were about building, MombasaNisisi Chapter.

Because the question isn’t whether the Gen Z movement died, it’s whether we are ready to nurture it into its next form.