These are the women breaking new ground in Kenya’s politics, business and activism – and we asked them our questions:
How did you get involved in politics?
I attended church where my pastor encouraged me to run after my high school. I joined my first political party in 2003 and it started my journey into the life of Kenyan politics.
I believe the first person who I met at my first political party meeting was Tiki, a great leader of the anti-government party of PNU, and a great friend.
The first thing we did is we met to develop our political party on what needed to be done and what shouldn’t be done and how we could help each other.
I always try to think about things from the perspective of my team members. They help make our party what it is today. I had a team of people who worked for me.
I believe we are the only political party in Kenya that had a 100 percent women team. We were the only party that had two female team members running for election in the 2019 General Election. This is a huge achievement.
After we won the election, I went to Nairobi where we held our first party congress.
I remember when I came back from Nairobi, I called my mom to ask how she was doing. To my surprise, I was able to tell her that PNU won the election. We were excited and happy.
We had a lot of young women who had come out into politics or were in the political party. However, we had about 20 women who hadn’t been involved in politics. I believe we have the power to change our political scene in this country and that we need to be more open about that.
When I first started, there was no media coverage on women in politics. The first time I wrote about women in politics, I got a call from the editor at The Standard, who wanted to interview me. She said “we are going to print a story about women in politics from you!”
I had no idea who they were. I was so excited. They printed the story on page four just so people could see what was happening in politics. At that time, a lot of women were