Rise in femicide in Kenya puts technology's role in the spotlight

In January, thousands of people took to the streets across Kenya to decry a sharp increase in femicide. The brutal murder of two women at short-term rental apartments in Nairobi sparked outrage among rights groups by what they now term a “femicide crisis.” The attacks have come to symbolize a growing form of online violence against women in Kenya, which starts online and shifts to offline spaces.

Njeri Migwi, the co-founder of Usikimye, an NGO that works to end sexual and gender-based violence, told Devex that women were experiencing the repercussions of an unanswered culture of gender-based violence, or GBV.

“What you are seeing now are the actual effects of GBV that have been normalized for so long,” Migwi said.

In January, 26-year-old Starlet Wahu Mwangi was found brutally murdered in a short-stay apartment allegedly booked via Airbnb. Wahu was last seen entering the rented premises with the prime suspect in her murder after the two met via dating app Tagged.  

Barely two weeks after Wahu’s murder, Rita Waeni, a 20-year-old Kenyan student, was also found murdered at a short-term rental apartment in Nairobi. Waen was lured by her killer through her Instagram account, according to investigators who gained access to her social accounts.

At least 14 women have reportedly been killed in Kenya this year in acts of gender-based violence, and in the last eight years over 500 Kenyan women have been killed by their intimate partners. Many of the cases remain unsolved.

“Until a few weeks ago, the term ‘femicide’ was not in our conversations,” said Migwi, whose NGO was one of the organizers behind the countrywide protests. “We have brought attention to the term. With attention comes the asks that we want: legislation and declaration of femicide as a national disaster.”

Kenya is not the only country in the region grappling with a femicide crisis. In 2022 alone, the largest absolute number of killings — 20,000 of the 48,000 women and girls killed worldwide by intimate partners or family members — took place in Africa, as well as the highest level of violence relative to the size of its female population, according to a recent report.

But this latest spate of killings has cast a spotlight on the role of technology in gender-based violence, with many people across the country shocked that these gruesome killings began digitally, via apps.  

Tech-facilitated violence against women

Online gender-based violence has been recognized by the Kenyan government for more than a decade. In 2014, cyberstalking and cyberbullying were included in a government report as forms of domestic violence.

Yet in 2016, a policy brief released by the International Commission of Jurists Kenya section noted that “the domestic legal regime provides very limited legal responses” to incidents of technology-assisted violence against women, even during a surge of documented across the country.

“Despite recognition of technology-facilitated gender-based violence by international instruments, existing legal frameworks did not explicitly contemplate technology-facilitated gender-based violence,” Lucy Bosibori, an advocate of the High Court working at the Kenyan section and co-author of the brief, told Devex.

The ICJ policy brief also identified the prevalent forms of tech-facilitated gender-based violence in Kenya, including cyber-stalking, cyber-bullying, online harassment, trolling, hacking, impersonation, and malicious distribution of images.

“Since releasing our report, we have seen the numbers continue to surge,” said Bosibori. “The ubiquitous nature of technology and its constant evolution and development has created novel ways through which perpetrators advance tech-facilitated violence against women.”

She added that coupled with glaring inadequacies in national laws that curtail online violence against women, “the lack of formal training for law enforcement and public officials on such issues have all contributed to the surge we are seeing now."

In their statements in response to the recent cases of femicide, women's rights groups and feminist movements see the root problem as “structural inequalities and systems of oppression entrenched in patriarchy,” and called for the government to strengthen its judicial system.

To this, Bosibori noted that “laws should be revised to be clearer, provide for cybercrimes constituting tech-assisted violence against women, and provide for stiffer penalties for these offences.”

The spread of ‘manospheres’

The killings have also exposed the underbelly of the country’s social media networks, spaces described as “manospheres” — whereby the victims are vilified rather than offered sympathy or justice. With one of the most active social media users in the continent, toxic masculinity has found pockets on X, formerly known as Twitter, to thrive.

From victim shaming and blaming to distributing toxic content denigrating women, manospheres have, over time, spread their reach beyond online spaces into mainstream media.

Migwi explained that the murders of Waeni and Wahu were sensationalized by Kenyan media to drive the narrative "that women are killed because of money … That is the narrative that is being sold."

Migwi was referring to the media’s constant use of the term “socialite,” a euphemism for a prostitute, in reference to Wahu. And news reports questioned why Waeni met with a male stranger “she had met on her Instagram page,” rather than focusing on the attack. Many of the comments made by men on X about the two murders justified the killings, blaming the victims for "bringing it upon themselves."

The Media Council of Kenya has also expressed concern regarding the gender biases observed in media coverage of femicide cases. A media advisory by Chief Executive Officer David Omwoyo noted that reporting on femicide must remain "factually accurate and objective, as opposed to being sensational and depicting gender biases" and should "bear no hint of stereotyping of any form."

Big tech and government accountability

In a statement released on their website days following the two murders, Airbnb denied claims that the events were connected to stays on properties listed on their platform. Meanwhile, the government and various national regulatory authorities have announced a raft of new measures and directives to apartments offering accommodation services, hosts, and guests.

However, according to Bosibori, while the rapid response by the Ministry of Interior and National Administration is laudable, some interventions need further probing.

“One would question the practicality of this nationwide inspection,” she said. “What measures and interventions will be taken against those found culpable/non-compliant? Is there a need for laws that specifically address this issue?”

Migwi also felt that the new measures, though well-meaning, were not only reactionary but “they were missing the forest for the trees.”

“I feel like that was a hasty statement to justify the government painting this as an Airbnb problem,” Migwi said. “We can’t term this as an isolated case involving rentals. The majority of the reported murders happen in the women’s own homes, based on existing data.”

Learning from others

One of the biggest challenges in seeking justice for victims of either online gender-based violence or femicide has been gathering evidence. This can be used to help pressure governments to deliver on their commitments to prevent violence against women.

Monitoring and documenting incidents is an important first step to tackling this problem. Patricia Andago, a social, consumer, and market researcher at the organization Odipo Dev noted that keeping a living database of all reported cases had helped in labeling femicide a crisis. This could also help dispel misleading narratives that are being spread through manospheres and in the media.

One project that achieved something similar in the Republic of Congo over a decade ago, aimed at holding the government accountable for gender-based violence by using Ushahidi software, a free and open-source software developed in Kenya. The software enabled users to post information on an online interactive map via cell phones or computers.  

The initiative, implemented by the Association for Progressive Communications, worked to strengthen documentation, reporting, and monitoring of domestic and sexual violence and the responses of law enforcement agencies in several different ways. This included working with collaborators such as women's rights organizations to collect, monitor, and collate cases, as well as building the capacity of their collaborators. It also mapped government commitment versus delivery.

In Kenya, the road ahead is treacherous for the country’s advocates, civil society, and feminist movements. Without a commitment to adequately tackle this issue, the voices denying that women face gendered threats and that femicide has become a national crisis may only get louder.

Visit Ctrl Shift Equality — a series produced by Devex in partnership with UN Women and the Generation Equality Action Coalitions on Technology and Innovation for Gender Equality, and Gender-Based Violence.

To learn more about the multi-stakeholder commitments made to the Generation Equality Action Coalitions, click here.