Suluhu's threat of violence to the youth takes East Africa backward

Following the most compromised election in the history of Tanzania last year, President Samia Suluhu’s comments at the business conference this week were hard-faced, honest, and habitual. Sadly, she represents a troubling new breed of politicians who threaten violence against their own youth with disturbing ease.

Let’s start with what Suluhu threw away. The Tanzania–Kenya Business Forum 2026 brought together Presidents Samia Suluhu Hassan and William Ruto, senior ministers, and top private‑sector leaders to dismantle trade barriers, sign eight integration agreements, and position the two economies as a single investment destination for the world.

Over 24 per cent and 53 per cent of Kenyans and Tanzanians do not have reliable electricity, mainly in rural areas. With poor storage and processing, farmers’ vegetables rot and go to waste.

The cost of living for most in our cities remains high. Inadequate digitisation keeps cross-border crossings tediously painful for our small and medium enterprises.

These trade policy gaps are responsible for rising food prices and collapsing livelihoods, food insecurity, and joblessness, especially among the youth. They also cost both nations over USD 100 million in trade losses.

Rather than focus on these consequential issues, Suluhu publicly embarrassed Ruto by referring to him as junior rather than an equal, berated his punctuality, questioned the Tanga dam project, and then proposed they collaborate on a few off-agenda transnational repression projects. As one would expect from our Swahili neighbours, the language used in the ambush was rich.

She framed freedom of expression as “wananitukana” and “nywinywinywi”, freedom of assembly as “kufanya fujo”, freedom from extrajudicial killings, torture, and abductions as “kuchapa mikwaju”, democracy as “utovu wa nidhamu”, and what will become an all-time infamous classic authoritarianism, as “mila na desturi zetu”. Thankfully, President Ruto chose not to respond publicly.

My late nephew, journalist Nderitu, used to remind me often, moments like this call for us to “maintain the sharrup”. Perhaps Ruto also saw the trap being laid for him 15 months before a General Election that will be determined by young people.

East African citizens have virally shared and condemned the clips. They remind us that Tanzania’s legitimacy and human rights crisis persist. The November elections were wrecked by pre-electoral intimidation and violence against the domestic opposition, media, and civil society.

Nor were Kenyans and Ugandans spared. Boniface Mwangi, Agather Atuhaire, Mwabili Mwagodi, John Ogutu, and others were detained, abducted, brutalised, or killed for observing political trials, expressing political views, or simply working abroad.

Excessive lethal force and nationwide internet shutdowns were used to secure a “98 per cent” poll. Despite all this, the government-appointed Commission of Enquiry has not released its full report, declared that any unlawful operations took place, or held anyone accountable.

Suluhu’s remarks this week reflect total impunity and the absence of an internal moral conscience. It remains to be seen whether she and her Cabinet can rebuild it.

1,600 kilometres away in Mogadishu, Somalia’s President Hassan Sheikh Mohamud faces his own Gen Z leadership moment.

Arrested on 12 April for defamation and incitement, 27‑year‑old Bajaj (tuk‑tuk) driver and social activist Sadia Moalim Ali has become a Gen Z symbol for openly challenging corruption, rising fuel costs, youth unemployment, taxation, and the cost‑of‑living crisis affecting informal workers.

Detained without access to a lawyer, her case, made more striking by the few woman drivers in Mogadishu, is fast becoming an international prisoner of conscience cause.

Like most Gen Z leaders across Kenya, Uganda, and Tanzania, Sadia Ali is a peaceful working‑class activist. She symbolises millions of young East Africans locked out of economic opportunity. As long as economic inequality and political misgovernance benefit only the elite, they will continue to speak up. No degree of coercion or political speechifying, even in Kiswahili, can contain this.

While we call for Sadia’s immediate and unconditional release, let us also condemn cross-border projects that seek to repress the rights of East Africans. Regional economic development must come with political freedom, or we risk it all.