On June 25, 2024, Nairobi erupted. Nineteen people died when police fired on protesters as they stormed Parliament. Let’s be clear—these protesters knew exactly what was going on. They weren’t confused or misled. They saw the storm coming and met it head-on.

Young Kenyans had taken the Finance Bill 2024, broken it down, and translated it into several local languages. They even used ChatGPT to answer questions about what the bill really meant. Developers built a “Finance Bill GPT” on Telegram and X, so anyone could ask about specific clauses or look up their MPs’ contact details and give them a piece of their mind. When Parliament moved to vote, nobody needed an economist to explain what was at stake. The bill meant a 16% VAT slapped on bread, new taxes on mobile money transfers, a 2.5% annual tax on vehicles—basically, more money wrung from people who had nothing left to give.

The violence wasn’t new. Kenya has seen state brutality before. What made June 2024 different was the protesters’ sharp understanding of the system squeezing them. They knew the Finance Bill wasn’t just about Kenya—it was about meeting IMF program targets. They saw the link between their empty wallets and debt sustainability spreadsheets in Washington. And when President William Ruto called the assault on Parliament “treasonous,” they didn’t buy it for a second.

This was the moment the IMF didn’t see coming: a generation that could fact-check its own exploitation in real time.

The Mechanics of Extraction

Back in April 2021, Kenya signed a 38-month IMF program to help with COVID-19 fallout and debt management. That unlocked $3.9 billion in funding. The price? The usual: raise taxes, cut subsidies, trim government spending. On paper, it looked like plain old responsible economics. Kenya’s debt had spiraled—external debt hit $62 billion, or 67% of GDP, after years of borrowing for big infrastructure projects. The IMF loans helped Kenya dodge a default on a $2 billion Eurobond maturing in June 2024.

But “fiscal consolidation” turned into something very real when the Finance Bill 2024 landed. Suddenly, bread would cost at least 10 shillings more for a 400-gram loaf, thanks to the new VAT. Mobile money transfer taxes jumped from 15% to 20%. A 25% excise duty on vegetable oil threatened to drive soap prices up by 80%.

These weren’t just policy tweaks. For millions of Kenyans already struggling, they were daily choices about survival.

The Finance Bill fight looked nothing like the protests of the past. This time, social media turned into a battlefield—X, TikTok, Instagram, all buzzing with calls to action and leaked phone numbers of politicians.

Activists used ChatGPT and other AI tools to turn dense legal jargon into simple WhatsApp messages and bulk SMS. When the government tried to sell the taxes as necessary for “development,” the protesters didn’t just listen. They checked the facts themselves, combing through budget allocations line by line.

The bill would have cut deep into health, education, and infrastructure—while boosting travel and hospitality budgets for the president and his deputy. It even set aside funds for offices that shouldn’t exist, like those of the president’s and deputy’s wives.

This wasn’t just blind anger meeting harsh policy. This was a well-informed generation saying, “No.”

When mobile data went down during protests, organizers switched to private channels to share real-time updates on tear gas and safe routes. Protesters used AI to whip up images, songs, and videos that carried their message even further. None of this was accidental. Kenya’s Gen Z grew up online. They speak in local languages, and they speak the language of global finance, too.

They know what “revenue mobilization” means. They’ve seen this playbook before.

The IMF’s Arithmetic Problem

After the protests forced President Ruto to yank the Finance Bill on June 26, the IMF’s reaction laid the real problem bare.

The IMF’s First Deputy Managing Director said Kenya still needed to find new ways to “mobilize revenue” after the failed tax proposals. In plain English: keep squeezing money from the same people, just call it something else.

Then in November 2024, the IMF Executive Board approved Kenya’s seventh and eighth program reviews, unlocking another $606 million. Kenya promised again to close its fiscal deficit and boost domestic resource mobilization—the same tired language that gave birth to the Finance Bill.

The numbers were simple. Kenya needed about 346 billion shillings from the Finance Bill to hit its targets. Without it, the hole didn’t just vanish. The pressure is still there, and everyone knows it.