Vijana Tugutuke: Political participation among young people in Kenya

DLDP has been working in Kenya since 2011

Centre for Multiparty Democracy - Kenya (CMD-K)

Since 2011, DLDP has been in partnership with the Centre for Multiparty Democracy Kenya (CMD-K), an umbrella organization for more than 20 parties working to promote democracy in Kenya.

From 2023-2025, DLDP collaborated with not only Venstre but also the Conservative People's Party, the Social Democratic Party, and the Green Left in regards to further development in Kenya. 

The themes in this cross-political partnership was:

• Local policy development inspired by the United Nations' Sustainable Development Goals

• Development and strengthening of local party branches

• Dialogue across the board, including the further development of the People Dialogue Festival (the Kenyan national assembly), including local assemblies

Vijana Tugutuke

The new project, Vijana Tugutuke: Political participation among young people in Kenya, contains a good mixture of innovation and continuity. Vijana Tugutuke is Swahili for “youth take charge”.

This new project implemented by Centre for Multiparty Democracy Kenya and two Danish parties tries to give a contribution to tackling a profound challenge in the Kenyan society: The youth, who constitutes more than half of the population shies away from electoral as well party politics. The GenZs who took to the streets in many parts of Kenya in 2024, said that they were tribeless, fearless, leaderless and partyles. Especially the latter two represents a serious challenge for the continued development of the Kenyan democracy.

Consequently, CMD and the Danish partners want to move the three aspects mentioned the below graphic in a positive direction to decrease the growing distance between young Kenyans and party politics. We believe that we must work on all three of them to be able to contribute to sus-tainable progress and that the three interventions will cross pollinate each other.