Qualla: 2007–2008 Kenyan crisis

2007–2008 Kenyan crisis: Introduction

Mon, 22 Jun 2026 00:00:00 GMT

On the night of December 30, 2007, Kenya's incumbent president was sworn in by lamplight, hurried and almost furtive, hours after an electoral commission declared him the winner of a vote it could not fully account for. The commission's own chairman would later admit he did not know who had truly won. Within minutes of the announcement, a country that had prided itself on stability began to come apart. Over the next two months, more than a thousand Kenyans would die and hundreds of thousands would be driven from their homes, neighbor turning on neighbor along lines of ethnicity that politics had inflamed. This is the story of how a contested ballot became a national wound, and how the country pulled back from the edge.

2007–2008 Kenyan crisis: A Vote No One Could Verify

Mon, 22 Jun 2026 00:00:00 GMT

The 2007 election pitted President Mwai Kibaki against opposition leader Raila Odinga, and as the count came in the result curdled into crisis. Early tallies showed Odinga ahead; then, as more results arrived, the gap narrowed and reversed, and the commission declared Kibaki the ...

2007–2008 Kenyan crisis: When Neighbors Became Enemies

Mon, 22 Jun 2026 00:00:00 GMT

What followed cannot be reduced to a single cause, and it should not be reduced to a single villain. Some of the violence was protest met with live police fire; officers shot demonstrators, some on camera, and each death fed the next. Some was the eruption of older grievances, de...

2007–2008 Kenyan crisis: Kiambaa

Mon, 22 Jun 2026 00:00:00 GMT

The horror found its symbol on New Year's Day, in a village called Kiambaa outside Eldoret. Families, most of them Kikuyu, had fled their homes and taken shelter in a church, believing a house of worship would be safe. A mob set it ablaze. Mattresses soaked in fuel were thrown in...

2007–2008 Kenyan crisis: The Toll

Mon, 22 Jun 2026 00:00:00 GMT

By the end of January, the dead numbered around 1,300, and as many as 600,000 people had been displaced, sleeping in churches, police compounds, and makeshift camps. The violence reached into public life and sport alike. The former Olympic athlete Lucas Sang was killed in Eldoret...

2007–2008 Kenyan crisis: The Handshake That Stopped the Killing

Mon, 22 Jun 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Help came from outside, in the person of former UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan, who arrived about a month after the election and refused to leave until the rivals reached a deal. Earlier efforts had collapsed in mutual distrust, but Annan, backed by a panel of eminent African fi...