President William Ruto has pledged to hand over power to young leaders in 2032, in a move aimed at winning over Kenya's Gen Z as debate over the role of young people in national politics continues to dominate public discourse in the country.
The commitment, reported by the Daily Nation, points to the end of what would be the president's second term as the moment he would pass the country's leadership to a younger generation. Ruto has led Kenya since September 2022, when he was sworn in after winning the August 2022 presidential election.
Kenya's Constitution limits a president to two five-year terms. Ruto is currently serving his first term, which runs to the next general election due in August 2027. A handover in 2032 would therefore require him to win re-election in 2027 and serve a full second term, after which the law bars him from contesting the presidency again.
The pledge places the president at the centre of a national conversation about youth and politics that has shaped Kenyan public life since 2024, when members of Gen Z, the cohort of Kenyans born from the mid-1990s onwards, organised countrywide protests against the Finance Bill of that year.
The demonstrations, coordinated largely through the social media platforms X and TikTok, brought young people onto the streets of Nairobi and…
