Kenya is experiencing a femicide epidemic. More than 500 women and girls have reportedly been killed by intimate partners and men known to them since 2016 – with 21 women killed in the country in January alone.

So widespread is the issue that on 27 January, thousands of Kenyan women gathered in cities across the country to call for an end to the deaths.

The epidemic is not a new phenomenon, nor one happening in a vacuum. When violence against women and girls goes unchecked for a long time, it inevitably leads to femicide, argues Stella Bosire, a feminist activist and doctor in Nairobi.

In this way, femicide has thrived in Kenya because there is already a larger background of violence against women, supported by a misogynist collective consciousness and public discourse that is rigged to harm.

Patriarchal violence against women in the country, which was a British colony from the late 19th century until 1963, sits at an intersection of culture and the legacies of colonialism.

Colonialism, which is a form of violence in itself, dictated that women were categorised and classified in a manner that ensured their inequality: ‘our women’, ‘European women’, ‘native women’, ‘non-European women’, ‘Coloured women’, ‘black women’, ‘white women’, ‘African women’.

This classification in itself perpetuates a specific interiorisation of African women and entrenches a culture of silence and invisibility. It also creates a perception of social and structural inferiority, which even today continues to inform the attitudes of Kenya’s government and individuals alike on women’s rights.

Decades of egregious crimes against women have been framed as a women’s issue. And since women are seen as lesser than others, this ‘issue’ is viewed as unimportant or even inconsequential.

Imagine it was men being systematically killed by women – would the Kenyan state have responded so feebly then? Would the directorate of criminal investigations have taken five years to announce an investigation into the deaths and serious sexual offences? Would politicians suggest, as Senator Tabitha Mutinda did about women recently, that men were being killed because they are obsessed with money? Would the victims of violence and activists who speak up against it be met with a wave of victim-blaming and sexist abuse?

In a continent rife with conflict and political instability, the liberation, protection and security of women is as urgent an issue as the economy, trade and technology – our authorities must treat it as such.

Instead, public response to incidents of femicide has been, at best, lukewarm and, at worst, dismissive. This misogynist consensus has solidified the narrative that women deserve to be killed especially when they do not abide by patriarchal standards of gender performance of dressing, behaviour or desire.

Women are forced to fight against gender-based violence themselves – as has long been the case, though there has been little research on it. Awa Thiam’s ‘La Parole aux Negresses’, written in 1978, documents feminist outrage at the range of violence against women in parts of West Africa. Four years later, Women in Nigeria formed and explicitly identified sexual violence against women as one of the major barriers to their participation in the economy.

In the tradition of our feminist leaders and ancestors, Kenyan feminists, women and other activists carried out an anti-femicide protest in 2019 – similar to the one seen last month – which is believed to have contributed to the introduction of specialised sexual and gender-based violence courts in 2023.

There is not yet much data on the effectiveness of these courts, but it is clear that for the foreseeable future, gender-based violence in the most extreme form will continue to colour the daily lives of Kenyan women.

But what will the Kenyan state do about it? Aside from lukewarm recommitments to investigate, what will the government offer half of its population?

It must meaningfully invest in safeguarding women’s lives by establishing official records of femicide, reduce impunity by investigating and prosecuting perpetrators, and take an official government position on the protection of women’s rights in Kenya as enshrined in the constitution.

Unpacking femicide requires a holistic approach, a genuine acknowledgement and rejection of the violent legacies of colonialism and all the other tyrannies African women are made to swallow in their human experience.

In the 2005 book ‘Pedagogy of Indignation’, Brazilian philosopher Paulo Freire teaches the denouncement of oppression and oppressive systems, including colonialism, hetero-patriarchy and capitalism and the announcement of new liberatory futures. Kenyan women and feminists have publicly denounced patriarchal violence twice in the past five years – is anyone listening?