In 2024, rebellions emerged across Kenya, uniting generations and tribes against the latest neocolonial violence leveraged against the people of Kenya through the state apparatus. More specifically, newly elected President Ruto proposed a finance bill that would impose astronomical taxes on goods, such as a 16% sales tax on bread, and higher import taxes. Ultimately, proposing to make an already precarious national economy increasingly fragile and leave the average Kenyan citizen to carry most of the economic burden (Rukanga, 2024). While Kenya has a rich history of resistance and rebellion against colonial and neocolonial forces, what made this particular rebellion significant are two key components. The first being the unity demonstrated by Kenyans, specifically Gen Z leaders, and the rejection of allowing matters of tribalism, classism, or gender to function as lines of division across the masses. The second being the decentrality in how these rebellions unfolded, rather than reserving protest activities to the capital, Nairobi, organizers dispersed protests across the country forcing the state to also fragment their resources of repression (Apollo et. al., 2024). However, before Kenyans stepped to the streets to rebel against the finance bill, Kenyan women and queer folks were engaging in their own rebellion against increasing rates of femicide. Much of the strategizing attributed to the success of the #RutoMustGo rebellions was informed by the preceding organizing by Kenyan feminists who similarly leveraged a decentralized approach to protest and a unity across common lines of division often weaponized by the state to infiltrate movements.

The labour engaged by Kenyan feminists to inform strategies of rebellion and possibilities of resistance was often erased in mainstream discourses about the 2024 #RutoMustGoRebellions in Kenya. However, one collective in particular, named Feminists in Kenya, rejected this erasure and sought to center and capture the feminist imaginings of African women, girls and LGBTQIA+ folks through the 2025 release of a Magazine titled The Feminist: Resistance Issue (2025). The resistance issue of the magazine is a key site of anti-colonial, feminist and liberatory knowledge production, particularly from Kenyan feminists who ground their politics in practice.