A collage of President William Ruto and the 2024 Gen Z protesters. /FILEThe 2024 anti-Finance Bill protests marked a turning point in President William Ruto’s presidency, reshaping how his administration approaches taxation, policy-making, communication, accountability, and political coalition-building.
What began as opposition to proposed tax increases quickly became a broader conversation about the relationship between citizens and government — including how public money is spent, how policies are explained, and how much influence Kenyans should have over decisions that affect them.
Two years on, the changes are visible not only in the policies adopted by the administration but also in how the presidency conducts its business.
Taxation and policymaking
The most immediate change came in taxation.
Ruto withdrew the Finance Bill 2024 after the protests, abandoning a package that had proposed a range of new revenue measures. The decision was followed by expenditure cuts and a search for alternative ways of raising revenue.
The government, however, did not abandon its revenue agenda.
By December 2024, Parliament had passed the Tax Laws (Amendment) Act, introducing changes to income tax, VAT, excise duty and other levies.
The approach was different from the original Finance Bill, with the government moving toward smaller and more targeted amendments rather than one large package containing numerous contentious measures.
The bigger shift has been toward tax administration and enforcement rather than relying primarily on increases in headline rates.
Treasury and KRA have increasingly sought to use digital systems, third-party information and data matching to identify taxable income and improve compliance.
Since the 2024 protests, KRA has increasingly relied on direct digital engagement to push tax compliance.
By 2026, Kenyans were regularly reporting receiving SMS notifications urging them to file returns, clarify income or address outstanding tax obligations, with some messages linked to discrepancies identified through eTIMS and other third-party data.
The authority has also moved compliance services onto WhatsApp, launching its Shuru chatbot in April 2026 to allow taxpayers to file returns, check obligations and access assistance.
The shift signals a more direct, technology-driven approach to widening compliance rather than relying mainly on new taxes.
The change reflects a new balance the government has had to strike: raising enough domestic revenue to finance its programmes and debt obligations while being more conscious of the public reaction to additional taxes.
Mbadi has himself acknowledged the lesson from the protests.
In explaining the 2025 Finance Bill, he said: “Last year’s events were a learning point for us all. Those of us who joined the government after that had to look for ways of doing things differently.”
Government communication
That lesson has also been evident in how fiscal policy is communicated.
Ruto acknowledged during the protests that the administration had failed to explain the Finance Bill adequately.
“We did not explain ourselves better; I am sure my communication team failed, and our communication architecture did not deliver. The message did not get out to the people,” he said on July 1, 2024.
The admission captured one of the central features of the 2024 crisis.
The government had largely relied on conventional communication, while young Kenyans were dissecting the Bill themselves on social media and circulating explanations of its provisions.
Since then, communication around taxation and the budget has become more continuous and interactive.
Mbadi has emerged as a prominent face of that approach, appearing in public forums, on television and before community groups to explain fiscal proposals.
In February 2025, for instance, he went to Jeevanjee Gardens to engage members of Bunge la Mwananchi on the budget process, telling them that the era when Treasury officials simply carried the Budget Statement to Parliament was changing.
His approach has continued into the 2026 budget cycle, with the Treasury CS repeatedly explaining the distinction between the Finance Bill and Budget Estimates and urging Kenyans to examine proposals before forming opinions.
“Before muanguke na hii Finance Bill yangu vile mulianguka na ile engine, I want you to take your time and understand what is in it,” Mbadi said while discussing the 2025 Bill.
He added: “What we have done with this Finance Bill is simply to make tax systems more efficient and to deal with the tax administration.”
Public participation has consequently become a more prominent feature of the budget process.
For the 2026 Finance Bill, Parliament’s Finance and National Planning Committee said it received memoranda from more than 100,000 respondents and held public hearings in 13 counties, alongside stakeholder engagements.
The significance is not only in the number of hearings.
Parliament and Treasury are increasingly presenting consultation as part of the policy-making process itself, rather than simply an exercise undertaken after a proposal has already attracted public attention.
Accountability
The protests also changed the conversation around accountability.
The demand was no longer simply that taxes should be lower.
It increasingly became a question of what the government was doing with the money already being collected. Public spending, procurement, government travel, corruption and debt became part of the wider debate.
Ruto responded first with a series of highly visible political and administrative decisions.
He withdrew the Finance Bill, dissolved almost the entire Cabinet and ordered reductions in government expenditure.
The subsequent supplementary budget cut Sh145.7 billion from national government spending, including Sh139.81 billion from the Executive.
The Cabinet changes represented a particularly significant moment in the presidency.
Ruto presented the reorganisation as an opportunity to assess performance and begin a new chapter, with greater emphasis on corruption, debt, jobs and government wastage.
Accountability has subsequently been framed increasingly around systems as well as individual responsibility.
Ruto has promoted digitisation of government procurement, with the aim of making it easier to establish who received public contracts and how much was paid.
The administration has also presented digital government systems as tools for reducing opportunities for corruption and improving oversight.
A good example is the fast-tracking of the Electronic Government Procurement (e-GP) system.
Treasury CS Mbadi has repeatedly linked the platform to greater transparency and accountability in public spending.
“EGP is a system that automates procurement processes from bid submission, tender opening to the tender award,” Mbadi said.
“The system minimises human interaction, which traditionally has been a major source of corruption, favouritism and solicitation of facilitation fees.”
Accountability has also extended to how the State responds to those harmed during demonstrations.
In August 2025, President Ruto established a framework for compensating victims of protests and riots, later supported by a Sh2 billion allocation.
The initiative was subsequently placed within a broader reparations framework developed by the Kenya National Commission on Human Rights (KNCHR), covering human-rights violations between 2017 and 2025.
By June 2026, KNCHR had received 1,937 claims and verified 1,101 cases, with compensation framed as recognition of harm and part of a wider process of justice, accountability and national healing.
Ruto’s political strategy
The protests also produced perhaps the most consequential change in Ruto’s political strategy.
In 2022, his political identity was built around the “hustler” narrative and a clear contest between Kenya Kwanza and the Azimio opposition.
The 2024 demonstrations, however, were largely youth-driven and operated outside the traditional party structures.
They therefore presented a different kind of political challenge — one that could not easily be addressed through negotiations with established opposition leaders.
Ruto's response was to broaden his political base.
In July 2024, he began incorporating opposition figures into a new Cabinet, including John Mbadi, and described the arrangement as a “broad-based” government.
The subsequent relationship with late former Prime Minister Raila Odinga developed into a formal Kenya Kwanza-ODM cooperation framework in 2025.
“I agreed with Raila Odinga that we should unite Kenyans and form a broad-based government that brings all Kenyans together so that we can eliminate tribalism, hatred, and discrimination,” the President said earlier in May this year.
The political significance of that shift became clearer as Ruto's relationship with his former deputy, Rigathi Gachagua, deteriorated and Gachagua was impeached in October 2024.
The President was increasingly able to rebuild his parliamentary and political alliances around a broader group of parties and leaders.
The result has been a change from defending the political coalition that carried Ruto to power to expanding his political reach ahead of 2027.
His allies have increasingly sought support in Nyanza, Western Kenya, the Coast, Ukambani and other areas traditionally associated with opposition politics.
The language of the presidency has changed alongside that strategy.
The “hustler versus dynasty” framing that dominated the 2022 campaign has increasingly given way to themes of national unity, inclusion and development.
Earlier, Ruto described the broad-based approach in terms of expanding the national economic “cake”, saying the objective was to “bake a bigger cake for everybody to share.”
He has also said the arrangement with Raila was intended to unite Kenyans and address tribalism, hatred and discrimination.
That political repositioning is also reflected in the growing emphasis on development as an electoral message.
Roads, health facilities, housing, agriculture, jobs and infrastructure have become central to Ruto's outreach, including in areas where his political support was previously limited.
Taken together, the changes suggest that the 2024 protests did not simply alter one Finance Bill.
They changed the way the presidency approaches the relationship between policy and the public.
On taxation, the government moved toward a greater emphasis on compliance and administration.
On policy-making, it has placed more weight on consultation before legislation reaches its final stages.
Communication has become more continuous and explanatory, with officials increasingly engaging directly with citizens.
Accountability has been linked more closely to expenditure controls, redress for those affected by state actions, procurement transparency and performance.
Politically, Ruto moved from a clear government-versus-opposition model toward a broader coalition built around national unity and the 2027 contest.
The extent to which those changes translate into lasting public trust will ultimately determine the deeper legacy of that turning point.
