Sixteen years ago, Kenyans gave themselves a new constitution.
It was promulgated on August 27, 2010. That was a moment of enormous hope, but also one informed by experience. Kenya had learnt that democracy cannot depend on the goodwill of those who hold power. Power needs limits, institutions need independence and citizens need rights that do not depend on who occupies office.
So, we dispersed power. We devolved it. We strengthened institutions to check it. We entrenched rights and public participation, and placed the sovereignty of the people at the centre of our constitutional order.
As we celebrate the constitution at 16, these achievements matter. But anniversaries should do more than remind us how far we have travelled. They should make us examine the distance between promise and experience.
And in that distance sits one of the most consequential issues in public life today: trust.
Trust is sometimes treated as intangible, a matter of perception or sentiment. It is much more than that.
Trust is the confidence that institutions will do what they say, apply the rules fairly and act with integrity even when no one is compelling them to.
President William Ruto, speaking at this year’s Katiba Day celebrations, made an important point: the real test of constitutional implementation lies in the everyday experience of citizens. That is also the test of trust. Citizens judge institutions not by the promises they make, but by the experience they create. The distance between the two is where trust is won or lost.
There is a powerful paradox in Kenya.
When Kenyans believe power has overreached, they still reach for the constitution. They invoke their rights, go to court and demand participation and accountability.
We saw that constitutional instinct in the challenge by a citizen to the alleged unconstitutional appointment of 51 Principal Secretaries, a case that reached the Supreme Court this year. Whatever one’s view of the merits of the case, the act itself matters: a citizen believed the exercise of public power should answer to the constitution and turned to the courts to test it.
Citizens can believe in the rules while losing confidence in those entrusted to uphold them.
Trust is not built through declarations. It accumulates through experience.
A young Kenyan applying for an opportunity wants to know that merit matters more than connections. A taxpayer wants accountability for how public resources are used. A citizen participating in a public consultation wants evidence that somebody listened.
And a woman looking at Parliament 16 years after promulgation is entitled to ask why the constitutional promise of the two-thirds gender principle remains unfulfilled there.
This is more than representation. It is about credibility.
The same question of reliability arises with devolution. Counties have repeatedly contended with delayed disbursement of their equitable share, despite the constitution requiring transfers without undue delay. The consequences are real: salaries, projects and services citizens depend upon are affected.
Gender representation and county funding may appear unrelated. One concerns equality and representation, the other resources and devolution. But they meet at the same place: can constitutional commitments be relied upon in practice?
Every promise repeatedly deferred makes the next promise harder to believe.
There is another dimension we discuss less often.
Trust must be reciprocal.
We frequently ask whether citizens trust institutions. Strong democracies must also ask whether institutions demonstrate trust in citizens.
That means listening when citizens disagree. It means understanding that criticism is not hostility and that public participation is more than a constitutional procedure to complete.
A government that wants the trust of its citizens must first demonstrate that it trusts their voice.
In my book Beyond the Ballot, I return to the idea that democracy is not something we practise periodically. Elections matter enormously, but the relationship between citizen and state is built in the ordinary days between them.
So is trust.
This matters particularly for Kenya’s younger generation. A Kenyan who is 25 today was nine when the constitution was promulgated. A 20-year-old was four.
They will judge it not by what it rescued Kenya from, but by the Kenya it has helped create.
As 2027 approaches, attention will inevitably shift towards candidates, coalitions and electoral arithmetic. But democratic trust cannot suddenly be manufactured in an election year.
Institutions cannot demand in moments of crisis what they have failed to earn in ordinary times.
The real measure of constitutionalism is not whether we respect the rules when they favour us. It is whether we respect them when they do not.
There is much to celebrate at 16. Devolution has changed Kenya. Citizens are more assertive about their rights. Public power is more open to challenge.
But an anniversary should not only ask whether the constitution has survived. It should ask whether its promises can be trusted.
Sixteen years ago, Kenyans placed enormous faith in a new constitutional order. Today, a generation with little memory of the struggle that produced it is asking a simpler question: does it work for me?
That question is not answered by ceremony,
constitutional text or institutional assurances. It is answered every day, in
whether the law is applied fairly, whether public resources reach where they
should, whether citizens are heard and whether constitutional promises are
kept.
At 16, Kenya does not have a shortage of
constitutional promise. The harder task is closing the distance between promise
and experience.
Because ultimately, trust is not what citizens are asked to give institutions. It is what institutions leave citizens with after the encounter.
Gina Din-Kariuki is a strategic communications adviser and author of Beyond the Ballot: Clear Communication. Effective Leadership. A Stronger Africa. She has advised governments, institutions and businesses for over three decades.
