Harmonious
coexistence is the greatest asset a nation can possess, yet it is often taken
for granted when it is present.
For Kenya, the current period of relative harmony and peace offers an important opportunity to consider how to prevent insecurity, violence, intolerance and social fragmentation from escalating and undermining the country's future.
Rather than waiting for a crisis to respond, Kenya should proactively use this moment to strengthen the foundations of harmonious coexistence and peace, beginning with the family.
A useful lens for understanding why this moment matters is provided by political scientist and Profemeritus John Kingdon of the University of Michigan. He developed the Multiple Streams Framework, which fundamentally changed how scholars and practitioners understand agenda-setting and the public policy process.
It explains why some problems finally attract serious policy attention while others linger unaddressed. Change happens, Kingdon argued, when three things align: a widely recognised problem, a workable solution and a political climate in which people are ready to act.
When these three ‘streams’ converge, they create a policy window, a brief opportunity for real change, seized by those willing to push for it.
Applied to Kenya, the problem is well known: insecurity, ethnic tension, hate speech and social fragmentation remain live concerns even in calmer times, as confirmed by recent research by the National Crime Research Centre on community policing.
What has been missing is a solution that goes beyond policing alone, one that builds social resilience, civic responsibility and peace education from the ground up.
The 2010 Constitution calls the family “the natural and fundamental unit of society and the necessary basis of social order”. That is not a symbolic phrase.
The home is where children first encounter conflict, disagreement, forgiveness and tolerance and how they see adults handle these things shapes the citizens they become. Basically, the nation’s agenda is set at the family level.
A child raised around dialogue learns to resolve conflict peacefully; a child continually exposed to hatred, intolerance or ethnic prejudice may carry those attitudes into adulthood.
This makes the family more than a private space; it is a peacebuilding institution in its own right. Parents and guardians should teach that political and ethnic difference need not mean hostility, and can help young people navigate social media responsibly, pushing back against misinformation and incitement.
Kenya's own history is instructive here. The National Cohesion and Integration Commission was created in the wake of the 2007-08 post-election crisis, a reminder that cohesion cannot be secured by government institutions alone, and that it must be built before conflict erupts, not merely restored after it does.
The elements of a policy window are already in place: a recognised problem, an available solution and a political and social environment open to acting on it. What remains is the will to use it.
Families need to hold regular conversations with their children about peace, citizenship and responsible political participation, while emphatically discouraging ethnic stereotyping and political hatred. Schools and religious institutions can strengthen peace education and reconciliation programmes.
Communities should promote dialogue and build local mechanisms to resolve disputes before they escalate, and government agencies must deepen the partnership between citizens and security institutions through community policing.
The media, too, has a role to play by reporting responsibly and avoiding narratives that inflame ethnic, political or religious animosity.
Elected leaders carry particular weight in all of this, since their language has the potential to either unite or divide a nation, but peace and security are ultimately a shared responsibility, not the exclusive preserve of the state.
Kingdon's theory
carries a warning as much as an opportunity. Policy windows are temporary. If
problem, solution and political will converge but no one acts, the moment
passes. Kenya should not wait for escalation to become a national crisis before
investing seriously in peacebuilding, and the family offers perhaps the most
accessible place to start.
Strong families can nurture responsible citizens; responsible citizens can build peaceful communities; and peaceful communities can strengthen a cohesive nation.
Kenya's peace should therefore not be understood merely as the absence of violence. It should be understood as a social value that must be taught, practised, protected and transmitted from one generation to the next. The policy window is open. The question is whether we will have the wisdom and the courage to use it.
The writer is a senior military officer and PhD candidate
