Youth as Agents, Not Problems

Kenya’s 2024 Gen-Z protests placed young people at the centre of national life as self-directed agents of constitutional accountability, in visible contrast to the 2007–2008 Post-Election Violence (PEV), in which youth were instrumentalised as agents of ethnic conflict. This article argues that the Kenyan church’s persistent narrative of youth as a problem to be managed, rather than an agency to be joined, is contradicted by both episodes and that the Gen-Z movement’s “Occupy the Church” call constitutes a prophetic summons the church cannot responsibly ignore. Employing Osmer’s practical-theological tasks, the study reads the 2024 protests descriptively, interprets the rhetoric used to frame protesting youth along class and generational lines, offers a normative theological response drawing on missional theology and the author’s prior empirical research on youth and the PEV, and proposes concrete, pragmatic commitments for youth ministry. The 2007–2008 violence is treated not as an equal comparative case but as the historical legacy against which 2024 must be read.