While I was in Kenya watching Ruto's government label peaceful protesters as "terrorists" and "anarchists," I was also watching DOGE eliminate 317,000 federal jobs in ten months.
The parallel is not obvious at first. One is a government cracking down on citizens demanding accountability. The other is a government trimming its own workforce in the name of efficiency. But the structural logic is identical: in both cases, the institution is removing the mechanisms that exist to constrain it.
Kenya's government targeted digital activists — the people who had the documentation and the platforms to hold the state accountable. DOGE targeted DEI offices, the State Department's aid functions, and the Department of Education — the institutional nodes that existed to distribute power rather than concentrate it.
Efficiency is a neutral word. Capture is not. When an institution eliminates the functions that exist to check its own power, that is not efficiency. That is the institution winning a battle that institutions always fight — the battle to serve only those who govern it.
I watched both from the same distance. The mechanisms differ. The direction of travel is the same.
Gabriel Mahia writes from the intersection of U.S. institutional infrastructure and East African operational reality. This essay is part of the Year in Kenya series — twelve months, April 2025 to April 2026.
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