Community and Advocacy Awareness Executive Director Daisy Amdany has called for a complete overhaul of Kenya’s electoral system to promote inclusion, equity, and fair representation of women and marginalized groups.
Speaking during an interview on Radio Generation, Amdany said Kenya’s current electoral system is “not a system that facilitates inclusion” but one that rewards personalities and financial muscle rather than merit or ideology.
“For me, I’ve been an advocate for changing the electoral system,” she said. “We completely changed our governance system, but we left our electoral system intact. Now, our electoral system is not a system that facilitates inclusion. It’s about the strongest will survive.”
Amdany noted that the current political environment often sidelines women and minorities, particularly in elective positions, due to structural and cultural barriers.
She added that while some women gain access to political spaces through nomination, very few are able to build sustainable political careers from those opportunities.
“We really need women to understand that even if you are that side person, or maybe a relative, you can still use it to build your political capital for yourself and move into a leadership position,” Amdany said. “It doesn’t necessarily have to be political, you can still be a CS, PS, or ambassador and find a pathway in leadership and governance.”
She emphasized that Kenya should establish a database of women leaders to help identify and nurture those with leadership potential across various sectors.
“We should be able to create a pool of women who understand leadership, who understand politics,” she emphasized. “But that’s not what is happening because, for some people, access to that space is through resources or relationships. That’s what we need to clean up.”
To achieve true inclusivity, Amdany proposed the adoption of a proportional representation system similar to South Africa’s, where political parties contest elections based on pre-determined lists that alternate between men and women.
“In proportional representation, it’s not about individuals, it’s about your party, what you stand for, and what you are promising the people,” she explained. “The party that wins the highest percentage of votes gets the highest number of seats in the house, in order of priority.”
She criticized Kenya’s political culture for shifting focus away from citizens to politicians’ personal interests. “Elections are about the people delegating their power to representatives,” she said. “But we’ve flipped it; elections have become about politicians and personalities, not service to the people.”
Amdany reiterated the need for a reformed, inclusive electoral framework that ensures diverse representation and strengthens democracy in Kenya.
