My prayers and hopes for Kenya and world in the New Year

2026 is finally here, with its promise of new hopes and new beginnings. Every new year is an opportunity to dream, and this week I share my prayers and dreams for Kenya and the world for 2026.

My first prayer is global. I pray that the world will be kinder, gentler and less violent in 2026. The savage brutality visited on Gazans, especially the murder of more than 20,000 children and injury of countless others in 2024 and 2025 is reprehensible and unjustifiable. The ongoing war in Ukraine that routinely targets civilians is a blot on the conscience of humanity. The world also ought to be ashamed of other violent spots that do not attract its attention as Gaza and Ukraine do.

These include next door Sudan, the Democratic Republic of Congo and parts of West Africa and lawless Haiti. These wars have been responsible for the murder, maiming and displacement of thousands of innocent civilians and require a concerted effort that brings the accompanying suffering to an end.

Unfortunately, in a season of America First, which Europe is quietly copying, the wars that do not affect these global big boys will go on for a while.

For Africa, the African Union must rethink its traditional approaches and recognise that America doesn’t care anymore, unless intervention allows it to mine 'rare earths'. The AU must make more concerted efforts to put a stop to the continent’s disasters.

My second prayer is local and concerns our now stated road to the first world, aptly named Singapore vision. Strategists say that a true vision is not achievable in one’s lifetime, but it is useful as a guiding star, defining the true north. On this basis, I totally support the vision to go even beyond Singapore. However, my prayer is that this vision should commence with targeted investments to improve the welfare of the struggling one third at the bottom of Kenya’s economic pyramid.

In this regard, our target should be to copy China, minus its authoritarianism of course. China managed, in four short decades, to raise 800 million people from extreme poverty. I pray that this will be the first commitment in our Singapore vision. Related to the Singapore vision is a prayer concerning the change required in Kenya’s software. While economic growth, infrastructural development and such hardware are critical on this path to the first world, Kenyans urgently need a software update.

We have increasingly become a brash, impudent, disrespectful and indisciplined lot. Just watch our behaviour on the roads. Or the way we manage our own trash. Or the way we treat each other on social media. A first world Kenya will require first world Kenyans, kinder, more decent, and more disciplined, from the top leadership to the lowest citizen rung.

My third prayer is about the referendum, which appears to be in the cards as a seventh question. While I have concerns about the wisdom of a referendum in the 2027 elections, that is an issue in the public domain, and we will record our views at the appropriate time. I am however mindful of some issues that might need a constitutional response, most critically the issue of the Leader of the Official Opposition. That said, the government should show goodwill by implementing all those aspects of the National Dialogue Committee report that did not require constitutional change. This report, restating some issues that appeared in the BBI report, had progressive propositions on youth empowerment, on gender mainstreaming and on investments in key economic sectors.

Implementing those aspects that the government has the wherewithal to implement may make selling the referendum easier. For instance, I have never understood the government’s fascination with altering the Constitution to achieve the not more than two-thirds requirement in Parliament and yet in the areas where it has unlimited discretion in appointments, it continues to violate the principle.

My final prayer relates to the improvement in the content and character of Kenya’s public discourse. I have raised this issue ad nauseum. This country’s challenges require more reflective, informed and intelligent discourse. I pray that the religious sector, civil society, the media and professionals take this mantle as we all seek to build a better Kenya. To you my reader, my prayer is for a prosperous, joyful and healthy 2026.

 -The writer is an advocate of the High Court