The Kenya Finance Bill 2024/25, presented to parliament on May 13, 2024, proposed various tax increases and new fees on essential items and services, including internet data, bread, cooking oil, sanitary napkins, baby diapers, digital devices, motor vehicle ownership, specialized hospitals, and imported goods. The bill quickly sparked widespread protests across Kenya, significantly amplified by social media platforms like X (formerly Twitter) and TikTok. Hashtags such as #RejectFinanceBill2024, #OccupyParliament, #RutoMustGo, and #RutoLies trended widely, fueling the demonstrations.
In response to these protests, Thraets launched the ‘Ruto Lies’ Portrait, an interactive webpage designed to highlight the grievances of Kenyan citizens against President William Samoei Ruto. This digital portrait comprises over 5,000 tweets from the #RejectTheFinanceBill2024 demonstrations, each dot in Ruto’s face representing a tweet containing the keywords “Ruto” and “lies.” This innovative project aims to spotlight public perceptions of Ruto’s false promises and engage data scientists and civic tech researchers in analyzing these claims.
The ‘Ruto Lies’ Portrait is both a visual spectacle and a powerful statement. Clicking on each dot allows users to read individual tweets that point out specific instances where the president’s promises were perceived as unfulfilled. This project provides a platform for public sentiment and invites deeper analysis and accountability.
Our research team meticulously analyzed and filtered over 5,000 tweets to create this portrait. These tweets, collected during the #RejectTheFinanceBill demonstrations, contain various forms of the keywords ‘Ruto’ and ‘lies’. This extensive dataset offers a rich resource for understanding public sentiment and the specific promises that are seen as unfulfilled. We are releasing this research to encourage developers and researchers to support the project by mapping these tweets to real claims or evidence of false promises made by President Ruto. We aim to provide a comprehensive framework for analyzing these claims.
On Saturday, August 17, 2024, Thraets participated in the HakiHack Hackathon, where we introduced and demoed the ‘Ruto Lies’ Portrait. The HakiHack Hackathon is a two-day event focused on developing tools to enhance democracy, good governance, and civic action. This event was a valuable opportunity for data scientists, statisticians, and civic tech researchers to engage with the Ruto Lies Portrait Project, access the data, and contribute to the mapping of tweets to real-world claims.
Several resources are available and ongoing civic tech projects like those below that could be mapped to the “Ruto Lies‘ tweet claims from Kenyan citizens shared during the protests.
- Kenya Kwanza Promise Tracker: A tool for tracking promises made by the Kenya Kwanza government since President Ruto’s inauguration on September 13, 2022.
- KK Promises Google sheet: A detailed list of promises made by Kenya Kwanza.
- Mzalendo Promise Tracker: A platform that tracks the ruling party’s progress in fulfilling its pledges as outlined in the party manifesto.
For those interested in further exploration, we have made the data and tools available on GitHub and have provided a link to the Twitter data dump. Researchers can access approximately 5,000 tweets related to claims of Ruto’s lies via the provided resources:
- GitHub Project: Thraets/ruto-lies
- Twitter Data Dump: HakiHack – Approx. 5K tweets
This project is more than just digital art; it is a call to action for the data science and civic tech communities. Researchers can help hold leaders accountable and ensure that promises made to the public are fulfilled. We invite all interested parties to join this effort and contribute to a more transparent and accountable governance in Kenya.
For further information or to get involved, contact Thraets at hey@thraets.org.