Documenting and Archiving People’s Struggles and Social Movements in Kenya

In June 2025, I was awarded a British Institute in Eastern Africa (BIEA) civic engagement grant. The grant aimed to support the documentation and archiving of people’s struggles and social movements in Kenya at Mashujaa Heritage Archives & Library in Lower Kabete, on the outskirts of Nairobi City. The key activities and outputs of this engagement include: (i) physical archiving, cataloguing and digitizing historical materials on social movements, and (ii) progress towards digital archives on the website and social media platforms that are still being developed.

To support this initiative, BIEA mobilized a team from its Undergraduate Volunteer Programme (UVP) and Graduate Attachment Scheme (GAS) to engage in the documentation and archiving of people’s struggles and social movements in Kenya at Mashujaa Heritage Archives & Library. The BIEA team, especially the graduate attachés, have been dedicated and committed for the success of this engagement.

The first step in this engagement included sorting, arranging, organizing, documenting and cataloguing the available materials and documents. These are being stored on a shared google drive. The second step was to catalogue the books, films and music library. The third step will be to digitize the physical materials, documents, books, and audio/video resources, and upload them on the website and on social media platforms.

This civic engagement project is important in that it is the first of the deliberate and strategic initiatives by BIEA to support community archives in Kenya. Mashujaa Heritage Archives & Library will be both online and physically. The archive will be made available and accessible for interested researchers and the general public to learn about and study them. This engagement will also provide the general public with greater access to patriotic history and culture in Kenya in form of books, material culture, music, paintings and related art forms. This is in addition to new educational and training experiences for human rights activists and the local community where archives are located. The physical and online space will continue to be a space for patriotic reflections of the past, present and future of Kenya. The inter-generational conversations that are being undertaken by this engagement will nurture and promote progressive activism among the new generation of activists in Kenya.

Community archives of people’s struggles and social movements have possibilities of resuscitating and reinvigorating voices of suppressed narratives and to counter hierarchies of knowledge, resources, and power.

They are also part of decolonial struggles: looking back, now, and in the future. Community Archives also serve as a space to mentor the new generation of progressive human rights activists. This initiative directly relates to the BIEA mission and research themes and contribute to global or regional policy agendas to promote sustainable development, peacebuilding, human rights and justice by drawing from past and current people’s struggles and social movements in Kenya.