Anita Soina is an environmental activist, author, and former MP in Kenya. She founded the Soina Foundation, which focuses on education and behavioral change in vulnerable communities in light of climate emergencies. Civic space in Kenya is obstructed, and here Soina shares why she continues to be a young activist.
My name is Anita Soina. I am a 24-year-old Kenyan born to parents from two different communities in Kenya, and I identify as a Maasai. In Kenya’s 2023 election, I ran for public office as a young woman. But to get to that part of the story, I must tell you more about where I came from.
Growing up, my now-late grandfather, Jonathan Kipsigei Sossion, was more of a father figure to me in my early childhood. He was a great community leader who championed different issues, the main one being education, as he was the chair of a school board and a member of several others. He valued and championed most of the issues that I do today. He was a great champion of education, and he, together with my grandmother, pushed all their children through school to college during a time when many did not value education. He did the same for his grandchildren.
He also fought for the rights of teachers and always asked others to do the same. This passion saw one of his sons climb to the top of the Kenya National Union of Teachers’ leadership. At the same time, the other owns one of the largest publishing companies in East Africa, publishing and distributing books across East Africa and beyond and engaging in corporate social responsibility projects to support education.
I was lucky to be his favorite grandchild since I spent my time in his house. He also owned a small forest on one of his lands, and trees largely covered it. The village neighbors knew him for his strictness, and people who cut his trees would always find themselves in trouble. For us, we’d climb up the trees to pick the branches for firewood and not fell the trees.
He also cultivated a culture of listening to the news on the radio, which led me to grow up as a child who was always interested in current affairs. He forced us to be quiet during news hour to listen to what was happening in the country. As a child, I didn’t understand much about everything he was doing and why it was important. I was going with the flow. After my childhood, I returned to my home country to learn about my background and culture and support my Maasai community.
My activism started back in high school. I joined the scouting club, and with time, I was one of the officials. The club engaged in community service both within and outside the school. Some of our activities included tree growing, cleaning the nearest hospital, and visiting the sick. At that time, I was doing it because the patron had asked for it. After high school, with my passion for politics, I joined politics immediately to campaign for various candidates I had read about in newspapers since it was an election year the following year. Even though I was not eligible to vote, I actively participated in key campaign activities. In the campaign field, I met my mentor, Erick Matsanza, who was keen to understand why I was in the campaign field at such a young age. When I told him I wanted to be in spaces where I could contribute positively to community development, he asked whether I had come across the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) — I hadn’t, they were new to me.
He then took me through them and asked which I was comfortable working on. After several months of trying to champion various things, I realized SDG 13 (climate action) was what I loved most. My initial activities included tree growing and clean-ups, and I rallied my campus friends and other friends to join me. I shared a lot on social media. I then quit the gospel music industry, where I started working as an artist and digital platforms manager, to focus on the environmental conservation activities I enjoyed fully.
Thanks to seminars, events, reading, and interactions that opened my eyes to understand that climate change wasn’t strange and wasn’t something far from us in Kenya — as it was previously made to seem for us non-experts. I started relating to the changes and effects witnessed in my country. I could now understand why the River Mara (where we fetched water from and went swimming as kids) was drying up; it was getting warmer, and the weather patterns and rainfall distribution were changing.
This pushed me to continue learning and educating others. When I thought of changing my course in university to something related to that, I realized that I didn’t need to because you don’t have to be in that field professionally to be environmentally conscious. The fact that you live on this planet is enough qualification for you to be a great steward.
When I started working on environmental conservation, I founded SpiceWarriors Climate and Environmental organization. This environmental organization focuses on climate education for different groups, mainly children, and organizes and participates in environmental conservation and climate change activities. Today, it has members all over Kenya; some are in Tanzania.
In early 2021, I had the idea to start a non-profit foundation to work on other community challenges. At the end of 2022, we had our first activity, in which we joined as partners and fully began our operations in early 2023. The Soina Foundation exists to address other societal challenges, such as how water scarcity affects hygiene, sanitation, and day-to-day lives, as well as climate change’s impacts on food security, education, and gender disparities. It was easy to do so after running a green-themed campaign during the 2022 Kenyan general elections.
It is not yet popular in our country and even the continent for green parties to win elections. During the campaign, most people argued that we couldn’t wait for climate change to be solved so that they could have access to basic services, which made sense and inspired me to run the foundation in the direction of community development.
When we noticed that one of our challenges is behavior change, we introduced training and capacity-building to encourage behavior change in different sectors. We now work fully in rural communities, focusing on the indigenous, marginalized Maasai and Maa people generally. Through partnerships, we reach other parts as well. We also use education and learning institutions to connect with children, the community of parents, and those living around the school.
In my time in this field and space as a climate advocate and an SDG and community development champion, I realized that communities were playing, and willing to play, their part. Young people play a huge role; civil society and NGOs do their best, but the biggest problem is political leadership.
My first time out of the continent was to head to the UK for COP26. I had a chance to participate in a climate strike. I was overwhelmed by emotion and anxiety as I had never been part of a protest exceeding 300 people, but there we were — a strike full of tens of thousands of people. A strike that wasn’t just for young people but with people of all ages. I was crying and said, “With this huge crowd, we surely are in a crisis that’s worse than I thought.”
While at the strike, most placards said “Dear World Leaders.” this struck me, and when I came back home, I joined politics and made the tough decision to run for office — specifically as a member of parliament to fight for these issues from within the corridors of power. This was not the easiest decision, and I remember getting a call from my mum, who was so scared for me.
Politics in my country is not favorable for youth and for women, so imagine being both.
Tough right? When I first announced my candidacy, most people thought I was not serious and that it was just another citizen playing with the minds of citizens. They were surprised to see me get serious with it as days went by. Being a young woman with no financial muscle, I can say this was the toughest decision. I expected overwhelming support from the climate movement, but I didn’t get much. However, I got support from some who constantly sent messages of encouragement from across the world and at home.
When I switched parties (there was no space for some of us in large parties, and many people like me faced having to step down to make room for someone else), I was fortunate to belong to a party of one of Kenya’s great environmentalists Dr Isaac Kalua Green — who was very supportive. One of Kenya’s climate champions, Alphonce Munyao, was my biggest cheerleader who supported me and was excited about my candidacy and green campaign. He rallied people to support me and always told everyone and anyone about me.
My campaign team was also full of young people who put everything they were doing aside to join me and support me throughout the campaign. Societal barriers and norms challenged our candidacy, from being told, “You are very young,” to asking where my husband and children were. I attended presidential rallies, and I had to fight for myself to speak like other candidates.
Another time, we had just branded our campaign vehicle, and we were at the gas station; some goons came chanting the name of our opponent and started hitting our car. Some days were really low. At one campaign rally, some aggressors grabbed my banners from my supporters and hid them, and some were destroyed. I thought of stepping down as days went by but reminded myself that giving up was not an option.
I am happy to have run until the end of the campaign and until the last voting day. A move that made me feel proud of myself and inspired other young people to get through tough spaces and to believe in themselves even when all the odds are against them. Parliament is an important tool, especially locally. That’s where laws are passed, issues are agreed on, and resources are allocated to different issues. I believe it is important to have legislators who understand these topics in depth to make better decisions.
In our continent and my country, the term “activist” is not seen positively in most spaces. It is treated as being an anti-everything, anti-everyone kind of thing. This sometimes denies many activists opportunities to engage in critical spaces. On our continent, for example, most climate activists do not stop at being activists and advocates rebelling against environmental and climate injustices; they are also implementers of many grassroots initiatives and play important roles in this space. There are places where many young activists do not want to identify as activists so as not to be left out of important opportunities or limited to a specific treatment.
To keep doing our activism work and inspiring more action, young people need to be seen, heard and appreciated. This also includes being meaningfully engaged and not being tokenized. While I am a very big lover of volunteering, as young people, we feel like we are always invited when there’s volunteering, but when bigger opportunities are there, we are not represented enough, and to me, that’s tokenism.
Young people running initiatives and innovations struggle to find necessary funding and support compared to how much government initiatives get. The reality is that most actors outside of the government are very passionate and intentional, which is evident in the many startups and initiatives by young people with little to no resources, yet they never give up.
Moving forward, I’ve decided to work closely with my community to ensure that rural children have access to better and quality education, as this is the biggest tool that has seen many people from the same community come out as leaders and professionals in every sector. A lack of education in rural areas means lacking information and exposure. My plans include being able to support as many young people as possible to become leaders and great actors in addressing global community challenges. This means I will no longer be just a climate champion — but also a champion of education for all.
This article, as shared with Gugulethu Mhlungu, has been slightly edited for clarity.