// BBC WORLD NEWS — MONDO
Making politics 'fun, trendy, sexy': How Gen Z could shape Kenya's next election
Ademba Allans is making it "cool" to vote in Kenya.
The student journalist turned civic mobiliser launched a voter registration drive on social media earlier this year, using snappy selfies infused with music and humour to target young people.
The result astonished him and many observers of Kenyan politics – by the time the registration period ended, 2.6 million new voters across the country had signed up. He is aiming to get another 2.3 million on board in the next round.
"It was the Gen Z way of doing politics," he tells me. "Fun, trendy, sexy, fashionable. Because of how we created the hype around it, people had the fear of missing out. Everybody wanted to be involved."
Gen Z, the term used to describe people born in the late 1990s and early 2000s, burst onto the scene two years ago with mass protests that forced the government to retreat on a widely unpopular tax bill. But their victory was followed by a police crackdown that killed and injured dozens of demonstrators.
Now many young Kenyans are planning to move from the street to the ballot box, angry with a political establishment they accuse of corruption and police brutality.
And they have the numbers to make a difference - more than 30% of voting-age Kenyans are younger than 35.
Polls suggest President William Ruto is looking vulnerable.
But can Gen Z convert a decentralized digital-led rebellion into organised political power?
"These youth-led movements are a wild card, in that they are unpredictable," says political analyst Tom Mboya.