How Poverty Levels Are Exacerbating GBV In Rural Kenya

By Isabella Maua

Gender-based violence remains one of the most pervasive human rights violations worldwide, according to UNICEF, and it still occurs literally in every country across all populations despite civilization and modernization.

One of the most underrated forms of GBV, however, is the most common rural-urban migration that no one seems to be talking about.

I may not know much about other countries, but for sure, in Kenya, homes have been broken, and women have been forced to play the role of single parents.

In the worst-case scenarios, men have been pushed to be single fathers while wives run away to the big cities.

As Hama Tuma puts it in the story “Who Cares for the New Millennium”: I am no wide-eyed True Believer or optimist, but a Gramscian pretender with an optimism of the heart and the pessimism of the mind.

Many years after education was embraced in Kenya, illiteracy still prevails, especially among youths who by default have become perpetrators of gender-based violence.

Maybe we should blame it entirely on poverty, or should we point fingers at the lack of proper education structure in the third world countries?

By the time you are done reading this piece, I bet you will know who is entirely to be blamed for the upsurge of GBV in this part of Africa.

Without knowledge of cultural beliefs that dictate the traditional African society, one may assume that almost all women here were born with nonchalant grace.

Not at all! It’s just that since time immemorial, a woman was born to be seen and never to be heard. But if by any chance you may be tempted to think that education has done more good than harm, you might be shocked!

A visit to some of the households in Western Kenya reveals more than meets the eye. John is a 25-year-old night guard at a company premises in Nairobi, Kenya’s capital.

He admits to having neglected his young wife of 4 years since his friend invited him to try his luck in the city.

“I was unable to complete my secondary school education due to financial constraints and illiterate parents who undervalued education,” John explains.

“In the year 2022, my close friend Caleb invited me to Nairobi since he had gotten a casual job and was optimistic that I would secure one and together change our lives,” he adds with a nostalgic smile.

By then, John’s wife, who had also dropped out of primary school, was around 2 months pregnant.

She reluctantly allowed her husband to go fend for their family.

True to his wishes, John secured a job as a night guard, though the salary couldn’t sustain his life, whichever way he chose to look at it.

He breaks it down: “My salary is Ksh. 7,000, my rent is Ksh. 4,000 in a single room in one of the most insecure areas. I need to buy food and clothes and send money to my family back at home.”

This statement is not only unpleasant but also disheartening.

Like most of his fellow young men in the city, John had to look for another source of income.

“I had to look for other laborious jobs, but still, life was a hard rock. Thank God for loans that our security firm offered us,” he divulges.

He bemoans, “I wish taking a loan would be the best thing I ever did; on the contrary, it was like chain links on my hands,” he says, wringing his hands while fighting hard to hide tears in his eyes.

John recounts that after taking his first, second, and third loans, it dawned on him that his life was meant to rely on more and more loans many years later.

He recounts a day when life became unbearable, prompting him to return home and attempt small-scale farming on the family-owned land.

“My attempt to talk to the boss about going back home to start my life with my wife and child was like putting salt in a fresh wound and rubbing it in,” he recalls.

John was astonished when his manager disclosed that he owed the firm a lot of money and that it could take years to pay off his debt.

“Deep down, I know my wife is suffering, but I can’t bring her to the city with me. I also can’t go back to stay with her since I’m enslaved by debt in the city,” he concludes with hidden shame in his voice.

Salome is another victim of circumstance. Married at the tender age of 18, she was abandoned by her boyfriend, who had impregnated her while she was in Form One.

“With no phone, no income, nor financial support from anyone, I left my home and went to my boyfriend’s home, where I lived alone in pain and regret,” recounts Salome.

The father of her child left her immediately after giving birth with a promise of getting a better life for them but left her in total darkness with no form of communication.

Like the 51.6% of women in the rural areas who didn’t own a mobile phone, Salome lived in total darkness (quite literally).

According to “Comprehensive Modular Survey: Telecom; 2025” reported by the National Statistics Office, 51.6% of women aged 15 and above in the rural areas didn’t own a mobile phone, while 80.7% of men in the same age group owned one.

“Later on, after one year, I heard from one of his friends that my husband had married another wife in the city and had moved on with his life like we never existed,” Salome says, her blithe smile tactfully hiding her underlying agony.

Salome was of any group dynamic, flamboyant, loud, and the type who seemed unabashed by anything, but not anymore.

She now sits outside her dilapidated hut with unanswered questions running through her mind.

Before we accuse Salome’s husband, let’s look at how many men find themselves in polygamy, especially polygyny, subjecting women to agony and abusive relationships.

According to the Kenya Institute for Public Policy Research and Analysis, 32.73 million youths out of 35.7 million Kenyan youths live in rural areas. This accounts for 68.9%.

No doubt most of these youths are in their most productive ages physically, needless to say, they are also sexually active.

The United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA) in 2020 highlighted the estimated number of youth migrants from rural to urban areas in Kenya to be 277,000 annually between 2015 and 2020.

There have been increased rates of intimate partner violence, mostly because they lack support systems among the women in polygamous marriages.

They can neither seek help nor escape abusive situations for fear of societal judgment.

Katana, a 45-year-old polygamous man, reveals that he didn’t turn out so by choice but by design.

“Life is hard and sometimes unbearable. I neglected my wife with 8 children in my rural home and had to move in with an older woman in the city to sustain my life,” explains Katana.

He thinks he made an unfair decision, and he is so apologetic, but no action could turn back time and erase the pain embedded in the hearts of his wife and children.

“I blame the ever-worsening economy and the fact we didn’t have knowledge on family planning and financial intelligence. I swear we could have done better!” he said resolutely.

Just like Katana’s wife, in Chwele, Naomi, a middle-aged mother of 7, has always been a housewife and lived with her husband for over 15 years.

All her life, she seemed lost and aimless without her husband, until 2023, when he left home in search of greener pastures (as a security guard) and has since been missing in action.

Sylvester (not his real name) is a manager in one of the top security companies in Nairobi. He explains vividly why loans have been termed as a trap among security guards, especially in the cities and big towns.

“Once we have employed a guard, we tell them about our SACCO, and as expected, most of them join it for financial support,” he says.

He further adds that they need a loan to sustain their lives in the city and in rural homes, as well as to start some long-term projects back in their rural homes.

“Once a member joins the SACCO, they’re expected to contribute Ksh.1000 for 6 months, totaling Ksh.6000, which will be capital shares, then a monthly contribution of Ksh.500 as a minimum,” Sylvester expounds.

On the other hand, remember that the capital shares can never be withdrawn, not even after one has decided to resign from thejob.

He adds, “That notwithstanding, the process of applying for a loan becomes laborious since one needs about 3 guarantors, and no matter how bad you want to leave the job, you can’t be cleared while you still have a debt.”

As a manager, Sylvester says they are not to blame whatsoever because they are only trying their best to help solve an economic problem, and life has to move on despite the ever-worsening economic state.

Conclusively, women left in the villages will remain acting as widows or single mothers, not by choice but by circumstance, if the government does not step up to empower rural regions.

The poor will continue to become poorer, and intimate partner violence will be too familiar to be seen as a form of gender-based violence.

My take? Freedom might be with us theoretically, but practically, women continue to be subjected to the unending pain of neglect, abuse, and suffering.