Senator Crystal Asige nominated for Time honours

Nominated Senator Crystal Asiuge. [File, Standard]

Kenyan artiste and nominated senator Crystal Asige is on this year’s Time Magazine's 2024 Time100 Next list. She is among the celebrated icons, artists, innovators and emerging world leaders on the prestigious list.

Another Kenyan, Thomas Njeru, the co-founder and CEO of Pula, a Nairobi-based micro-insurance business that serves over 20 million farmers across Africa, Asia, and Latin America has also been listed under the Advocates category.

Asige is in the Leaders list alongside others like the former American President’s daughter-in-law, Lara Trump.  

“A phrase from Kenyan Senator Crystal Asige’s Insta­gram bio immediately stood out to me: 'visually impaired person but the streets just call me VIP.' Reading it, I instantly knew we rolled in the same pack—a growing cohort of brilliant and badass African leaders with disabilities taking up space on the world stage. Senator Asige’s life is a master class in embracing the unexpected,” read a Time Magazine's 2024 Time100 Next verdict statement by Eddie Ndopu, a humanitarian and a UN Sustainable Development Goal Advocate.

“Diagnosed with glaucoma as a teenager, Asige rose to prominence as a formidable politician in Kenya—after first gracing the airwaves as an award-­winning singer. With every twist and turn, she has charted a course that defies categorization.

"Since taking office, she has helped pass bills to uplift people with disabilities, including a tax break for parents and caregivers of kids with disabilities, and new support for Kenyan sign language. Senator Asige is a true Renaissance woman, proving what I have always known—being disabled is compatible with an extraordinary life,” said Ndopu of Asige.   

Now in its fifth year, the Time100 Next list was created to recognise that many of today’s most influential leaders are individuals who are not waiting long in life to make an impact.

Nor are they eager to respect the status quo by following the traditional power structures and pathways that have determined what influence looked like in the past.

Time100 Next has no age requirements; its aim is to recognise that influence does not have them either, nor does leadership look like it once did. Indeed, the majority of the individuals on this year’s list are leaders of colour; and more than half are women.

Acknowledging the great honour, Asige said she was happy that her work was being recognised and encouraged others that nothing is impossible.

“What! I am screaming. I have no clue how my work travelled around the world and landed in front of Time, but naming me in their 2024 #TIME100NEXT list of influential leaders shaping the future of their fields and defining the next generation of leadership is wild, and you are all right at the centre of this acknowledgement.

“Thank you for helping me show the world that young, quirky people can also create impact! I just want to speak to the underdogs who feel like what they want is impossible. Please, please keep putting one foot in front of the other however dark it might be - I promise, you were made for a time such as this on purpose and for purpose!” she wrote.

According to the Time Magazine's 2024 Time100 Next report, Thomas Njeru saw the challenges of smallholder farmers who are often just one drought or flood away from a crisis – who as the global climate shifts to be hotter and less predictable, the risk they face only stands to grow.

This was his firsthand experience while growing up in rural Kenya.

 “After a drought, it would take farmers up to five years to get back to where they were because they don’t have money to replant,” he says.

Pula’s insurance payouts, totalling over $120 million, allowed them to bounce back more quickly. He leverages on-the-ground and satellite data with its own AI models to calculate premiums, keeping costs low.

This innovative approach gives financial institutions the confidence to extend credit to farmers—leading to a 16 per cent rise in investment and an impressive 56 per cent yield boost for Pula-insured farms.

In the spring, Pula itself secured $20 million from investors—a sizable sum Njeru plans to put toward a rapid expansion, with the goal of reaching 100 million small-scale farmers by 2029.

Among the artistes featured in the list are Sabrina Carpenter, Aaron Pierre, Ashley Park, Victoria Monet, Beabadoobee, Kaia Gerber and Nicola Coughlan. Others are Ambika Mod, Kingsley Ben-Adir, Adrian Arjona, Kali Reis, Shaina Taub, Brandon Blackwood and Kaveh Akbar.

In a previous interview, Asige said she started to notice problems with her eyesight when she was around 16 years old before fully losing her sight at the age of 20.

"I went to the UK in Bristol which was where I attended university to study film and theatre. I went for a general checkup and the doctor told me that there was something seriously wrong with my eyes.

"He said that the pressure was three times higher than the normal pressure in the human eye. Still alarmed, I went to the hospital and after a series of tests were done over some time, I was finally diagnosed with glaucoma.

"I was left distraught because I was only 20 years at the time, in my second year of university. Lots of things flashed before my eyes, I thought about everything that my parents had sacrificed for me to get a good education only for me to drop out because I was going blind. I also thought about my very visual course, and I wondered how all this was going to work if I couldn't even see. I was so stressed out, to say the least," she said in a previous interview.

Additional information by Fay Ngina