A journey through happenings of the year that was

 Chairperson of Indian conglomerate Adani Group, Gautam Adani addresses a gathering during the inaugural session of Vibrant Gujarat Global Summit 2024 in Gandhinagar on January 10, 2024. [FILE,Standard]

A: Adani deals. Nothing dominated public discourse in Kenya in the final quarter of the year like government deals with India’s Adani Group, owned by Gautam Adani, one of the richest men in Asia. Two deals – one to run Jomo Kenyatta International Airport and another, a public-private partnership with the Ministry of Energy for the firm to operate Ketraco power lines infrastructure – created an uproar after a series of whistleblower revelations. The deals were eventually cancelled by President William Ruto in late November, a day after Adani had been indicted for fraud in the US

B: Broad-based government. Following rampant anti-government protests that culminated in an unprecedented breach of Parliament in June, President Ruto dismissed his Cabinet. In a bid to appease the Opposition, and with the belief that this would quell popular dissent, the President appointed several members from the ODM party into government as Cabinet Secretaries. In an interesting twist of events, they have since been seen to actively echo pro-government rhetoric, much to the chagrin of Kenyans, supporting the same policies they once bitterly opposed.

C: Chief of Defence Forces. On April 188, a military helicopter crashed in Sindar, Elgeyo Marakwet County, killing the Chief of Kenya Defence Forces, Gen Francis Omondi Ogolla, who had been on a mission to reopen schools that had been closed due to banditry. He died alongside nine other military personnel, with two others injured. The General’s death generated considerable national furore, with some suggesting that the crash resembled a haphazardly executed assassination. Serious questions were subsequently raised about the helicopter, one of six Bell UH-1H Huey II helicopters acquired by the army from the US in 2016, and the safety of these helicopters

D: Donald Trump. The now US President-elect, Donald Trump, was found guilty of 34 felony counts and convicted early in the year. As his woes worsened, he was shot at and injured during a campaign rally in July. However, Trump staged a phenomenal comeback to the presidency, winning the top seat in November. In doing so, he became the second US president ever – after Grover Cleveland – to return to power after a hiatus.

E: Eclipse. A total solar eclipse swept across North America, passing over Mexico, the United States, and Canada on April 8, 2024. Dubbed ‘’The Great North American Eclipse’, it was the only solar eclipse in the 21st century with totality visible from all three of the aforementioned countries. For scientists, this was a remarkable event, worth noting in their journals for 2024. The next total eclipse of similar width is expected to take place on August 12, 2045, although several other regions will experience solar eclipses of varying degrees before then.

F: Floods. Between April and May, torrential rainfall hit Kenya and Tanzania, leaving a trail of destruction across both countries. ReliefWeb estimated that 267 people were killed in Kenya by the end of April, and 188 were injured. Seventy five went missing, while 281,835 people (56,367 families) were displaced. On  April 29, a railway embankment collapsed near Mai Mahiu, sending down a river that claimed 61 lives and flattened entire homesteads. Ill-equipped disaster response mechanisms were noted as one of the many reasons for the significant losses.

G: Gaza war: The armed conflict between Israel and Palestine, which started on October 7, 2023, raged on throughout the year. Several institutions, including the Gaza Health Ministry, reported total casualties of more than 53,000 (at the time of going to press). Calls for a ceasefire have repeatedly borne no fruit, with regular, intermittent bombardments on the Gaza Strip, whose amenities have increasingly been targeted by Israel and face total destruction.

H: Harris’ bid. After relentless calls from powerful quarters, 82-year-old US President Joe Biden stepped down from the presidential race, leaving the ticket to, and endorsing, his vice president Kamala Harris. At the time of his exit, Biden was the oldest president in US history.

I: Iran President. In another unfortunate air accident, on May 19, Iranian President Ebrahim Raisi, who had served in his position for three years, died. He was known as the ‘Butcher of Tehran’ due to his involvement in the 1998 execution of thousands of political prisoners and was largely a polarising figure as president.

J: Jobs in Germany. President Ruto announced that Kenya and Germany had reached an agreement in which 250,000 skilled and semi-skilled workers would be sent to Germany. Berlin refuted claims about the numbers, stating that they would be based on the skill set of eligible Kenyans and available opportunities. Heated online debates followed, with opponents of the move being highly critical of the government’s drive to export labour. However, the first batch of Kenyan drivers arrived in Germany in September.

K: Keir Starmer. The United Kingdom got its sixth prime minister in eight years – a period that began with David Cameron stepping down after losing the Brexit vote in June 2016 – when Prime Minister Rishi Sunak lost the General Election in July, after less than two years in office. Keir Starmer had been, until then, the leader of the opposition. His victory ended 14 years of Conservative Party governance

L: Leadership. There has been a popular sentiment that Kenyans are over-represented in the two levels of government. But 2024 shows real, serious gaps in leadership, with politicians flip-flopping- barely standing for anything, changing their beliefs sporadically and supporting conflicting ideologies depending on the coalitions that have been developing in the country.

M: Mexico. Former Mayor and Head of Government of Mexico City, Claudia Sheinbaum Pardo, became the 66th president of Mexico in October in what was a landslide victory. In doing so, she also became the first woman to hold the office. She replaced the centre-left Andrés Manuel López Obrador.

N: Namibia. In the south of Africa, Namibians elected Ndemupelila Netumbo Nandi-Ndaitwah as the fifth president and the first female president. The 72-year-old is a woman of many firsts; she served as the country’s third vice president from February 2024 and, in that capacity, was also the first woman. Namibia became one of very few African countries to elect a female president.

O:Opposition politician Alexei Navalny dies. Russia has been in the headlines for a long time, and for a number of issues, chief among them its attack on Ukraine. Another key issue was the death of Navalny, one of Vladimir Putin’s fiercest critics, who founded the Anti-Corruption Foundation in 2011 to investigate – with the aim of combating – corruption in Russia. He was poisoned in 2020, jailed in 2021, and died in 2024. The prison service stated that he lost consciousness shortly before his death.

P: President Biden pardons Hunter. Despite promising not to, US President Joe Biden on  December 1 ‘’fully and unconditionally’’ pardoned his son, Hunter. Biden had promised not even to commute his son’s sentence. Hunter faced sentencing for federal tax and gun convictions, and his father’s decision to pardon him was met with significant discontent, with AP News reporting that only about two in 10 Americans approved of the decision. The Hunter issue was used by Republicans to campaign against his father.

Q: Queen Margrethe II.  After serving for 52 years and becoming the second-longest serving Danish monarch ever, Queen Margrethe abdicated at the age of 84, paving the way for her son, Crown Prince Frederik, 55, to take the top seat. Her story has many similarities with that of Queen Elizabeth II, who also inherited her seat from her father, King George VI, and although she exited by death, left it to her son, King Charles III.

R: Riggy G’s woes.  It has been a topsy-turvy year for Rigathi Gachagua, the self-declared ‘Truthful Man’, who was Kenya’s second Deputy President. Gachagua endured an unremarkable year in 2024, facing accusations of attempting to sabotage his boss, the president, and was subsequently impeached. The National Assembly voted overwhelmingly to impeach him, with 282 votes to 44, and the Senate, which required a two-thirds majority to remove Gachagua, confirmed his impeachment.

S: Syria civil war. Bashar al-Assad, who had been the President of Syria since 2000, was ousted on December 8, with rebel troops marching into Damascus. It had seemed impossible to remove the autocratic Assad family, which had been in power for six decades and had overseen intermittent bouts of civil war. Assad quickly fled to Moscow to seek political asylum from the Russian government.

T: Tebogo. Star sprinter Letsile ‘Schoolboy’ Tebogo won a gold medal in the 200m race at the 2024 Summer Olympics in Paris, France, marking a first for Botswana. He set an African record of 19.46 seconds in the event. In doing so, the sprinter established himself as one of the finest short-distance runners in the world.

U: Uganda’s Kizza Besigye. After recurrent cases of abductions in the city and calls for President Ruto to take action, Uganda’s opposition leader Kizza Besigye was arrested by security forces in Nairobi on November 20 and ferried to Uganda. Despite initial claims by Kenya’s government of its non-involvement in his capture, Uganda confirmed it had enlisted the support of Kenya to arrest Besigye, with the aim of charging him in a Kampala court. Besigye has been a long-time opponent and critic of long-serving Ugandan President Yoweri Museveni.”

V: Vladimir wins election. Yet again, Russia’s President Vladimir Putin won a fifth term with an unprecedented 88 per cent of the vote in post-Soviet Russia and was inaugurated on May 7. Putin has been either Prime Minister or President since 2000. Since February 2022, Russia has been engaged in a sustained invasion of Ukraine, from which he has refused to back down.

W- Wikileaks’ Assange released. Julian Assange, an editor and activist, was arrested in April 2019 and sentenced to 50 weeks in jail for breaching earlier bail conditions. He was then taken to London’s maximum-security Belmarsh prison. Assange, who founded WikiLeaks in 2006, had the first arrest warrants issued against him in 2010 and was arrested and granted bail the same year. In 2019, a federal grand jury in the US indicted him on 17 new alleged violations of the Espionage Act. He was released from jail on bail on June 24, then pleaded guilty to one count of breaching the Espionage Act soon after and was allowed to return home to Australia.

X: X ban lifted in Brazil. Within six weeks, between August and October, a ban on X was introduced and then quashed, as Elon Musk’s platform had been accused of failing to comply with laws in Brazil. Fines were to be paid and a local representative appointed, and after weeks of defiance, X was deemed to have complied, leading a Supreme Court judge to lift the ban in the first week of October.

Y:Your year? Do you remember starting the year holding onto the hope that this would be your year? Writing down resolutions? Did you make a conscious effort to ensure you achieved what you wanted? Have you reflected on what went right and should therefore be upheld, and what went wrong and needs to change? We often say that every year is our year. Does that include 2024?”

Z: Zambia’s Lungu barred from re-election. Zambia’s Constitutional Court barred former President Edgar Lungu from vying again in 2026. Lungu became president in 2015 after President Michael Sata died in office in October 2014. He has claimed that he did not complete a full term and should be allowed to start a fresh one.

Happy New Year 2025!!