G20 Must Deliver Economic Justice for All: FIA Kenya Demands a People-First Global Agenda
PHOTO: FIA Kenya National Coordinator, Brenda Osoro
NAIROBI, Kenya, Nov 13 – Fight Inequality Alliance Kenya (FIA Kenya) has issued a powerful call to action, urging world leaders who will be meeting at the upcoming G20 Summit in South Africa to fundamentally shift their priorities and place people and planet before profits.
The declaration highlights the urgent need for a new global economic paradigm that centers on social equity and environmental sustainability rather than purely on financial gain.
Bringing together a diverse coalition of Kenyan civil society, grassroots movements, and community organizations, the Alliance is strongly advocating for global and national leaders to adopt bold and transformative steps to achieve economic justice for all moving away from systems that benefit only the privileged few.
The G20 continues to operate within an economic framework that deepens inequality rather than confronting it. The current state of inequality in Kenya is a crisis fuelled by unjust global policies and weak domestic accountability.
Although Kenya is seen as one of Africa’s emerging economies, the benefits of growth remain highly unequal.
According to the Kenya National Bureau of Statistics, about 36% of Kenyans live below the national poverty line, while millions face unstable employment, rising living costs, and a lack of access to basic services.
Meanwhile, the country’s wealth is increasingly concentrated among a small elite. Kenya’s public debt stands at KSh 11.81 trillion, approximately 67.8% of GDP, meaning that more than half of every shilling collected goes to creditors, not to Kenyan families.
The government now spends more on debt repayment than on any single social sector, Kenya’s inequality crisis is not merely a domestic problem but the result of a global order that consistently favours the few.
The global north, home to less than a fifth of the world’s population, controls the vast majority of its wealth this imbalance is maintained through G20 policies that allow multinational corporations to exploit tax loopholes and shift profits abroad while ordinary citizens bear the heaviest tax burden.
Additionally, International lenders, have continued to push austerity measures, cutting subsidies, freezing public hiring, and privatizing essential services in the name of efficiency.
“These measures have only worsened poverty and inequality Turning inward, Kenya’s leaders must also take responsibility for domestic policy choices that entrench inequality”.
“The Kenyan government to stop managing poverty and instead focus on tackling inequality through progressive taxation, social protection, and investment in services that uplift communities”.
FIA Kenya outlines five key proposals to tackle inequality at both global and national levels, This includes; A comprehensive public debt audit and an African debt negotiation platform, ensuring that no country spends more on lenders than on citizens; progressive taxation on wealth and luxury goods, and a global UN tax convention to ensure corporations pay where they operate; prioritization and expansion of public services; reform of corporate tax incentives to benefit small enterprises and citizen participation in budget and debt decisions so that democracy does not end at the ballot.
The Alliance emphasizes that inequality is a global crisis rooted in policy choices that can be undone with political will, courage, and solidarity, It calls on the G20 to move beyond talk and embrace transformative reforms that centre human dignity and economic fairness.
