A young Kenyan who is part of the country’s burgeoning tech society has allegedly been taken away by armed men. The techie who is known on X as OakSupreme, real name JohnFrank Githiaka Ngemi, was taken while at the Kahawa Sukari area in the outskirts of Nairobi.
Oaksupreme has been part of the tech community in the country that has been discussing ways to help Kenyans practice their democratic rights using technology.
Together with other Kenyans, Oaksupreme is involved with the Friends of The People community on GitHub. The community’s bio states, “We are a collective unified by a call. We build and maintain public tools for people to exercise their rights and freedom.” The techies are building open source code to keep Kenyan politicians accountable.
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The community has come together to discuss initiatives such as, a Django server that manages the verification of constituents, publishing of representative information, and signing of document to recall elected officials. Setting up the repository has just been part of many tech innovations Kenyans have used in the ongoing Finance Bill 2024 protests across the country.
Alarmingly, Oaksupreme isn’t the first person to be abducted. Content creators using digital platforms to express themselves have been picked up and later released. Billy Simani (crazynairobian), medical doctor Austin Omondi (japrado), and comedian Eric Omondi all were abducted and released by what was confirmed to be state agents.
Another Kenyan from the tech ecosystem, data scientist Shadrack Kiprono, was abducted in South B, Nairobi by masked men. His whereabouts are still unknown.
Further, Kenyans on social media are faced with the challenge of suppressed Hashtags. This has especially been prevalent on X.
