Mwenje urges shift in campaign strategies to target youth on social media
By Emmanuel Rono, April 22, 2026Embakasi West Member of Parliament Mark Mwenje has called for a rethink of political campaign strategies, urging leaders to adapt to the changing communication landscape driven by the rise of new social media platforms.
Speaking during a morning talk show with a local station on Wednesday, April 22, 2026, Mwenje noted that traditional methods of campaigning are no longer sufficient to effectively reach younger voters, who dominate online spaces.
The lawmaker said the TikTok generation and Twitter generation require a more direct and digitally integrated approach.
“Now it’s different. You want to mobilise people to come out and register, you need to create small pressure groups that are out there moving around. That is why it is so good to have the IEBC, these guys who are moving around within the constituency. It’s not just about going to a church, it’s about going to that car wash where there are 20 or so youths who are seated,” Mwenje stated.
Effective use of new media
He stated that the emergence of new social media platforms means that messaging must be crafted to reach young people in the spaces they actually inhabit.
Mwenje noted that he can no longer campaign the way his father did in previous decades.
“With the new social media space and the X platforms and all that, you now have to campaign differently. Now I can’t campaign the way my father campaigned in the ’90s. I have to do it in certain spaces that didn’t exist, and people might take them for granted,” Mwenje said.
“Messages need to be crafted in a way that reaches young people and helps them understand what is in it for them.”
Niko Kadi campaign
This comes following the recent success of the Niko Kadi challenge, where the youths successfully used the online space to campaign for the mass voter registration.
Taking it to his X handle on Saturday, April 18, 2026, Ademba condemned the general attitude of people wanting to vote in their rural residences, even though they live and work in the cities. He observed that most of these people hardly get to travel upcountry during elections, and most of them do not know the candidates who are running in those places.
The Tuko Kadi campaign still goes on to mobilise the youth throughout the land and motivate them to enrol as voters, change their voting points where needed and participate actively in the governance.