Mudavadi warns artificial intelligence is fueling rising terrorism threats in Kenya

Kenya’s Mudavadi warns AI is reshaping the terror threat. The question is: Are we ready?

The warning from New York

On the sidelines of the UN General Assembly in New York, Kenya’s Prime Cabinet Secretary and Foreign Minister Musalia Mudavadi offered a stark message: artificial intelligence is no longer a distant technology story. It’s a security story—and a fast-moving one. “AI tools could be used to generate propaganda, manipulate information through deepfakes, automate recruitment messaging, or support cyber-enabled crimes such as phishing and financial fraud,” he said after meeting Natalia Gherman, the head of the UN’s Counter-Terrorism Executive Directorate (CTED).

Mudavadi’s words carry weight in a country that has lived through the menace of Al-Shabaab and small, lethal cells exploiting porous borders and digital platforms. He spoke of a landscape where cross-border raids, improvised explosive devices and targeted killings take place in parallel with shadowy online recruitment pipelines that pull at Kenya’s youth. That online pull, he warned, is evolving as quickly as technology will allow.

Why AI changes the playbook

At first glance, AI might seem far removed from the dusty border towns or the bustling matatu stages of Nairobi. But the technology’s utility is precisely in its reach. Generative tools make it easier to craft slick narratives at scale. Deepfake audio can imitate trusted voices. Bots can flood a conversation long before fact-checkers can catch up. Financial frauds can piggyback on mobile money habits. None of this is hypothetical; it mirrors patterns investigators in Europe, the Middle East and Southeast Asia are already tracking.

Across regions, counterterrorism agencies and watchdogs have catalogued the same traits: speed, camouflage and low cost. It doesn’t take a full laboratory to create a convincing fake video or a thousand tailored messages anymore—just a laptop, some time and software that’s rapidly becoming commoditized. In this sense, Mudavadi’s warning is less about “new” threats and more about the acceleration of old ones.

• Propaganda at scale: AI can craft messages tailored to local dialects and grievances.
• Deception: Deepfakes blur lines between truth and rumor, especially during crises.
• Automation: Chatbots and scripts can sustain recruitment conversations 24/7.
• Cyber-enabled crime: Phishing, identity scams and laundering schemes can finance operations.

Each of these risks interacts with Kenya’s particular vulnerabilities and strengths: one of Africa’s most connected mobile markets, a vibrant social media culture and an economy that increasingly runs on digital rails. The same digital tools that power mobile payments and online marketplaces can, in the wrong hands, be repurposed.

Kenya’s layered response—and its limits

Mudavadi outlined a multi-dimensional approach rooted in law, boots on the ground and partnerships. Kenya’s Prevention of Terrorism Act underpins a constellation of specialized units, including the Anti-Terrorism Police Unit, while intelligence-led surveillance tries to blunt cross-border infiltration. The National Strategy to Counter Violent Extremism (NSCVE) delegates prevention and rehabilitation to county forums, a nod to the reality that deradicalization is hyper-local work.

Regionally, Kenya remains enmeshed in the security frameworks of IGAD and the African Union and in maritime cooperation through the Djibouti Code of Conduct. Investment has flowed into counter-IED skills, cybersecurity and intelligence-sharing with partners abroad. Mudavadi publicly thanked CTED for supporting those efforts, calling for more technology transfer, steadier financing and greater inclusion of African perspectives in how global counterterrorism priorities get set.

That last point is crucial. In practice, “tech transfer” in counterterrorism means more than shipping software licenses. It implies training analysts, equipping labs, building responsible data-sharing agreements and ensuring that small county-level teams can act on intelligence. The next evolution will also require modernizing legal tools—keeping pace with what constitutes evidence when a video can be faked and a voice can be cloned.

A region under pressure, a world in flux

Kenya’s threat picture is best understood in context. Somalia’s fragility continues to create space for Al-Shabaab. Fighters move across the Horn of Africa along trade routes that predate modern borders, and diaspora networks connect these flows to online spaces. Mudavadi pointed to the movement of foreign terrorist fighters as an aggravating factor—a trend that echoes what security services have reported from North Africa to Central Asia.

Globally, governments are scrambling to get ahead of synthetic media. Election authorities from India to Slovakia have grappled with deepfake audio leaks. European agencies have warned about generative AI’s capacity to flood platforms with false narratives during crises. For countries like Kenya, which prepare for the next election even as they face security threats, the overlap between disinformation, social cohesion and physical safety is no longer theoretical.

Homefront realities: youth, opportunity and the attention economy

Kenya’s greatest strength—its young, tech-savvy population—is also a vector of risk when pathways to opportunity are uneven. Scroll any Nairobi timeline and you’ll see both the optimism of a digital entrepreneur class and the hustle of young people searching for their foothold. Recruiters know this and tailor messages to grievances both real and perceived. The addition of AI means those messages can mimic friends, local leaders, even parents. In the everyday din of WhatsApp groups and TikTok trends, the difference between the authentic and the artificial can be hard to spot.

How should the state respond without drowning out legitimate speech? Mudavadi suggested one clue: start early. “Even in education, there is a need to introduce basic awareness from an early stage,” he said. Digital literacy—how to verify sources, spot manipulated media and report scams—belongs in the same curriculum that teaches road safety and civic duty. The private sector has a role too, especially in a country where mobile money is woven into daily life and where fraudsters innovate almost as quickly as fintech firms.

Why a fresh CTED assessment matters now

CTED last assessed Kenya in 2016. “It is about time to conduct an assessment for Kenya. ICT is a useful tool in counter-terrorism, but in the hands of terrorists, it can be weaponized,” Gherman said, signaling readiness to undertake a new review if Nairobi agrees. Mudavadi welcomed the move, noting that law and policy must evolve with the technology.

What would success look like? A thorough assessment could help Kenya benchmark its capabilities against emerging AI threats, identify gaps in digital forensics and cyber investigations, and bolster cross-border protocols that keep pace with encrypted platforms. Just as important, it could elevate East African insights into global debates that too often default to Euro-American assumptions about infrastructure, language and law.

The balance to strike

Kenya’s security story has always been about balance: between vigilance and openness, between free expression and the need to stop those who would harm civilians, between safeguarding innovation and preventing abuse. AI doesn’t change those fundamentals, but it tightens the timeline and raises the stakes. For policymakers, the test is whether frameworks designed in an era of forums and flyers can stretch to an era of synthetic speech and stealthy scripts. For families, educators and faith leaders, the test is whether a community’s first line of defense can be upgraded for a digital generation.

It is worth asking: What safeguards—ethical, legal, educational—do we need so that the same tools that help a student in Eldoret finish a homework assignment don’t fuel a scam that pays for an attack? And who gets to set the standards for those tools, from Nairobi to New York?

Mudavadi’s answer, at least in part, is partnership. With CTED poised to return for a deeper look, the opportunity is there to bring Kenya’s experience—hard-earned, at great cost—into a global conversation that needs more voices from the front lines. The urgency is clear. So is the chance to get ahead of a threat that moves at the speed of code.

By Ali Musa
Axadle Times international–Monitoring.