The politics behind Kenya's Building Bridges Initiative (BBI): Vindu Vichenjanga or sound and fury, signifying nothing?

On 9 March 2018, Kenya's president Uhuru Kenyatta and opposition leader Raila Odinga shook hands in a symbolic gesture that ended months of tensions following the disputed election in 2017 that gave Kenyatta a second term. Popularised as the handshake, the agreement has caused major rifts within the ruling party since it ushered in the Building Bridges Initiative (BBI). Those allied to Deputy President William Ruto accuse Odinga of hijacking Jubilee for political interests, while proponents of the handshake and the BBI fault Ruto's allies for curtailing Kenyatta's initiative to unite Kenyans. This commentary discusses the potential implications of the BBI for the 2022 elections and the principal-agent problem surrounding the initiative, arguing that BBI's stability as a political settlement rests on a shaky foundation. I develop these arguments by assessing Kenya's political history, complemented by the BBI report and recent media reports about the initiative.