Raha Fest Organizers apologizes over Chaos at Shenseea concert at Uhuru Gardens

Raha Fest organizers have issued a statement apologizing for the chaos that rocked their 31^st of December concert headlined by Shenseea and Alikiba.

In their statement, Organizers called for a soul-searching for the growing trend of ‘occupying’ events, where some Kenyans feel entitled to attend an event they didn’t pay for.

They went on to highlight the success of Raha December before last night’s events that forced Shenseea to end her performance prematurely.

Shenseea was whisked away by her security after performing for only seven minutes while Alikiba was forced to cut short his performance at some point before returning due to heavy teargas in the air.

Here is the statement by Raha Fest Organizers

We will start by thanking our Raha family for the support showed us in 2024, the birth of our amazing platform, created to ensure Kenyans enjoy world class festival, concert and entertainment experiences comparable to anywhere in the world.

We write this, admitting that Raha Fest of 31st December 2024 might be our last event in Kenya, but we must state things as they are.

Raha Fam, we upheld our part of the bargain, delivered on all promised (Entertainment & Experiences), but a section of Kenyans failed us.

When we announced Raha December in Kenya, we did it believing that Kenyans deserved the best holiday experiences, as found, and acclaimed, in South Africa, Ghana, Nigeria, and other countries with such admirable holiday experiences. We set out to provide Kenyans with the best experiences, to help end the year on a high and put Kenya and Kenyans on the entertainment map.

As a brand, we have never compromised on standards. Our first Raha Fest in March 2024, which had Davido and King Promise as headliners, set the standard on what festivals should be in Kenya. We proceeded to organize other events in the same year; Raha Rave (headlined by Ruger), Ayra Starr’s live-streamed event, Raha Pull-up (headlined by Daliwonga), leading to a 4-day Raha December program. At all these events, we never compromised on standards, despite the immense challenges of organizing these events in Kenya.

Our Raha December calendar had many headliners on different days. Ya Levis headlined Raha Rave, which took place at Masshouse, and was successful. At the first day of Raha Fest, headlined by Bnxn (formerly known as Buju), we showed Kenyans how smooth and professionally managed events of such magnitude can and should be. This, we repeated on the last day of Raha December, on the 31st, headlined by Shenseea, until a group of people (some of us Kenyans) failed us.

As has become customary in recent times, we have observed a growing trend of some Kenyans exhibiting unhealthy and deeply worrying entitlement towards events. They believe they should not buy tickets to events and are entitled and deliberately willing to “occupy” events. This trend is disappointing, regretful, and retrogressive. This behavior poses immense danger for all, especially people who have spent their hard-earned money to pay for these events. This entitlement poses immense danger to the artists, who must perform in a safe and secure environment, potentially seeing Kenya as an unsafe environment for them. This entitlement poses immense danger to organizers, security personnel, vendors, sponsors, investors, to name a few.

Unfortunately, such behavior if met by force, by the security personnel, will quickly earn the sympathies of the majority. This dilemma of how to deal with such unruly behavior creates further risks for all and was fully the crux of the matter on December 31st, 2024 (into 1st of January 2025). Our security personnel did not fail us, our security plan did not fail us, our security support did not fail us, these unruly (occupying) Kenyans failed us. The growing entitlement of a section of Kenya failed us, and there are no winners – we are all worse off for it.

We call for soul-searching at this point, what more can event organizers do in Kenya? What more could we have done in the dilemma? What security lapses on our part were present, with unpaying individuals attacking the gates, forcing down barriers, attacking our staff, destroying property, and violating our security protocols at every opportunity.

We are grateful to all our sponsors, partners, vendors, security personnel and everyone who worked hard to make Raha December a success still. We genuinely apologize to all those whose Raha experience was affected and made unpalatable on the last day of Raha December, our Raha Fam, our Artists, and all working team and the security personnel. We set out to provide an excellent experience for you, your friends and family. However, some of us Kenyans failed us.

We hope 2025 will be a year of course correction for the Kenya entertainment industry. God bless the people and the Republic of Kenya.

Yours sincerely,

The Raha Team.