Welcome to the “Silicon Savannah,” where the only thing faster than the 5G connection is the speed at which your “friends” will record you naked and sell your dignity for a few thousand shillings. We keep hearing about the Digital Superhighway, but for women like Sylvia, it’s a dark alley where a bottle of expensive liquor and a “view once” WhatsApp video are the weapons of choice. The report handed to President Ruto talks about “emerging threats,” but let’s be real - this isn’t emerging; it’s already here, it’s thriving, and it’s being fed by a system that finds it easier to shame a victim than to charge a criminal.

If you think reporting these “digital crimes” to the police will bring you peace, you’ve clearly been living in a TikTok filter. In this city, the Gender Desk is often just a front-row seat for officers to demand to see your nudes “as evidence” while laughing at your misfortune. One young woman went to Buruburu Police Station after her ex-boyfriend leaked her photos over a Sh3,500 debt. Instead of an arrest, she got a lecture on why she sent the photos in the first place and a demand for “fuel money.” In Nairobi, justice isn’t a right; it’s a commodity with a fluctuating price tag.

The cruelty of the “system” is more efficient than any hacker. When the DCI finally “intervened” for one survivor, they didn’t catch the guy; they just confiscated the victim’s phone for six months. For a domestic worker who relies on that phone to find cleaning and laundry jobs, that’s a death sentence for her livelihood. Then comes the kicker: a Sh10,000 demand to “move the case.” It’s a classic Nairobi hustle - the police hold your life hostage and then ask you to pay the ransom while the perpetrator walks free to delete the evidence at his leisure.

It doesn’t matter if you’re a sex worker in Utawala or a politician in Meru; the digital hitmen will find you. Sex workers like Hellen are tracked via hidden cameras and stalked across the city, only to be chased away from police stations with insults. Meanwhile, women in politics are silenced by coordinated smear campaigns that label them “immoral” faster than a retweet can spread. The script is always the same: weaponize a woman’s body, put it on Telegram, and watch the “moral” public tear her apart while the law looks the other way.

This digital violence is just the latest version of an old Kenyan story - one where the vulnerable are preyed upon and the authorities are just another group of predators looking for a cut. It’s a landscape as treacherous as the one faced by those caught in the Major Security Crackdown at JKIA Leads to Arrest of Human Traffickers and Fraudsters, where the line between the criminals and the “system” is thinner than a screen protector. Until the “Gender Desks” stop asking for bribes and start asking for warrants, the Digital Superhighway will remain a playground for the Digital Judas.