Kenyan Christian doomsday cults (umbrella, Mackenzie tragedy)

Kenya's regulatory environment has long permitted unregistered evangelical churches with minimal oversight, producing periodic doomsday-cult tragedies (the 2017 Migori starvation case; the 2008 Kayole 'New Jerusalem' incident). The watershed case is Paul Nthenge Mackenzie's Good News International Ministry, founded 2003 in Malindi. Mackenzie initially preached against secular education and government identification; from 2019 onwards he relocated followers to Shakahola Forest in Kilifi County and progressively commanded a series of escalating fasts — first of children, then women, then men — that he taught would deliver believers to Jesus before the End Times. Police acted on a March 2023 informant report; exhumation work through 2023–2024 has produced 429 confirmed bodies and counting, including 191 children. Mackenzie, his wife Rhoda, and 94 co-accused face murder, manslaughter, terrorism, and child-cruelty charges in concurrent trials at Mombasa and Tononoka courts. Kenyan government has subsequently moved to register and regulate religious organisations more stringently; the 2024 Religious Organisations Bill is in part a Shakahola response. Adjacent cases — the Atemi Pentecostal poisoning (Migori, 2018) and ongoing Magnificent Meal Movement and Republic of God activities — sit alongside Mackenzie under this umbrella.