Shifting Agency: A Critical Discourse Analysis of Kenya’s Evolving Media Coverage of the Belt and Road Initiative (2013–2024)

Although African countries hold a significant position in the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) landscape, limited research has explored how these countries perceive this global initiative. Employing corpus-based critical discourse analysis, we investigate how Kenya’s leading newspaper, the Daily Nation , has constructed and negotiated BRI narratives from 2013 to 2024. A diachronic analysis of keywords shows a shift in media focus from infrastructure and trade to broader issues such as debt, governance transparency, and environmental sustainability. Collocate analysis further reveals a perceptual transition from passive acknowledgment to more active and selective engagement, reflecting Kenya’s increasing strategic agency. It challenges binary portrayals of African countries as passive beneficiaries or victims, revealing how Kenya exercises agency within the BRI framework in the face of multilayered and asymmetric structures. It also contributes by addressing the underexplored diversity of both the forms and actors of African agency.