Kenyan entrepreneur and content creator Cashmeer Sayyid has issued an official apology to guests who believed they were attending her wedding, revealing that the elaborate ceremony was in fact a bold marketing campaign.
The event was meticulously designed to launch her educational venture, the Bollington Institute.
“It starts with a choice, a choice to put your kids through school — not a wedding dress, but a school uniform.
Let’s end child marriage,” she wrote following the institute’s unveiling.
On Tuesday, following public uproar, the trained software engineer said that the ploy was intended to shed light on the issue of underage marriages and child exploitation.
“Many of my guests felt cheated, but this was a symbolic marriage for me,” she said. “It was pushing the agenda of underage marriage.”
She also said that, as a storyteller, she was trying to be creative in conveying that message. People attending her wedding believed she was marrying a man from Congo, referred to as Mkongo.
“I chose Mkongo to build a story and kill two birds with one stone,” Cashmeer explained, referring to both child slavery in Congo and child exploitation in Maai Mahiu as exposed recently by BBC Africa.
Child exploitation is a persistent issue in Kenya
Despite the backlash caused by the marketing campaign, child marriages and sexual exploitation remain a stark reality in Kenya. Contrary to the legal protections allowed in Kenyan law, many girls are still forced into unions before adulthood.
Nationally, 23% of girls are married before age 18, including 4% before turning 15. This troubling figure has only modestly declined from 26.4% in 2008 to the current rate, according to UNICEF.
Regionally, in the Coast region, child marriage affects an estimated 41% of girls, second only to the North Eastern region. These coastal areas often face compounded vulnerabilities: poverty, limited educational opportunities, and entrenched cultural practices such as FGM that act as gateways to early marriage.
“Behind closed doors, in the shadows of our towns, children are being robbed of their innocence,” Cashmeer said before her marketing campaign. “The child sex trade is real, and it’s destroying lives. We cannot stay silent while our daughters are sold.”
