Hamas on Friday announced the names of three hostages — including an American citizen — whom it said it would release this weekend as part of its cease-fire with Israel to end the war in Gaza, an agreement that has now held for nearly two weeks.

Abu Obeida, the spokesman for the group’s armed wing, named the three as Yarden Bibas, 35, Ofer Kalderon, 54, and Keith Siegel, 65, an American-Israeli. Israel is slated to release about 90 Palestinian prisoners this weekend in exchange for the three men, according to a Hamas-linked prisoners’ information center.

The three were abducted during the Oct. 7, 2023, surprise attack on Israel when Hamas and its allies killed roughly 1,200 people, mostly civilians, and took about 250 hostage, according to the Israeli authorities, setting off the war in Gaza. Israel’s subsequent military campaign against Hamas in Gaza has lasted for over a year and killed more than 45,000 people, according to local health officials.

In a multiphase cease-fire deal that Israel and Hamas agreed to this month, Hamas pledged to free at least 33 of the 97 remaining hostages over the first six weeks in exchange for over 1,500 Palestinians jailed by Israel.

About 10 Israeli captives have been freed so far, in addition to five Thai workers who were taken hostage in the October 2023 attack while working in Israeli villages near the Gaza border. Israel has released more than 300 Palestinian prisoners, including many who were serving life sentences for involvement in deadly attacks against Israelis.

For many Israelis, the abduction of Mr. Bibas’s family has become emblematic of the cruelty of the Hamas-led attack. Militants also abducted his wife, Shiri Bibas, and their two children, Ariel, who was 4, and Kfir, who was 9 months old.

Hamas later said that Ms. Bibas and the two children had been killed in an Israeli airstrike. Israeli officials have not publicly confirmed that assertion, but have said that they are gravely concerned for the fate of the three captives.

Mr. Siegel was taken hostage from his home in Kfar Aza, a kibbutz close to the Gaza border. His wife, Aviva Siegel, was held captive with him until late November 2023, when she was one of about 105 hostages released as part of a weeklong cease-fire deal.

Shir Siegel, his daughter, shared a video on Instagram showing her embracing her mother after receiving the news on Friday. “Dad’s coming back, Dad’s on the list,” Aviva Siegel says, choking up.

Mr. Kalderon, a French-Israeli dual citizen, was taken captive when Palestinian militants raided his hometown, Nir Oz. His two children, Erez and Sahar, were freed in the November 2023 truce.

Shortly after her release, Sahar described being afraid of her Hamas captors — and also of being killed in Israel’s relentless aerial bombardment of Gaza. She was 16 at the time.

“What about my father, who has been left behind?” she told The New York Times. “I ask of everyone who sees this: Please, stop this war; get all the hostages out.”

Patrick Kingsley contributed reporting.

Richard Grenell, President Trump’s envoy for special missions, said on social media that he was flying home from Venezuela with six American detainees on Friday, after meeting with the country’s president.

There were at least nine people with U.S. citizenship or residency detained in Venezuela, according to Venezuelan officials. The government had accused some of them of plotting to kill the country’s president, Nicolás Maduro.

“Just been informed that we are bringing six hostages home from Venezuela,” Mr. Trump said on social media. “Thank you to Ric Grenell and my entire staff. Great job!”

The United States has no diplomatic presence in Venezuela, and the U.S. government was not even sure where its citizens were being held, a State Department representative said this month.

Relatives of three detained U.S. citizens said they had gotten very little information from the American government and had not heard from their loved ones for months since they had disappeared.

David Estrella, 64, who worked in quality control for pharmaceutical companies in New Jersey, was among those released, according to his family.

“After such horrible moments that we and David have suffered unjustly, we look forward to welcoming him home and taking care of him until he fully recovers and leaves all this unfortunate incident behind him,” said Elvia Macias, Mr. Estrella’s former wife and close friend. He had entered Venezuela from Colombia to visit friends, Ms. Macias said.

Mr. Maduro, an autocrat whose country has seen an extraordinary exodus in recent years, has become increasingly isolated on the global stage, accused of having stolen the last presidential election in July. The United States has recognized the opposition candidate as the legitimate winner.

After the disputed elections, Mr. Maduro started rounding up foreign prisoners, a move that former. U.S. diplomats and analysts said they saw as seeking bargaining chips to use with other nations.

Mr. Trump’s foreign policy team includes many aides who support taking a hard line against Mr. Maduro, and policy experts said the Venezuelan leader most likely feared that Washington would take a tougher stance, including potentially imposing more economic sanctions.

Mr. Maduro, who has spent his entire tenure blaming Venezuela’s economic woes on U.S. imperialism, talked about starting a new era of engagement with the United States in televised remarks on Friday. He did not directly refer to the released Americans.

“We are starting a new beginning of historical relations where what needs to be done will be done and what needs to be rectified will be rectified,” he said. “We love and admire the people of the United States.”

Mr. Maduro also referred to his meeting with Mr. Grenell as “frank, direct, open and positive” and said: “We are not anti-American nor have we ever been anti-American. We are anti-imperialist, which is different.”

But Mauricio Claver-Carone, the U.S. special envoy for Latin America, said in a call with journalists on Friday morning that Mr. Grenell would not make any concessions in exchange for releasing American detainees.

“This is not a quid pro quo,” he said. “It’s not a negotiation in exchange for anything.” He urged the Maduro government to “heed” to Mr. Grenell’s demands “because ultimately there will be consequences otherwise.”

Julie Turkewitz contributed reporting from Santander, Colombia.

Belgium reached an agreement to form a coalition government on Friday, the nation’s monarchy announced, ending seven months of partisan squabbling over deeply unpopular proposed cuts to social spending and other issues. Full details about the agreement were yet to be officially released.

The new government was formed under the stewardship of Bart De Wever, the leader of a conservative Flemish nationalist party, the New Flemish Alliance. The party won elections in June with 17 percent of the vote, the largest share of the contenders, in a win that was a victory over a far-right separatist party.

With Friday’s agreement, Mr. De Wever is poised to become the country’s next prime minister, leading a five-party coalition that has been negotiating with a hard line on migration and cuts to the country’s pension and heath care systems. Mr. De Wever’s party joined forces with the liberal Reformist Movement and the centrist Les Engagés, two Francophone parties, as well as the Flemish socialist party Vooruit (Forward) and the party Christian Democratic and Flemish.

Belgium, whose capital, Brussels, is home to the headquarters of both the European Union and NATO, has a population of just 12 million people and represents only about 3.4 percent of the European Union’s total gross domestic product. But it faces many of the challenges common to European nations, including an aging population that is driving up the cost of its pensions and health care.

Partly because of that, the nation has a relatively large deficit, around 4.6 percent of gross domestic product last year, based on estimates. European Union fiscal rules that went into effect last year have ramped up the pressure to control costs.

If the country does not submit a budget plan to the European Union on time, it risks being placed on a strict four-year adjustment path and could eventually face penalties and fines.

The ultimate deal to form a government is expected to include substantial budget cuts, increased military spending and cuts to some taxes, based on leaks previously reported by news outlets. The agreement’s details had not yet been released as of late Friday night in Belgium, but at least some parties suggested that many popular spending programs had been sustained.

On social media, Maxime Prévot, leader of the centrist coalition party Les Engagés, posted that it was “a reform agreement for the future, which guarantees indexation and ensures the payment of pensions for today and tomorrow.”

A protracted process for forming a government is not new to Belgium; one standoff in 2010 and 2011 set a world record, with the parties taking 541 days to form a coalition.

Usually Belgium’s drawn-out negotiations are attributed to deep divisions between Flanders, Belgium’s Dutch-speaking and more right-leaning northern region, and Wallonia, the nation’s French-speaking and more left-leaning southern part.

But this time, an additional complication slowed the process: the need to rein in the nation’s budget deficit.

Making cuts to pensions and health care is a challenge in many European countries. France’s decision to raise the retirement age to limit spending led to mass protests, and this month the country’s prime minister said he would consider a change in the law.

Belgium has been facing its own version of that problem as it tries to balance treasured social norms with a harsh fiscal reality. In recent weeks, teachers, military personnel and trade unionists have staged strikes and protests against pension-reform proposals that had been leaked to news outlets.

Belgium’s system of automatic wage adjustments to inflation also became a flashpoint in the negotiations. The negotiators looked to curb them to reduce government wage bills and make Belgium more competitive, even as centrist and left-wing parties were concerned about how changes would affect workers. Other issues that caused talks to break down included social benefits, pensions, health care and a proposed capital gains tax.

The agreement must still be approved by party congresses. In its post on Friday confirming that an agreement had been reached, the Belgian monarchy said that the date of the swearing-in of the prime minister and new members of the government would be announced later.

Soon after Islamist rebels overthrew the authoritarian president of Syria, Bashar al-Assad, a hashtag gathered steam on Egyptian social media: “It’s your turn, dictator.”

The message for President Abdel Fattah el-Sisi of Egypt was unmistakable. But he hardly needed the warning.

Since the ouster of Syria’s longtime dictator on Dec. 8, Egyptian leaders have watched events in the Syrian capital, Damascus, with grim-faced vigilance, knowing well that revolutionary fire has a tendency to spread.

Both countries have had a turbulent history since the Arab Spring uprisings that started in late 2010 and spread across the Middle East.

The Syrian revolt culminated almost 14 years later with Mr. al-Assad’s fall. The Egyptian revolution deposed the country’s longtime authoritarian president, Hosni Mubarak, and saw an Islamist political party come to power in the country’s first free elections. Mr. el-Sisi seized power two years later in a military takeover, and he and like-minded leaders in the Persian Gulf and beyond remain wary of Islamist groups gaining any power in the region, as they just did in Syria.

Days after Mr. al-Assad fled Syria for Russia, Egyptian security forces arrested at least 30 Syrian refugees living in Cairo who were spontaneously celebrating his fall, according to the Egyptian Initiative for Personal Rights, a rights group.

The Egyptian authorities also made it harder for Syrians to travel to Egypt in the aftermath of Mr. al-Assad’s overthrow, requiring most to obtain security clearances first.

Mr. el-Sisi has given unusually frequent addresses in recent weeks to defend his record.

“My hands have never been stained with anyone’s blood, and I have never taken anything that wasn’t mine,” he said in December, a week after Mr. al-Assad fell.

In doing so, he seemed to draw a contrast with the deposed Syrian leader while brushing aside his own human rights record, including a massacre by the Egyptian military forces that he led of what rights groups say were at least 817 people protesting Mr. el-Sisi’s takeover of power in 2013.

Since the rebels in Syria seized power, Egypt has arrested or began prosecuting several people considered political opponents, including the director of a prominent rights group, the wife of a detained political cartoonist and a TikTok user who had been posting videos critical of Mr. el-Sisi. Egypt already was holding an estimated tens of thousands of political prisoners, many of them Islamists.

“Two thousand and eleven is only 14 years away,” said Mirette F. Mabrouk, an Egypt expert at the Middle East Institute in Washington, referring to the year of the Egyptian revolution. The Egyptian authorities, she said, “know that things snowball.”

After years of deepening economic misery across Egypt, Mr. el-Sisi was already in an acutely vulnerable position. Any hint that Egyptians could catch Syrians’ revolutionary fervor spells trouble — not because Egyptians want armed revolt, Ms. Mabrouk said, but because it could take very little for their disgruntlement to explode into protest.

The most visible attempt to capitalize on the moment has come from Ahmed al-Mansour, an Egyptian who left the country to fight with Syrian rebels years ago. After Mr. al-Assad’s ouster, he repeatedly ranted against Mr. el-Sisi online from Damascus.

“You’re worth one bullet,” Mr. al-Mansour said of Mr. el-Sisi in a video posted on X. It was viewed 1.5 million times.

The threat sent Egypt’s TV anchors, who often amplify pro-government talking points on their nightly broadcasts, into an uproar. One host, Ahmed Moussa, called on Syria’s new leaders to act.

“They must tell us if they are with what is happening in the targeting of our country or not,” he warned.

Shortly after his tirade in mid-January, the new Syrian authorities arrested Mr. al-Mansour along with several associates. He was detained on his way to a meeting with the country’s interim defense minister, according to a statement from the anti-Sisi movement Mr. al-Mansour founded.

It is unclear whether Egyptian authorities had pushed for his arrest.

Mr. al-Mansour’s group urged the Syrian authorities to release him, saying that the Egyptian people were exercising their rights against Mr. el-Sisi just as Syrians had done against Mr. al-Assad. His current status is unknown.

But even with Mr. al-Mansour silenced for now, other Egyptians are unlikely to stop complaining.

Many have soured on Mr. el-Sisi after years of economic crises, the most recent of which was triggered by the successive shocks of the wars in Ukraine and Gaza. But the problems are also rooted in government mismanagement and overspending, including on grandiose megaprojects.

With Egypt deep in debt and losing revenue, the currency has crashed, some goods have become difficult to find and inflation has soared.

Such hardships have suffocated a population of about 111 million where nearly one in three already lived in poverty, according to official statistics.

Mr. el-Sisi has tried to shield himself from criticism, saying in a recent speech that the country was already in bad financial shape when he took over in 2013 and that Egypt’s rapid population growth had made it difficult to provide for his citizens. But he had spent years boasting of the prosperity he would bring to Egypt — prosperity that never came, even as he inaugurated a costly new capital city complete with a gleaming presidential palace.

“People are seriously discontented, and therefore he’s trying out there to just tamp things down,” Ms. Mabrouk said.

In the beginning, many hailed the president as a hero and savior for using military force to oust the Muslim Brotherhood, the Islamist political party that won the presidency following the 2011 Egyptian revolution but went on to alienate much of the population.

Mr. el-Sisi spent the ensuing years stamping out the Brotherhood in Egypt, viewing it as a threat to his power. Egyptian authorities prosecuted thousands of Brotherhood members and suspected sympathizers, labeling them terrorists, while others have fled the country.

Even weakened, political Islamists remain a popular target for Mr. el-Sisi and his supporters, who frequently invoke the dangers of political Islam.

So it was unsurprising when the Egyptian authorities sounded a note of caution about the lightning rise of Hayat Tahrir al-Sham, the Islamist rebel group that has taken charge in Syria. The group was once affiliated with Al Qaeda but has disavowed its extremist origins.

Egypt may have had little love for Mr. al-Assad, analysts said, but it had come to prefer the brittle stability he represented to the chaos and conflict that surround Egypt in Libya, Sudan and Gaza.

It has therefore approached relations with the new Syria gingerly.

Unlike other Arab countries, Egypt has not yet held high-level meetings with Syrian officials.

Diplomats in Cairo say Egyptian officials have privately urged other governments to remain wary of Syria’s new leadership and not to lift penalties on the country too quickly. They spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to speak publicly.

Egypt’s foreign minister, Badr Abdelatty, has called on regional and international partners to ensure that “Syria does not become a source of regional instability or a haven for terrorist groups.”

Mahmoud Badr, an Egyptian pro-government activist who helped foster the anti-Muslim Brotherhood protest movement that paved the way for Mr. el-Sisi’s ascension, said on X soon after Hayat Tahrir al-Sham swept into Damascus that the group and the Brotherhood were indistinguishable.

“It’s all part of one network and no one can convince us otherwise,” he said, citing widely circulated photos that showed the leader of the Syrian group meeting with a prominent Egyptian member of the Brotherhood.

And though anti-Islamist sentiment remains strong among Egyptians, so does anti-Sisi sentiment.

“It comes at a very bad time for Sisi,” said Broderick McDonald, an associate fellow at Kings College London’s International Center for the Study of Radicalization.

He blocked Facebook, Instagram and Twitter.

He signed a censorship law that led TikTok to disable its functions.

President Vladimir V. Putin has clamped down on free expression in Russia to a degree unseen since the Soviet era. Now he is taking aim at the last Western tech platform barely standing in wartime Russia: YouTube.

Mr. Putin has not formally banned the U.S. video platform that has more than 2.5 billion users worldwide. But the site has angered Russian authorities, who view the platform as an uncontrollable gateway to antiwar content. They have also decried YouTube for removing Russian propaganda channels as well as videos by Russian musicians subject to western sanctions.

So last summer Russian users experienced a significant slowing of YouTube, primarily on desktop internet connections. Internet experts have said the sudden and simultaneous drop-offs in traffic could be explained only by deliberate throttling of the service on the part of Russian authorities.

The purposeful slowing of the service spread to a wider swath of the internet, including mobile networks, in December. Millions of Russians trying to access videos have found them too slow to load or too pixelated to watch.

“This sudden massive drop is 100 percent artificial,” Philipp Dietrich, an analyst at the German Council on Foreign Relations, said. “There is no doubt about the fact that this is human-made.”

The results of the broadside against YouTube have so far been mixed, demonstrating the complications Moscow faces in snuffing out an American-made cornerstone of the Russian internet that for years was seen as practically too big to ban.

YouTube for years has been a staple of daily life for many Russians, streaming everything from old Soviet movies to anti-Kremlin political shows. Some 96 million Russians over the age of 12, or about 79 percent of the over-12 population, visited the site monthly as of July, before the slowdown in service began, according to the research group MediaScope.

But the relationship between the Kremlin and Google, which owns YouTube, has been tense for years. Searing viral YouTube broadcasts transformed the late Russian opposition figure Aleksei A. Navalny into a significant threat to the Kremlin. His corruption investigation into a palace on the Black Sea built for Mr. Putin, released on YouTube in early 2021, has drawn 133 million views over the past four years, underscoring the power of the platform.

On one level, the throttling looks to have worked. Russian internet traffic to YouTube is less than a third of what it was this time last year, according to public data released by Google, the streaming service’s parent company. VK, the state-controlled social media network, is pitching a domestic alternative to YouTube, known as VK Video, and it has trumpeted surges in traffic.

But the reality is more complex.

Droves of tech-savvy Russians are continuing to access YouTube using virtual private networks, or VPNs. Those tools route their internet traffic through another country, meaning it does not show up in Google’s data as Russian usage. They also encrypt users’ traffic and protect their identities.

The impeding of YouTube has also proved spotty across Russia’s hundreds of internet providers, leaving some Russians able to access YouTube videos directly, even without VPNs.

Political shows critical of the Kremlin filmed outside Russia have seen relatively minimal traffic declines from the slowing service, according to the Russian journalist Dmitry Kolezev, who tracks the shows through a product called YouScore. That is likely because their viewers in Russia who are particularly motivated to view anti-Kremlin content have swiftly acquired VPNs.

Entertainment content, ranging from children’s cartoons to cooking shows, has seen a significant drop-off in many cases, according to YouTube traffic measurement sites. Viewers of such content are less likely to purchase VPNs and may be able to find what they are looking for on Russian streaming platforms.

The exact number of Russians using VPNs is unclear. Mikhail Klimarev, executive director of the Internet Protection Society, a digital rights group now based in Europe, estimated that more than half of Russian internet users, or about 60 million people, at least know what a VPN is and say they are able to use one.

“People will learn to use VPNs because of YouTube and will discover that there is much more to the internet than what they get on the regular Russian internet,” Mr. Klimarev predicted. “It is simply of higher quality, there are simply more opportunities, more access to content.”

Still, the slowdown in service is driving many Russians to state-controlled domestic platforms, such as VK and RuTube, to consume at least some of the content they used to watch on YouTube. That is a bifurcation of the internet that the Kremlin desires.

“We are calling this phenomenon a splinternet,” said Anastasiya Zhyrmont, policy manager for Eastern Europe and Central Asia at the digital rights group Access Now. They are trying “to splinter the internet and build their own ecosystem,” she said.

Ilya Shepelin, a Russian journalist in exile who makes popular YouTube videos skewering state propaganda, worries that only politically oriented Russians willing to go through the process of setting up and paying for quality VPNs will end up staying on YouTube, with the rest migrating toward a state-controlled domestic internet for leisure, where they will not chance upon political videos critical of the state.

The result, he said, would be “a kind of information bubble” where video creators will not “reach the average Russian.”

Already, some bifurcation is visible.

Artur Dneprovsky, the creator behind some 20 YouTube channels showing Russian-language children’s cartoons, including the popular “Blue Tractor,” said in an email that his studio’s bigger channels have seen drops in YouTube traffic from 20 percent to 30 percent, while the smaller projects have dropped up to 50 percent, amid the slowdown.

At the same time, he said, he has seen noticeable and rapid increase in views and subscribers on Russia’s domestic video platforms, especially RuTube, where more than 400,000 people have signed up for “Blue Tractor” since the start of the throttling — suggesting that some people having trouble with YouTube are migrating to RuTube or VK as alternatives.

Maxim Katz, a Russian opposition figure who broadcasts a popular political YouTube show from Israel, watched as the number of users tuning into his show from Russia in the data for his channel dropped 45 percent from a year ago. But his overall viewership numbers stayed the same, suggesting that some viewers in Russia had adopted VPNs and were showing up in the data as coming from other countries.

“People simply switched to using VPNs en masse and are continuing to watch YouTube,” said Mr. Katz, who is on Russia’s federal wanted list and does not publish videos on the state-controlled platforms.

Mr. Putin’s invasion of Ukraine in early 2022 significantly escalated the Kremlin’s clash with Google. The company globally blocked more than 1,000 Russian state-sponsored propaganda channels, including more than 5.5 million videos, according to YouTube. It suspended ads shown on YouTube to users in Russia, as well as the serving of ads by Russia-based advertisers to users globally.

Google regularly denied demands by the Russian authorities to remove content. For example, after Mr. Putin announced a mobilization in September 2022 to shore up his reeling forces in Ukraine, Russia’s communications regulator asked Google to remove 63 videos from YouTube related to the unpopular mobilization. Google said it agreed to remove only one, because the clip advised the use of poison to avoid the draft.

In July, Google prompted ire from the Kremlin when it complied with European Union sanctions on pro-Kremlin musicians and removed their channels and videos. The impeding of service began soon afterward.

Russian authorities have also slapped Google with increasing fines.

Mr. Putin, speaking at his annual call-in show last month, accused YouTube and Google of doing the U.S. government’s bidding by serving up politically oriented videos to Russians searching for culture and music content.

“If they want to work here,” Mr. Putin said, “let them act in accordance with the laws of the Russian Federation.”

Mr. Putin also blamed the disruptions to YouTube last year on Google, saying that the company had not serviced its infrastructure in Russia since retreating from the market. Google denies that technical issues were responsible for the slowdown

Russian authorities have been stepping up a long-running campaign against VPN services, which, if effective, could further reduce Russian access to YouTube and other Western tech platforms.

Apple, for instance, removed scores of VPNs from its app store in Russia last year under apparent pressure from Moscow, a move that outraged international human rights groups. (Google Play, the App Store equivalent for Android devices, which are more popular than iPhones in Russia, has not done so).

Few Russian content creators, including those who support Mr. Putin, are satisfied with being confined to state-controlled domestic YouTube alternatives, which lack the same international reach, recommendation algorithm, monetization possibilities and broad user base.

Mr. Putin’s comments on YouTube in December came in response to a question from a popular Russian-language YouTube blogger, Vlad Bumaga.

Mr. Bumaga, originally from Belarus, praised the Russian alternatives, including VK, which has a deal to air his videos. But he nonetheless asked if YouTube access could remain accessible.

Even after signing with VK, Mr. Bumaga is still uploading his videos on YouTube, where they continue to earn millions of views and thousands of Russian-language comments. His account claims he is based in the United States.

Alina Lobzina and Oleg Matsnev contributed reporting.

When her three children didn’t have enough to eat, Monica Atieno decided to apply for a job through a new program that was recruiting women to become motorcycle taxi drivers — a profession long dominated by men.

At first, she kept her plan a secret from her husband, who was himself a motorcycle taxi driver in their town of Ukwala in western Kenya. When he found out, he was furious and threatened to leave. But Ms. Atieno, who is 29, says she told him: “I’m going to do it, because I know what I’m going to achieve.”

Last year, after hundreds of hours of training, she became a motorcycle taxi driver — a “Boda Girl,” as they’re called. She’s now one of only about 1,000 women among the estimated 2.5 million motorcycle taxi drivers in the east African nation of Kenya, according to the Boda Boda Safety Association, an advocacy group.

The road to success has been full of obstacles. Many of the women who signed up, like Ms. Atieno, had never before driven a motorbike, let alone a car. They have faced harassment from passengers and fellow drivers. Their husbands voiced disapproval.

The women received training in essential skills like self-defense and mechanics. Now, many say they have begun to earn incomes and independence, discovered new strengths and, in some cases, started to support their entire families — accomplishments they once thought impossible.

“When I joined Boda Girls, my life changed completely,” said Lilian Rehema, 33, one of the first women motorcycle taxi drivers in her area. “My kids can dress nicely. They can get food every day.”

The program started when Dan Ogola, who had helped found the local Matibabu Hospital two decades ago, noticed that women were regularly coming to the hospital in search of work — whether as cooks, cleaners or receptionists.

The hospital was one of the largest employers in Siaya County, where one million residents live mostly in villages and small towns connected by red soil roads that wind through flat plains and rolling hills. Many people make a living by farming maize, cassava or sweet potatoes. Others fish in Lake Victoria, Africa’s largest lake. Jobs are scarce, especially for women.

At the same time, Mr. Ogola noticed a troubling pattern: When these same women became patients, they couldn’t afford transportation to the hospital for medical checkups. Many had to walk up to two hours, even when pregnant, to reach the hospital. Some ended up giving birth en route.

So, with the support of an American charity, the Tiba Foundation, which also helps fund the hospital, he hired a driving school to train women motorcycle taxi drivers. In April 2022 he recruited 10 women from nearby villages — the first cohort of “Boda Girls.”

“We kill poverty by creating jobs for them,” he said, “and they bring people to us and make health services accessible to women.”

After Ms. Rehema’s husband died, she and her four children could no longer survive on money from growing kale on her small farm. On the verge of losing her home, she was forced to beg for money. After years of struggle, she came across Matibabu hospital’s surprising job opportunity when she went there hoping to find work as a cook.

She had never before heard of women driving boda-bodas, as the two-wheeled taxis are called.

Boda-bodas originated in the 1960s when riders along the border between Kenya and Uganda would shout “border to border” to attract customers, according to researchers. What started as bicycle taxis eventually transformed into motorcycle taxis — often cheap, imported bikes from India. Boda-bodas became one of Kenya’s major economic forces.

“I didn’t know how to ride, but I could learn,” Ms. Rehema said.

With time and persistence, she mastered the skills to navigate the region’s unpredictable dirt roads: hitting the brakes just before turns and leaning into corners while keeping steady. She learned how to change engine oil in inconvenient conditions.

Two years ago, she became one of the first female drivers in her area. Now, she rushes expectant mothers to deliver their babies in the hospital, and transports women and their babies to checkups. When she arrives at the hospital, she greets everyone with warm smiles, kisses babies and shakes hands like a beloved local politician.

The “Boda Girls” program was an instant hit, inspiring others.

Each morning, Lucy Odele marveled at the confidence of the Boda Girls zooming past her house. Ms. Odele had had polio as a child, leaving her with a limp in her right leg and making it hard for her to stand for long. It also made finding work even more difficult. Living as a single mother with her parent, Ms. Odele, 38, longed for independence. She applied to the program, and joined 13 other women in May 2023 as part of the second cohort.

But Ms. Odele said she had initially struggled, finding it hard to swing her leg over the bike. “I used to cry. I would see others make progress, while I stayed where I was,” she said.

Refusing to give up, the program found her a solution: a smaller scooter that she could more easily mount. At night, she wheels it carefully into her cramped house, positioning it next to her sofa like a trusted friend.

“I know what it’s like, walking long distances to clinics,” she said. “I don’t want anybody to suffer the way I suffered.”

The program has now trained 51 women. In the early morning light, they can be seen on their colorful bikes with bright pink seats — a mark of their trainee status. When they graduate, they are given purple leather seats, each displaying the hand-stitched Boda Girls logo.

Last summer, when Violet Onyango was in labor, her family couldn’t afford the fare to transport her to the hospital, and the baby’s father refused to help. So she called one of the Boda Girls who had already driven her to multiple checkups, who gently transported her for free to the hospital to safely deliver her baby girl.

Afterward, Ms. Onyango, an avid soccer player, said of her baby, “I want her to go to school, get an education and become a footballer like me.”

Many male boda-boda drivers believe that women are taking their jobs.

“Before the Boda Girls arrived, I was doing well, but things changed,” said Frederic Owino, a longtime boda-boda driver in the county. “Since they came, my work has decreased.”

Kevin Mubadi, chairman of the Boda Boda Safety Association of Kenya, which supports inclusion for women drivers, said, “Some passengers still find it strange for women to ride boda-bodas.”

He added that women also often experience “sexual harassment from male clients.”

To protect themselves, the Boda Girls learn self-defense. Trainers teach them to stop the bike if a passenger is inappropriate, firmly assert the rules and take a defensive stance — arms extended, palms out, ready to kick if threatened.

The Boda Girls have gone on to share these skills with girls in nearby schools.

The landscape is slowly changing, with more women joining the industry not just as drivers, but also as engineers and mechanics — changing mind-sets all around them.

Ms. Atieno’s once-skeptical husband, who had threatened to leave when she first enrolled in the program, changed his mind after a month when he saw that she was already earning double what he made. With her Boda Girl earnings, she bought a cow and several pigs, and expanded into other ventures like making soap and tailoring.

One morning in July, she carried two of their children to school on the back of her purple motorbike. Her husband hopped on too, so he could attend a parent-teacher meeting. After dropping them at school, Ms. Atieno rode on — off to work.