William Ruto’s recent presidential visit to Washington and the deployment of Kenyan police to a US-funded peace mission in Haiti place the African country in a firm alliance with America, writes Mike Moon.
Deadly violence on the streets of Nairobi in late June will have given the US government pause for thought.
A Kenyan government plan to raise taxes drew angry protests outside the nation’s parliament building in late June and a police response to the uproar saw at least 12 people killed. The incident came less than a month after Kenyan President William Ruto’s formal state visit to the US, which was widely seen as the Joe Biden administration’s ordination of Kenya as its key regional partner in a strategic reset in Africa.
The state visit was the first by a Kenyan leader in 20 years and the first by any African leader in 16 years – and was therefore highly symbolic.
America’s new strategy aims to consolidate and expand influence in Africa against a backdrop of growing involvement on the continent by geopolitical rivals – notably Russia and China.
Institute for Security Studies analyst Peter Fabricius put it this way: “Kenya has clearly emerged as America’s leading strategic partner – if not in Africa as a whole then at least in sub-Saharan Africa. At a time when Africa and other parts of the world are polarising, with Russia-leaning juntas evicting Western militaries from Sahel states and South Africa and others tilting towards Russia and China, Kenya is becoming increasingly significant.”
During Ruto’s visit, Biden designated Kenya a “Major Non-Nato Ally” – the only one in sub-Saharan Africa and making it one of the US’s most important strategic military partners in the world.
Analyst Fergus Kell of the UK’s Chatham House commented: “In Ruto, Biden is welcoming an increasingly assertive international operator, with … a keen awareness of the new partnerships possible in a multipolar world.”
The main topics discussed in Washington were “trade and security”.
The first of these items had much to do with an impending US decision on renewing its Africa Growth and Opportunity Act (Agoa), which is the core of US economic and commercial engagement with Africa and gives 32 sub-Saharan African countries duty-free access to the US market for 1,800 products.
Agoa, launched in 2000, has already been renewed once but there are growing pressures within US politics to scrap it as archaic. So, also under the “trade” talks, was a new bilateral free-trade deal first mooted in 2020, as well as a new regional pact if Agoa goes away.
On foreign investment, Kenyan Trade Minister Rebecca Miano said: “We have prepared more than 30 bankable projects worth over $20.5-billion to interest American investors.”
Agreements signed included cooperation on sustainable energy – in which Kenya is a world leader with over 90% of its energy from renewables. Another was in building semi-conductors as Silicon Valley collaborates with Kenya’s flourishing “Silicon Savannah”.
The “security” aspect of Ruto’s mission involved the future of its military alliance with the US, which has seen Kenya play a key role in combatting Al-Shabaab extremists in Somalia and elsewhere.
Another security issue was the deployment of 1,000 Kenyan police officers to lead a US-funded, UN-backed, multinational mission to restore order to gang violence-wracked Haiti. The first officers began arriving in Haiti on 25 June – despite considerable political opposition back home.
Ruto has defended the undertaking as a “mission for humanity” in the Western hemisphere’s poorest nation.
So, scenes of insurrection outside Kenya’s Parliament amid threats to overthrow the Ruto government – less than a month after the pageantry in Washington – will have grabbed attention in the White House and the Pentagon.
The controversial tax-hike legislation was intended to raise money to ease Kenya’s crippling debt repayment burden – run up by previous governments, including the previous one that Ruto served in.
The civil unrest over the bill forced Ruto to back down on it. But he still faces a debt monster that has seen Kenya’s debt-to-GDP ratio rise from 42% to 69% between 2013 and 2020.
The Biden administration would have been sympathetic to Kenyan arguments about debt relief. It owes a whopping $5.3-billion to China’s Exim Bank for construction of a railway line between Nairobi and the port of Mombasa and the US does not want China using that to undermine its own influence.
The principal chunk of debt, though, is owed to the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund (IMF), which has pressured Kenya raise more revenue through higher taxation to pay down its debt.
The Nairobi-Washington Vision was signed by Ruto and Biden, calling for greater debt relief for developing countries that invest more in their people’s development. This “vision” could be used by the US to get the IMF to ease up on an ally.
The BBC commented that the Ruto visit indicated “Washington appears to be playing catch-up in Africa”, with China investing heavily in infrastructure in numerous countries and Russia rapidly ramping up its military presence – such as in Niger, from where US troops were recently ejected by a new regime.
The US game of catch-up does not hinge solely on Kenya, though.
For example, the BBC reported the Biden administration had won plaudits for investing in the Lobito Corridor on the other side of the African continent.
This is a railway line snaking through Angola, the Democratic Republic of Congo and Zambia to transport critical raw materials – thus providing a western African coast export departure point for key minerals for the US.
It wasn’t only the Lobito money that mattered, but the manner of the investment.
“With that Lobito Corridor, [the Americans] decided to speak in the language that Africans understand,” the news agency quoted Kingsley Moghalu, a Nigerian political economist, as saying.
“If you are seen to be delivering major projects that are beneficial to African economies, and to African people, then off the back of that you have leverage to talk about democracy and things like that,” said Moghalu.
