US President Joe Biden welcomes Kenyan President William Ruto at the South Portico of the White House in Washington, US on May 22, 2024. PHOTO | REUTERS
In recent months, there has been a lot of buzz about President William Ruto being America’s new blue-eyed boy in East Africa (even Africa).
As he visits the West and is feted, and on the back of his recent state visit to the US, the first for an African leader in 16 years, there has been a lot of writing, a lot of it draped in national colours, declaring that Kenya is the undisputed “anchor state” in the region and a principal ally of the West. Dr Ruto’s fan club has called him a “voice for Africa”. He seems to be warming up to the accolades and has permitted himself to talk of his vision for the African Union and the continent.
Previous figures that played that role in the region are being written off as expired and damaged goods. On the left of the African political spectrum, there are warnings. “America will use and then spit you like stale meat”, radical pan-Africans have advised President Ruto free of charge. Literary giant Ngugi wa Thiong’o, in a heartbroken message, has suggested that the President is an imperialist agent and nothing has hurt him like his country’s decision to send its police to intervene in lawless Haiti. President Ruto, the radicals say, will be thrown under the bus and end up like former US anti-communist ally of the US and president of the then-Zaire (Democratic Republic of Congo), Mobutu Sese Seko.
Superpowers
How might one explain all this to a curious grandmother? Global power politics is driven by superpowers. But superpowers like the USA don’t have boots on the ground worldwide. They need friends, and allies, to work with in other regions to pursue their interests; for example, keeping shipping passages safe for their corporations to trade around the world. Keeping the Indian Ocean region along the East African coast secure is important, so it will strike a deal with a country with the ability to chase Somalia-based pirates away or has facilities from which they can launch operations against the criminals themselves. Those pirates are believed to share their loot with Somali-based Al-Shabaab militants.
Kenya has a naval base in Manda Bay, Lamu, which the Americans can use. During President Ruto’s trip, Washington announced that it would pay for constructing a 10,000-foot runway at Manda Bay Airstrip to enhance Kenya’s efforts against Al-Shabaab. And, needless to say, the US would likely use it more than Kenya.
Money in the bank
But a runway is not enough; in exchange, Kenya needs more. So the US threw in fighter helicopters and amphibian materiel. In the end, all these things are about money in the bank—and global capital needs regional hubs to collect their money and then send it to their home banks, or to bring their money and have platforms and institutions from which to distribute it for investment.
Kenya is that hub in the region, and many financial institutions, banks that are growing very fat on big profits, and money managers are based in Nairobi. And, as a hub, it gets a nice little cut of the money that is sloshing around.
Besides, this doesn’t fall from heaven like manna. Being a regional geopolitical player requires your government and people to invest their money, labour and intellect. The only advantage you enjoy for free is geographic location. To be a financial hub, you have to build financial institutions of near-world standards.
Peace enforcer
For your military to go and be a peace enforcer, it must be worth it. You cannot send a clan militia in monkey skin, that can’t shoot straight or read a map, to face the fierce gangs in Haiti or confront Al-Shabaab. The money from the geopolitical games, then, could be seen as a return on your investment.
And there is more. If you muscle your way to being a regional geopolitical power, your president will sit either at the table or the next row at international meetings. The president of the World Bank will pick up his call if he rings. But when a befuddled prime minister of a restless nation in the Sahel calls, it will be put through to his deputy.
If there is a big international conference on refugees, peace and security or climate change, attended by 2,000 delegates, it is likely to come to your capital—not to the country further inland, where it would have to be held in a makeshift stadium, has only 100 hotel rooms and doesn’t completely nothing for the region or the world. If each of those delegates spends $1,000 on accommodation, taxis, beer, nyama choma and paying for the company of your finest young men and women, that is $2 million in the economy. Not too bad for two days’ work.
Anti-imperialists and patriots despise this picture. It is exploitative, they say. And they are not wrong. But the reality is that if country A doesn’t seize this sub-contractor and conduit role, there is always country B that will do so. In realpolitik, you might as well be the one that sits on the hill.
Mr Onyango-Obbo is a journalist, writer and curator of the “Wall of Great Africans”. @cobbo3
