Kibaki has embraced China as strategic development partner

By Billow Kerrow

The Kibaki Government sees red only these days! Or so the Whites believe. The Western envoys are grumbling that State House is unreachable and they find it hard to meet the President when they want to. Custom has it that the Western envoys meet President of the host country regularly, at least once every six months, to discuss bilateral relations. Some multilateral agreements such as the ACP’s Cotonou Agreement encourage such biannual meetings.

The Western envoys now believe Kibaki is in breach of tradition, and has no time for them. We rarely hear about a Western diplomat on a courtesy call at State House these days. The UK Minister for Africa, Mr Bellingham, was in town recently but did not meet the President, something pretty unusual just a few months ago.

Trade, Energy and Immigration ministers on his schedule failed to meet him too ‘because they were at a presidential function’ according to the then Foreign Affairs Minister Moses Wetangula who had difficulty explaining why the visitor was snubbed by State House.

Just days before, an MP tabled a ‘leaked dossier ’purportedly from the UK embassy that called for the detention of the Uhuru and Ruto in The Hague, and hinted at an on-going investigation against the President by ICC, among other things. A few weeks earlier, UK Foreign Minister William Hague, was in Nairobi and caused an uproar as he departed when he warned that Kenya’s international reputation was at risk if The Hague suspects were allowed to lead the country. Fortunately for him, he met President Kibaki before he made the statement.

The State House issued a statement this week denying it is "inaccessible’ to our traditional friends but reaffirmed that Kibaki’s diplomacy was now guided by ‘changing geopolitical dynamics’ and that it was reachable by "any nation that works for the good of the Kenyan people’.

It was categorical that the President’s focus was on East Africa and Asian countries that ‘have emerged as strategic development partners of Kenya’.

To political observers, it was clearly a loaded statement that said so much about receding relevance of the West, not helped by their unequivocal support for the ICC process and their cosy relationship with the Prime Minister. China, unlike the Western nations, fully supported Kenya in its efforts last year to bring the cases back home.

Two days after Bellingham left, the President met a visiting Chinese delegation led by Liu Qi, a member of Political Bureau of the ruling Communist Party and a member of Beijing Municipal Committee, and urged China to help finance the Lamu project.

It is instructive that this request was not made to the UK minister who is in charge of development in Africa. This week, the President again met Hua Jianmin, a senior legislator in the National Peoples Congress of China.

China, together with Africa Development Bank, now rank as the major financiers of development projects in Kenya. The two will provide nearly Sh44 billion of the Sh183 billion external support planned by the Government this year. IDA, the World Bank’s soft loans arm, will give Sh53 billion and the French aid agency, AFD, will provide Sh27 billion. China’s direct project aid of Sh20.7 billion, though still below the French’s AFD amount, has been growing steadily.

Whilst EU remains a major donor to the country, the relative ease of funding by China has given the latter an edge. EU still remains the major export market for Kenya, outside Africa.

Our two major forex earners, tourism and horticulture, are with EU. China has overtaken as our key source of imports, excluding oil.

Long after the ICC die is cast, the Grand Coalition gone and with the oil discovery, it will be interesting to see whether Kenya will continue embracing the Reds over the Whites.

The writer is a former MP for Mandera Central and political economist