Who is the Ford Foundation?

Protestors run to safety from police teargas in Moi Avenue, Nairobi on July 16, 2024.[Boniface Okendo, Standard]

Kenya has been on the edge since Tuesday, June 18, when anti-government protests began, to oppose the unpopular Finance Bill 2024.

President William Ruto rejected the parliament-approved Finance Bill on June 26, a day after the invasion of Parliament by angry protesters.

A decision to dissolve Cabinet, roll out of austerity measures, and a proposed dialogue have done little to quell the ongoing protests leaving a frustrated Ruto blaming foreign players for fanning the rage of the youth through funding.

The Ford Foundation is the first foreign entity to be implicated in the violence witnessed during the previous protests by President Ruto.

“We have no use for anarchy, violence, destruction of property, and loss of life. We know the people sponsoring the violence against our democratic nation,” said an agitated President Ruto, adding, “I’d like to ask the Ford Foundation how they benefit from sponsoring the anarchy. We are calling them out and telling them to style up or leave.”

The non-governmental organisation has, however, denied financing the protests saying in a statement that it has a “strictly non-partisan policy for all our grantmaking.”

Ford Foundation in Kenya

Ford Foundation is an American philanthropic headquartered in New York, USA with offices across the five continents where it operates including in Africa, Asia, the Americas, and the Middle East.

Though distinct from the Ford Motor Company, the NGO was established in 1936 by Edsel Ford with an initial gift of $ 25,000 which has since grown to a sizeable endowment of 16 billion dollars (Sh2 trillion), partly used to finance the 500 million dollars (Sh65 billion) worth of grants every year.

The foundation has had nine other presidents since Edsel Ford. Darren Walker has been at the helm of the body since 2013.

Its Kenyan office was opened in 1962 to "support open civic space, civil society and public dialogue with the government", in Kenya and the greater Eastern Africa region.

The foundation has since been at the forefront of championing emerging social, political, and economic issues including human rights, social justice, gender equity, and workplace equality.

The organisation has not only spent big amounts on philanthropy. It has also funded the development of social justice centres including through its 2015 ‘BUILD’ programme that availed $ 1 billion (Sh 130 billion) for the development of 300 centres over five years.

Mzalendo Trust, a Kenyan parliamentary monitoring organisation, is listed on the foundation’s grantee database as a beneficiary of a Sh43 million grant for the July 2024 to June 2025 cycle under the ‘BUILD’ initiative.

Open source data on the organisation’s website indicate that 14 Kenyan civic and human rights bodies have received grants of varying amounts ranging from Sh1 million to Sh43 million since the start of this year.

The grantmaking process is laid on the foundation’s website with information on the beneficiaries published and frequently updated for transparency.

According to the foundation, it aims to help expand the civic space in the global south to bridge inequality. This endeavour, it says, faces the challenge of civil society groups being marginalised by governments that accuse them of advancing foreign interests at the expense of national values.

The major functions of the organisation internationally include civic engagement, promoting creativity and free expression, championing human rights, advocating good governance, investing in ideas with impactful mission, and advancing tech integration in the society among other functions.

Ford Foundation says that it supported revolutionary figures including Martin Luther King Jr. Nelson Mandela and close to 50 Nobel Prize winners besides helping launch notable rights organisations like Human Rights Watch.

Former Chief Justice Willy Mutunga is among the most notable Kenyans to have worked with the organisation.