Waning support from the West poses a risk to Raila's defiance

Azimio la Umoja leader Raila Odinga during a presser at the Jaramogi Oginga Odinga foundation on March 9, 2023. [Denis Kibuchi, Standard]

The US First Lady's recent visit to the country was rich in significance, politically and economically, even though no official has openly said so.

In her public remarks, Mrs Jill Biden expressed almost no sentiments touching on the country's political affairs. In fact, she bore herself with an admirable objectivity and focused on her advocacy for women and youth causes and her attempt to attract the world's attention to the drought ravaging the Horn of Africa region.

Mrs Biden -- whose third visit to Kenya (and her first to Namibia) was aimed at strengthening "the United States' partnerships on the African continent" -- talked of the "common future" Americans and Africans share, their shared values - liberty and democracy - and "shared priorities" - empowering women and youth.

The William Ruto administration appeared to have realised the political and economic undercurrents of the visit by the wife of the White House chief. It knew that Mrs Biden's very presence in the country was in and of itself an expression of approval of President Ruto, whose government is in there pitching to fix a broken economy bequeathed to it by the previous administration, analysts say. Mrs Biden was the first senior official from the Biden White House to visit the country.

"The visit by FLOTUS [the first lady of the United States] is a passive endorsement to Ruto's administration. You can recall that just after the swearing-in, Ruto visited the US and met with President Biden," Joel Otieno, a political analyst at the Nairobi-based Partnerships for Africa Social and Governance Research, told The Sunday Standard. "So, apart from the strategic reasons for development, the visit was to send a political message, particularly the willingness to work with the new administration."

President Ruto and First Lady Rachel feted Mrs Biden. Kenya's First Lady, Rachel, was photographed serving her American counterpart tea. President Ruto along with his deputy Rigathi Gachagua and Prime Cabinet Secretary Musalia Mudavadi showed up at the airport to see her off.

"I couldn't ask for a warmer welcome," Mrs Biden said.

During her stay in the country, Mrs Biden had no airs and graces. She travelled on dirt roads. Laughed a lot. Spent hours listening to Kenyans in Kibra slums and Lositeti village in Kajiado county. She shook hands with many women, including Maasai herders. Ordinary Kenyans lined the streets and roads on which her 35-vehicle motorcade travelled. Singers and traditional dancers entertained her as soon as she arrived in the country and minutes before her departure.

"I told my granddaughter Naomi that coming here [Kenya] changed my life and that is why she wanted to join me," Mrs Biden told a group of Kenyan women on February 25, in brief remarks that were punctuated by laughter and applause.

The deepening ties between President Ruto and the US government is likely to undermine Raila Odinga's attempt to cast doubt on Ruto's legitimacy. That includes his defiance campaign that shall be marked by another public rally today in Mombasa.

Mrs Biden's visit couldn't have come at a worse time for the opposition leader who just two days earlier had announced mass action if his passel of demands - opening the electoral commission's servers, stopping the recruitment of new electoral commissioners and addressing the skyrocketing cost of living - were not met in a 14-day ultimatum, whose deadline expired Wednesday last week.

Even as mass action commenced on Friday with spates of shy demonstrations in Nyanza and Western regions, business activities went on as usual. Earlier, soon after Raila's declaration of a planned mass action, President Ruto said "nobody is going to threaten Kenyans" and accused Raila and unnamed others of being used to "impunity and forcing their way."

Mrs Biden's visit was "an implicit statement of recognition of the incumbent government and support for Kenya's democracy, and partly, a pressure points for the opposition to abandon destabilising and delegitimizing actions," Edmond Pamba, an independent analyst on the Horn of Africa region's geopolitics, told The Sunday Standard.

In an interview with KTN News a few days ago, Raila admitted that in 2008, the international community "put pressure on us to agree to negotiation and eventually we have agreed to negotiations." But he insisted that this time around he would challenge President Ruto's presidency to the bitter end and urged foreign countries to keep off Kenya's affairs.

President William Ruto meets FLOTUS Jill Biden. Looking on, US ambassador to Kenya Meg Whitman, DP Rigathi Gachagua, First Lady Rachel Ruto, and Prime CS Musalia Mudavadi, February 26, 2023. [PCS, Standard]

"What we're dealing with is an internal Kenyan affair and we don't want any country to interfere in our own internal affairs. They have their own problems in their own countries, and we don't interfere [in them]," Raila told Ken Mijungu.

"So we want us to be allowed to face this issue as Kenyans and find a lasting solution to it," Raila said.

He added threatening him with a travel ban would not make him change his position on Ruto, stressing that he was comfortable being in the country and "don't have to travel" to other countries to achieve his political objectives.

Asked in the interview whether he will sit down with President Ruto, the Azimio leader, who seems loaded for bear this time around, replied: "There is no basis of talking right now because he [Ruto] is insisting that he's elected and he's moving ahead."

It's not clear whether the US or other western powers could or would be able to blackjack Raila into accepting the legitimacy of Ruto's presidency to avert chaos on Kenyan streets.

Since routing his rival, Raila, President Ruto has emerged as the fair-haired boy of the US, which looked askance at his predecessor's close relations with China, which is in economic and technological wars with Beijing, Africa's main trading partner.

Washington congratulated Ruto after the Supreme Court declared him the winner of the August election. President Joe Biden dispatched the United States Trade Representative Katherine Tai, a member of his Cabinet, to Kenya to attend Ruto's inauguration on September 13. Tai's delegation included Assistant Secretary of State for the Bureau of African Affairs, Mary Catherine Phee, and Assistant Administrator for the Africa Bureau at the United States Agency for International Development Monde Muyangwa.

On January 23, the US Representative to the United Nations Ambassador Linda Thomas-Greenfield visited Kenya in a trip whose objective was, according to her office, to "advance shared priorities, including addressing regional security, reinforcing commitments to democracy and human rights, strengthening food security, supporting African resilience and recovery, and mitigating the effects of climate change."

The US's impassioned and renewed interest in Kenya's new administration and in other African countries is a part of a wider US strategy aimed at coaxing Africans away from Russia and China, which has been generously funding major infrastructure projects in Africa, even though Chinese traders were accused of running local small-scale entrepreneurs out of business.

Recently, hundreds of Kenyans marched through Nairobi's streets to protest against what they called Chinese traders' invasion of the country.

On February 25, China Square Limited announced that it would "temporarily" close its business "to re-evaluate and replan our company strategy, in order to better serve our customers and meet their needs." But the store remained shut, with Moses Kuria, the Cabinet Secretary for Investments, Trade and Industry, asking former Cabinet Secretary for Interior and Coordination of National Government Fred Matiang'i why he issued "work permits to the Chinese traders at China Square."

China Square. [File, Standard]

"Kenya is open for business but Kenya is not open for dumping," Kuria tweeted on Feb. 26, in a clear reference to Chinese traders. He said there was "no special skill required to sell bras and boxers in the streets of Nairobi. Kenyans can do it."

Under pressure, the government has since moved to allay public concerns. Gachagua asked disgruntled Kenyan traders to give authorities more time to look into the matter. He said the country risked becoming a Chinese colony in 10 years if the Chinese were allowed to kill local capacity and Kenyan traders were not protected. The US always decried Chinese investments in Africa as exploitation of local resources and pooh-poohed the Chinese loans to African countries as "death-trap."

"The People's Republic of China (PRC), by contrast, sees the region as an important arena to challenge the rules-based international order, advance its own narrow commercial and geopolitical interests, undermine transparency and openness, and weaken U.S. relations with African peoples and governments," said the US Strategy Toward Sub-Saharan Africa that was unveiled last year. "Russia views the region as a permissive environment for parastatals and private military companies, often fomenting instability for strategic and financial benefit."

The US officials' recent back-to-back visits to Africa followed last December's US-Africa Leaders Summit in Washington, where President Biden committed $55 billion in Africa "to advance the priorities we share."

"That number represents a comprehensive commitment from the United States to invest in Africa's people, Africa's infrastructure, Africa's agriculture, Africa's health system, Africa's security, and more," Biden said.

So far, Secretary of State Antony Blinken, Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen and Special Climate Envoy John Kerry have visited Africa. Yellen travelled to Senegal, Zambia and South Africa, while Blinken visited South Africa, Rwanda and the Democratic Republic of the Congo.

Otieno, the analyst, said Mrs Biden's Kenya tour "definitely has strengthened relations between Kenya and the US."

"But," he added, "more than that, the visit also has had implications of geopolitical and domestic proportions. For domestic politics, FLOTUS has affirmed to Ruto that the US is willing to work with his administration. This is definitely bad for the opposition owing to the political agitations and refusal to recognise the new government."

Otieno said, "evidently, Ruto's administration is seeking to foreground itself externally in the midst of internal challenges with the opposition." He said the US is seeking to deepen its relations with Africans and "disrupt the increasing influence of rivals, China and Russia in Africa," where ideological and economic wars between the West - Europe and America - and the East - China and Russia - are raging on.

The US seems to have already bagged Kenya. On March 2, President Ruto met members of the American Chamber of Commerce who, he said, would hold a Summit in Nairobi between March 29 and 30. "Deepening trade between Kenya and the USA is a strategic opportunity for Kenyan and American entrepreneurs," Ruto tweeted.

Ahead of her trip to Africa that included Kenya, Ghana and Mozambique, Thomas-Greenfield told the South African Broadcasting Corporation that the US is seeking a mutual relationship with African countries.

"We've a strong partnership with Africa. We're not telling African countries they can't be friends with other countries, they can't have relations with other countries," she said. "What we're about is developing our own partnership, a partnership that is respectful of the African continent and of the people of Africa."

Azimio la Umoja leader Raila Odinga during an interview with 'The Standard' on February 28, 2023. [Stafford Ondego, Standard]

Yellen also echoed the same sentiment, saying, "the United States was "ready to work with Africa as an equal partner - defined not by what we can do for each other, but rather what we can do with each other."

"We know that a thriving Africa is in the interest of the United States. A thriving Africa means a larger market for our goods and services," Yellen said. "It means more investment opportunities for our businesses. ... And it means that more Americans can benefit from the dynamism and creativity of people in Africa."

Pamba, the independent analyst, said the US is in "various policy dilemmas on Africa: Winning back Africa through soft power and restoring the US image, strengthening ties after the Donald Trump presidency and consolidating influence and support in the region in the context of the US geopolitical contest with Russia and China in Africa and globally."

"In fact, Russia and China have been making a lot more visits to Africa recently and have become significant actors in Africa," said Pamba. "The US finds it strategically challenging when Africa is divided on the US-Russia fall-out for instance, instead of uniting behind the US position on issues such as Ukraine."

The US First Lady, whose power lies in her proximity to the president, said she would tell her husband, "'Joe, if we can give more, or if we can reach out to other countries and say, help us, help all these people to live - [we need to do that].' And I think that's what I'll take back to him," according to an interview with the Washington Post, noting that the highlight of her visit was when she left the city and saw people and "how they're living and their challenges, how tough life is for a lot of people."

"There's just so little for them to eat," she said after visiting Lositeti village.

Towards the end of February, USAid, announced that it was providing more than $126 million (Sh16bn) in additional food assistance to Kenya to meet the urgent needs of approximately 1.3 million people across the country. Last year alone, the US provided nearly $310 million (Sh40bn) in humanitarian assistance, making it the greatest donor.