Kenya's flying President and the high cost Kenyans bear

President William Ruto and First Lady Rachel Ruto arrive at the Beijing Capital International Airport in China for the 9th Forum on China-Africa Cooperation (FOCAC). Summit. The President was received by the Chinese Minister of Industry and Information Technology Mr. Jin Zhuanglong (right )[PCS,Standard]

Kenya’s founding father, the late President Jomo Kenyatta, hated the skies. He hardly flew out and if he had planned to give flying a chance, his last flight must have taken his heart out of flying completely.

Coming back from a Tanzania trip, Kenyatta’s flight had some turbulence. The President ordered the pilot to terminate the journey in Mombasa and opted to travel to Nairobi by train. He never flew again.

Kenyatta’s morbid fear of flying would not let him board an aeroplane, no matter how short the trip was. He preferred to deal with the bumpy roads as he moved across the country.

President William Ruto, the nation’s fifth Head of State, is the polar opposite. He enjoys the skies and the comforts that accompany executive travel. Few frequent flyers would match his air miles over the last two years. He would easily win a contest for Kenya’s king of the skies.

Six days after assuming office, Dr Ruto flew out to attend the funeral of Britain’s Queen Elizabeth before heading to the United States of America, a favourite destination for the President, visiting the country four more times since then.

Over the last two years, the President has made more than 70 trips abroad to nearly 40 nations. His most memorable tour was the May State visit to the US, the first by an African head in 15 years.

While Kenya gained several positives from the trip, the extravagance stood out the most. For the much-hyped visit, Ruto opted to charter a luxury jet, which a Standard expose revealed could have cost the taxpayer more than Sh200 million.

We exclusively accessed a quotation from RoyalJet, an Emirati airline that provided the plane, which showed that a one-way trip to the US cost Sh98 million.

Ruto would later say that “friends” had paid for the trip but he never offered evidence of that. Top officials would direct us to the United Arab Emirates government to confirm their claims.

Since the damning expose by The Standard, Ruto hardly shares details of his flights abroad, unless he is flying aboard the national carrier, Kenya Airways.

When he averaged three foreign tours per night in mid-June, the President spent half the month on foreign beds.

The running joke then was that the Jomo Kenyatta International Airport was the de facto Office of the President and that Ruto only lands in Kenya to freshen up ahead of another round of flights.

He long surpassed the 33 trips the late former President Mwai Kibaki made during his decade-long tenure and looked set to break former President Uhuru Kenyatta’s record of 151 foreign trips.

Ruto made 35 foreign trips last year and flew out nine times in his first three months in office. He had seemed on course to making 100 trips by the end of the year until the June/July youth-led revolt over tax hike proposals kept him grounded.

At the height of the nationwide protests, Ruto discovered he could spend entire days and nights at the State House, Nairobi. He seldom ventured out, not even to church services, which he perhaps enjoyed as much as flying.

That was until former Prime Minister Raila Odinga came to the rescue, agreeing to a partnership to form what they now call the broad-based government.

The President would resume his flying ways, both locally and internationally. Other State officials would pick up this hobby. Over the last few months, Prime Cabinet Secretary Musalia Mudavadi has been on a globe-trotting spree.

Mudavadi, also the Foreign Affairs Cabinet Secretary, is Ruto’s top envoy, taking up trips the Head of State would have ordinarily made before the Generation Z protests. 

October and November have been particularly busy for Mudavadi, who represented Ruto at international meets. Among them are the Cop-29 Summit in Azerbaijan last November and the  International Conference on the Great Lakes Region in Angola.

A month earlier, Mudavadi attended a Commonwealth summit in Samoa and the Common Market for Eastern and Southern Africa Heads of State and Government Summit in Burundi. 

Their excursions do not come cheap. Controller of Budget Margaret Nyakang’o has constantly revealed this fact in her annual expenditure reports.

In the first quarter of the current financial year, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs spent Sh574 million on foreign trips, with State House and the Executive Office of the President spending Sh5.7 million and Sh1.3 million respectively.

During this period, the national government spent Sh3.4 billion on domestic and foreign travel.

The numbers are astonishing in the previous financial year. Between July 2023 and June 2024, the government had blown Sh27.3 billion on travel. Local tours gobbled up Sh18.15 billion and foreign trips cost the taxpayer Sh9.19 billion.

The Foreign Affairs Ministry, which picks up the President’s tab during international trips, blew a staggering Sh3.26 billion on foreign travel during the period.

State House and the Executive Office of the President spent Sh298 million and Sh36.7 million respectively. Domestic tours by State House, often characterised by helicopters and endless convoys of high-end vehicles, cost the taxpayer Sh1.3 billion.

Many have often questioned the government’s extravagance despite austerity orders.

Machakos Deputy Governor Francis Mwangangi, argues that Kenya Kwanza was spending too much money on travel and starving county governments and other sectors.

“”It is mismanagement of the highest order and very wasteful. The sky team seems to be back after they were stopped by Gen Zs. While the President is the top diplomat, he should go out only when it is necessary. He should spend more of his time in the office, planning and supervising development,” Mwangangi says.

In a previous interview, certified fraud examiner Bernard Muchere also questioned the necessity of the tours.

“What official duties does he (the President) go to perform abroad? When he says he is looking for money, what money is he talking about? He cannot go around borrowing against the Constitution, which requires all borrowing to be in the budget. He can’t be signing loans, which are only negotiated by accounting officers,” Muchere said. 

But the President says the travels have borne value to the nation.

“I travelled with a plan. I am not a tourist,” Ruto said last year.