Prof Kagwanja: How Kenya’s foreign policy contributed to Raila’s defeat
The loss is a wake-up call for Kenya to return to its Africa-centered foreign policy based on national interests.
Raila Odinga’s lost bid for the African Union Commission (AUC) top seat offers a perfect stoke-taking moment for Kenya’s Euro-African foreign policy.
While Raila needed President William Ruto to endorse him and open state coffers for his expensive AU campaign, the ultimate question is whether Kenya’s new style of diplomacy in the Ruto era was a heavy millstone around Raila’s neck.
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With Ruto’s tweet that “Israel needs protection against terrorists” where he seemed to take sides in the ongoing Israel/Palestinian crisis, Kenya could hardly count on the vote of 19 largely Muslim States in Africa.
This hard-hearted comment was also highly impervious to the AU collective position that backs a two-state solution to the world’s most protracted and deadly crisis.
Kenya had also lost its shine as an honest neutral broker in the East African region for which the AU had ring-fenced the seat.
Publicly accusing Kenya’s leadership of covert business deals with the Rapid Response Force (RSF) and supporting the rebels fighting the Government, Sudan rejected Kenya’s role in mediating the Sudanese Civil War.
Rwanda’s President Paul Kagame also accused Kenya of negatively personalising EAC’s mediation of the crisis in Eastern DRC.
Congolese President, Felix Tshisekedi, also accused Kenya of siding with Rwanda and being too soft on the M23 rebels, and turned to the Southern African Development Community (SADC) for military support and to Angola for mediation.
This also made getting the vote of 16 member states of SADC—which had troops fighting in Eastern Congo—a very tall order.
Kenya’s virulently pro-West policy and status as a non-NATO ally of Joe Biden’s ultra-liberal Washington alienated the country’s strong pan-African allies like South Africa which saw Ruto more as a puppet of the West than a bonfide Pan-African leader.
It is in this context that Ruto’s announcement that he had spoken to French President Emmanuel Macron on the DRC Crisis was received in 21 French-speaking states in the AU experiencing a strong anti-French wave.
The loss is a wake-up call for Kenya to return to its Africa-centered foreign policy based on national interests.
Prof Peter Kagwanja is a Kenyan intellectual, adviser, reform strategist and policy thinker on governance and Chief Executive at the Africa Policy Institute.
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