Politics
What Code is Your [TRIBE]?
12 min read.Kenyan demographers seem blind to the politics of identity and belonging. Yet the codification and recognition of tribe or ethnicity in Kenya has evolved into an exercise that gives – or denies – people political and social visibility.

“Take ye the sum of all the congregation of the children of Israel, after their families, by the house of their fathers, with the number of their names, every male by their polls.” Numbers 1:2
The broken promise
The Kenya Human Rights Commission (KHRC) shared pictures of Shona women dressed in immaculately white dresses, deliberately invoking a religious sensibility. This was necessary since the Shona had arrived in Kenya as African missionaries in the 1950s. These pictures were taken at a podium draped in the Kenyan national flag on the occasion of what KHRC referred to on Twitter as the #ShonaCitezenshipPrayer. At the back of the dais was a canvas poster with the words “Prayer for the government of Kenya to grant the Shona citizenship.”
When they moved labourers from one part of their empire to another, the British didn’t think of the kind of long-term damage they left behind among translocated communities like the Warundi (sisal farmers in Kwale), the Makonde (rescued slaves resettled in Kilifi), the Shona (African missionaries), the Nubians (King’s African Rifles who helped the British expand their empire) and the Pemba from Zanzibar. Or the Indians who were brought to work on the Uganda Railway. The post-colonial governments in Kenya, while instrumentalising ethnicity, had not evolved any mechanism to incorporate this translocated population who have over the past 57 years hovered in the margins of the Kenyan state.
Whether affected by the British Empire or rejected by the post- independence regimes, Kenya has been notorious for locking entire communities from accessing services and crucial papers through elaborate exclusionary mechanisms like censuses and ethnic coding.
Illusions and smoke screens
On 18th December, 2018, at an event in Marsabit, the then social services minister and former Marsabit governor, Amb. Ukur Yatani, presided over the issuance of legal status to “Wayyu”, the newly acknowledged name of the Waata community. The event, dubbed “rebirth of Wayyu”, was an official rejection of their old name, Waata, which had been considered pejorative and connotive of a low caste hunter gatherer group. With the name change also came their recognition as Kenya’s 46th tribe.
This recognition was a culmination of many factors. The idea was mooted by a Waata researcher in a 1993 paper where he suggested that “The Waata be registered as a distinct sub-group of the Boran-speaking peoples as are the Boran, Gabbra, Sakuye, etc;” as a means of preserving the Waata culture and identity. Over the years this quest took on different forms: advocacy through petitions and threats, until at the end the quest for state recognition had become for Ali Bala Bashuna and for the Waata an existential question.
In a 2000 paper titled “When will we be people as well? Social identity and the politics of cultural performance, Aneesa Kassam gives a broader context for Ali’s quest, noting that:
“With no political support, his (Ali Bala’s) campaign has had little success. The state is, in fact, generally inimical to such manifestations of ethnicity. It considers them counter to its programmes of nation-building and will only support such movements when they are to its own political advantage.”
Wayyu was the third group to be given official ethnic codes and with it a form of a legal status. The government made it look like this granting of legal status through ethnic code was a necessary and desired development.
Before Wayyu, and through a presidential proclamation, Kenyan Asians were recognised as Kenya’s 44th tribe on 22 July, 2017. In a TV interview, Farah Manzoor, a fifth-generation Kenyan human rights activist and the main architect behind the recognition of Kenyan Asians, led a choir thanking the president for recongising the Asian community.
Arabaini na nne
Twashukuru raisi
Arabaine na nne
Sisi ni wakenya
Wahindi wakenya
Kabila la kenya
When the Minister for Interior, Fred Matiangi, announced the presidential proclamation, he told Kenyan Asians, “Now, you are part and parcel of us formally. You are part and parcel of Kenya’s great family.”
A few months earlier, the Makonde community received their own ethnic code on 1st February 2017 when the president himself conferred citizenship status to this erstwhile stateless community. They had been asked by the Minister for Interior, Joseph Nakaissery, “to feel liberated”.
Other groups came forward asking that they too be recognised. This is where the #ShonaCitizenshipPrayer finds a meaning.
When the Minister for Interior, Fred Matiangi, announced the presidential proclamation, he told Kenyan Asians, “Now, you are part and parcel of us formally. You are part and parcel of Kenya’s great family.”
A section of the Kirinyaga community came forward, asking that they be recognised as the 45th tribe of Kenya away from the Gikuyu tribe. One of the speakers said, “We are not here to promote tribalism…we don’t want our children to suffer from inferiority complex when they are talking. Another one added, “We claim social benefits, recognition…”
Just before the 2019 census, the Lembus community came forward with a legal suit for what they claimed to be an erroneous classification that had been “done without their consent thereby denying them crucial rights”.
Intentions and meaning
The issuance of tribal codes and their recognition in all the three cases of Makonde, Wayyu and Asians meant something different. For the Makonde, their recognition as Kenya’s tribe 043 changed their statelessness and made them Kenyan citizens. For the Kenyan Asians, to be Kenya’s tribe 044 meant someone was playing a political game with the community’s name. For the Wayyu, there was a social political validation; they were now a distinct, independent and legit “tribe” who would never live under the shadow of other tribes.
Kenyans watched the “admission” of these “tribes” into an imaginary Kenyan National Register of tribal groups. No one noticed that from Makonde 043, Kenyan Asian 044 the government had skipped Tribe 045 and named Wayyu as Tribe 046. But that didn’t matter; this was vintage Kenyan ethos at play.
Census code
A few days prior to the 2019 Kenyan census, a video of an elderly man in a Kanzu and seated next to a wall with the words “Gurreh 509” scribbled on the wall went viral in Mandera. The man kept asking people to “wake up” and to “pass word around” that the people of Mandera were Gurreh–code 509 and not Garre–code 532. This, on his part, was short notice civic education to remedy the confusion of multiple codes provided as options for the Garre in the 2019 census. The man told the people to choose Gurreh 509 and to be vigilant enough to ensure that they were not recorded as Garre 532.
The 2019 census revived an old discussion on census and tribal codes.
Old game
In his book Define and Rule, Mahmood Mamdani says that the census was an imperial tool that propped up indirect colonial rule. Censuses, he says, “…endeavoured to shape the present, past and future of the colonised by casting each in a nativist mould, the present through a set of identities in the census, the past through the driving force of a new historiography, and the future through an extensive legal and administrative apparatus.”
A few days prior to the 2019 Kenyan census, a video of an elderly man in a Kanzu and seated next to a wall with the words “Gurreh 509” scribbled on the wall went viral in Mandera. The man kept asking people to “wake up” and to “pass word around” that the people of Mandera were Gurreh-code 509 and not Garre-code 532.
An example of the quest of such a classification was visible during the colonial times in the curious case of the Isaaq and Harti Somalis who in 1937 petitioned the British colonial government demanding that they be charged a higher tax under the “non natives” category. Keren Witzenberg, writing about this, says that “fearful of losing their privileged status within the colonial racial order, Isaaq elites claimed that they were not Africans, nor Somalis, but rather “Asiatics”.
This classification for the Isaaq/Harti Somalis came with benefits, including “pass exemptions, special rations in prison and the military, higher salaries, and access to separate wards in hospitals…and access to many of the civil rights denied to other African subjects”.
Census code as mother of ethnic code
The magical Kenyan number of 42 ethnic tribes was, according to Gabrielle Lynch, born out of the options provided during the 1962 census. Census reports, however, have not over those years been consistent in reporting on the number of ethnic groups in the country, as illustrated in the table below.
Kenyan tribes, as reported in the Kenyan census over the years

Source: Kenya National Bureau of Statistics
In the 2009 enumerators’ manual, at least 114 different tribes were coded, including subgroups under the big tribes like the Luhya, the Kalenjin, the Swahili and the Mijikenda. If this is compared with the census results and the ethnic data found on the Kenya National Bureau of Statistics (KNBS) website, it becomes easily apparent that even where one’s community had been coded and options provided, it did not automatically translate to their ethnic data being included in the final census report. The reverse is also true for some communities whose names were not coded or provided as options but their numbers and final figures were included in the final ethnic data report. By 2019 the number of coded ethnic/nationality options were 135.
It was obvious that the census was not serious about what and who they included in their ethnic lists. Numerous examples abound.
The 2009 census codes were different from the 2019 codes. Nubians who had been included in the 2009 census for the first time under code 220 were now coded 021 in the 2019 census. Even the Makonde with ethnic code 043 were listed under census code 320.
Other inconsistencies in the census include repetitions, double entries, misspelt community names, for example, Garre,Gurreh or Waat,Watta,Aweer/Watta, Wayyu.
While many minorities fought for inclusion, a community like the Orma are fighting to have the name Galla removed from the census since it is a pejorative reference invented in the colonial period. (Mgalla muue na haki mpe? )
The 2009 census codes were different from the 2019 codes. Nubians who had been included in the 2009 census for the first time under code 220 were now coded 021 in the 2019 census. Even the Makonde with ethnic code 043 were listed under census code 320.
Kenyan demographers seem blind to the politics of identity and belonging. It was obvious that KNBS hasn’t given serious thought to the socio-political implications of what the census means. In the enumerators manual we see a cautionary attitude from KNBS. To the question “What is <NAME>’s ethnicity or Nationality?” enumerators were asked to:
Accept the answer as given to you without question. Do not get involved in any argument on this issue. The census is not concerned with the legal position. Accept what the person tells you and record the ethnicity or nationality to which the person considers he/she belongs.
When did census coding become political?
While the census transitioned from its narrow orientation in 1962 where only 16 ethnic groups were tallied to 2019 where 135 options were provided, including minorities like Waat and Nubians, an examination of the census reports over the decades shows unexplained inclusion or exclusion of ethnic groups. This has created the perception that ethnic exclusion from the census tallying process means exclusion from opportunities and resources. The inclusion of any ethnic groups in the census one year and its removal in the next census has led to the general idea that one’s existence and identity is being questioned. Here a protest begins.
At least 17 tribes/Nationalities/options included in the 1989 census report had been left out of the 2009 results. But there was the addition of 18 new ethnicity/tribes/nationalities/options provided in the 2009 census.
Addition of new tribes in the Kenyan census over the decades

Source: KNBS
But even as new tribes were added, over the decades some were suddenly dropped from the reports.
Tribes left out of census reports over the years

Source: KNBS
Source: KNBS
In the 2009 census, there were 114 options provided, including the subgroups for larger groups like Luhya (18), Mijikenda (12) Swahili (20) The census report only gave the figures for 55 different tribes.
In 2019, the options provided were 143, including subgroups for larger groups. The 2019 census reports has also shown the figures for all the subgroups, a departure from the past where the subgroups were amalgamated and their figures reported as one.
Efforts towards state recognition
The “rebirth of the Wayyu Nation ” began with the population census dating back to the 1990s. This bore fruit in 2009 because finally and for the very first time the Waata were counted as Waata and not as “others”.
Then their second quest begun in Ethiopia on 8th January 2013 at an event in which eight supreme traditional leaders (Aba Gadas) unanimously agreed to Waata changing their name to “Wayyu” because, as an activist put it, “Kabila haliwezi kujiita na Matusi“.
After this, the Wayyu set out on the quest for state recognition in Kenya. They began with the county commissioner’s office. “We got letters from the Marsabit, Isiolo, Tana River and Mandera county commissioners respectively confirming that our community lived in each of these counties.” County commissioners were instrumental in this quest since part of the ministry’s mission is “maintain a credible national population register, enhance nationhood”.
The Waata activists’ efforts included “taking the letters to the Gender and Equality Commission, who referred them to KNBS who referred them to Kenya National Census who referred them to the Attorney General’s office to whom they made a presentation justifying why we need to change our name from Watta to Wayyu and why we need an ethnic code”.
The Attorney General, Githu Muigai, then wrote a letter to the Office of the President through the Secretary to the Cabinet. They waited for the electioneering period to end, went back to the Secretary to the Cabinet, and also “asked for Ukur Yatani’s intervention, we even took the state recognition of Wayyu in Ethiopia, letters from the UN confirming the minority status of Wayyu”. Then a letter was written “to the registrar of persons….from the president himself”. These events eventually led to the community being recognised as Kenya’s tribe 046.
To be recognised as Kenya’s 43rd tribe, the Makonde embarked on a long journey. “We started the journey for recognition as Kenyan citizens early in 1995 “with the last major effort being “a walk for the stateless” where the Makonde community walked from Kwale County to State ouse in Nairobi, a distance of almost 500 kilometres.
Census as an eating opportunity?
But why, if the Makonde’s wanted recognition as Kenyan citizens through ethnic coding, did the Wayyu and Asians also agitate for a code when they were already recognised as citizens, as they were already included in the census?
In post-devolution Kenya, a background is created. Employment and other resources were given along ethnic considerations. Thus, to add a “constitutional status” or a presidential pat to one’s ethnic existence redefines the framework in which local ethnic alliances are discussed and navigated, granting groups a new confidence and renewing their efforts to organise.
A Wayyu community activist captures the prevailing sentiment that an ethnic code might affect substantive changes in the community’s present and future access to resources and related opportunities. This speculative streak was putting a political question on the census/coding exercise. I ask how an ethnic code was different from a census code. “Census is a research, they keep on changing the number ascribed to a community for purposes of analysis…census codes are not permanent. But an ethnic code is permanent, and that was our desire…If you cannot elect Wayyu by voting them as a minority then they can be given nomination seats, something like the old ‘bunge Maalum’ or even as an MCA in the county assembly.”
For the Nubians, inclusion in the census was thought to lead to an express access to land. Samantha Balaton-Chrimes, writing about the Nubians’ reaction to being included in the 2009 census, observes that, “land was thought by many participants to be one of the reasons why the code in the census was so long in coming, and was of the primary benefits they hoped to gain from the 2009 code”
Samantha adds that “recognition in the form of a census code gave an institutional context for the multiple and complex modes of belonging that carry actual salience in their real lives”.
A year after the Makonde had been coded, the Daily Nation visited the community to see what had changed for them and were told: “Two youths joined the Kenya Police Service and four joined National Prisons Service. About 200 youth have also been participating in community work under the National Youth Service.”
In addition 1,875 members of the community had been issued with IDs and were registered as voters in Kwale County.
Post-independence anxiety
For many communities, an anxiety emerged at independence. In Kenya the post-independence governments inherited and wholly adopted the same simplified notion of ethnicity, which in most areas worked against the economic, social and political context of some groups, especially those that had been brought to Kenya in the service of the colony, such as the Indians, the Nubians or even the Burji. Kenya did not adopt an active denationalisation policy and did not undertake a mass expulsion of “non-nationals”, as was seen in Uganda where Asians under Amin and Banyarwanda under Obote were expelled en masse. In Kenya this was instrumentalised at a certain level as a manipulation tool. Murmurs of “rudi kwenu” or being called “wageni” never ceased.
Inclusion in the census, for some, has over the past decades brought back these anxieties because censuses in Kenya have evolved into exercises that give people political and social visibility.
It looks like the problem of exclusion from censuses is experienced elsewhere too. Even in the United States, the exclusion of the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) identity category brought some controversy when it was ignored in the 2020 census. This erasure was challenged by congresswoman Rashida Tlaib who said, “By ignoring us you are erasing us…we will be invisible for another decade in our country” The MENA community, like others, relies on accurate census representation for health research, language assistance, civil rights laws, and reporting educational outcomes.
A convergence of confused expectations
It is obvious that another purpose can also be added to the census code. These communities between them capture a microcosm of the anxieties that emerge in the face of statehood, problems of citizenship, belonging and access to opportunities.
This is the wellspring of the overly optimistic notion that with an ethnic/census code minorities will also gain an expressway to all the things that they had been denied or had lacked; respect, political representation and full inclusion into national decision making. But this ambition had been adopted without proper assessment.
A year after the Makonde had been coded, the Daily Nation visited the community to see what had changed for them and were told: “Two youths joined the Kenya Police Service and four joined National Prisons Service. About 200 youth have also been participating in community work under the National Youth Service.”
Only four members of the Wayyu community have contested an electoral office. On all but one of these occasions, the performance were dismal. These candidates suffered not only electoral loss but social ridicule and references to a “lower caste”, which meant that they lost their social standing and reputation. This ridicule and mocking jeers seemed intended to discourage further electoral contestation. The issue of forming political alliances, or their quest for ethnic codes was thus a matter of political necessity and of nationalistic expediency.
BBI games
The Building Bridges Initiative (BBI), like the census, reflects a quest for ethnic codes. Kenyan ethnic groups submitted memoranda on what they desired for their communities. Regional tribal alliances were formed to show allegiance to the president. Public political declarations were issued in support of BBI but also factions emerged as tribal elites sought to be the true spokespersons in submitting their ethnic group’s grievances and needs.
Mahmood Mamdani says “tribalism is a reified ethnicity”. And in Kenya a narrow utilitarian value has been ascribed to ethnicity and tribalism as the parameters of resource distribution and political mobilisation. Many Kenyan politicians often decry that tribalism is the cause of many of the country’s woes. The paths of these problems pass through the narrow bridges of ethnicf and census codes.

Politics
A Dictator’s Guide: How Museveni Wins Elections and Reproduces Power in Uganda
Caricatures aside, how do President Yoweri Museveni and the National Revolutionary Movement state reproduce power? It’s been 31 years.

Recent weeks have seen increased global media attention to Uganda following the incidents surrounding the arrest of popular musician and legislator, Bobi Wine; emblematic events that have marked the shrinking democratic space in Uganda and the growing popular struggles for political change in the country.
The spotlight is also informed by wider trends across the continent over the past few years—particularly the unanticipated fall of veteran autocrats Muammar Gaddafi in Libya, Hosni Mubarak in Egypt, Yaya Jammeh in Gambia, and most recently Robert Mugabe in Zimbabwe—which led to speculation about whether Yoweri Museveni, in power in Uganda since 1986, might be the next to exit this shrinking club of Africa’s strongmen.
Yet the Museveni state, and the immense presidential power that is its defining characteristic, has received far less attention, thus obscuring some of the issues at hand. Comprehending its dynamics requires paying attention to at-least three turning points in the National Resistance Movement’s history, which resulted in a gradual weeding-out of Museveni’s contemporaries and potential opponents from the NRM, then the mobilisation of military conflict to shore up regime legitimacy, and the policing of urban spaces to contain the increasingly frequent signals of potential revolution. Together, these dynamics crystallised presidential power in Uganda, run down key state institutions, and set the stage for the recent tensions and likely many more to come.
The purge
From the late 1990s, there has been a gradual weeding out the old guard in the NRM, which through an informal “succession queue,” had posed an internal challenge to the continuity of Museveni’s rule. It all started amidst the heated debates in the late 1990s over the reform of the then decaying Movement system; debates that pitted a younger club of reformists against an older group. The resultant split led to the exit of many critical voices from the NRM’s ranks, and began to bolster Museveni’s grip on power in a manner that was unprecedented. It also opened the lid on official corruption and the abuse of public offices.
Over the years, the purge also got rid of many political and military elites—the so-called “historicals”—many of whom shared Museveni’s sense of entitlement to political office rooted in their contribution to the 1980-1985 liberation war, and some of whom probably had an eye on his seat.
By 2005 the purge was at its peak; that year the constitutional amendment that removed presidential term limits—passed after a bribe to every legislator—saw almost all insiders that were opposed to it, summarily dismissed. As many of them joined the ranks of the opposition, Museveni’s inner circle was left with mainly sycophants whose loyalty was more hinged on patronage than anything else. Questioning the president or harboring presidential ambitions within the NRM had become tantamount to a crime.
By 2011 the process was almost complete, with the dismissal of Vice President Gilbert Bukenya, whose growing popularity among rural farmers was interpreted as a nascent presidential bid, resulting in his firing.
One man remained standing, Museveni’s long-time friend Amama Mbabazi. His friendship with Museveni had long fueled rumors that he would succeed “the big man” at some point. In 2015, however, his attempt to run against Museveni in the ruling party primaries also earned him an expulsion from both the secretary general position of the ruling party as well as the prime ministerial office.
The departure of Mbabazi marked the end of any pretensions to a succession plan within the NRM. He was unpopular, with a record tainted by corruption scandals and complicity in Museveni’s authoritarianism, but his status as a “president-in-waiting” had given the NRM at least the semblance of an institution that could survive beyond Museveni’s tenure, which his firing effectively ended.
What is left now is perhaps only the “Muhoozi project,” a supposed plan by Museveni to have his son Muhoozi Kainerugaba succeed him. Lately it has been given credence by the son’s rapid rise to commanding positions in elite sections of the Ugandan military. But with an increasingly insecure Museveni heavily reliant on familial relationships and patronage networks, even the Muhoozi project appears very unlikely. What is clear, though, is that the over time, the presidency has essentially become Museveni’s property.
Exporting peace?
Fundamental to Museveni’s personalisation of power also has been the role of military conflict, both local and regional. First was the rebellion by Joseph Kony’s Lord’s Resistance Army in northern Uganda, which over its two-decade span enabled a continuation of the military ethos of the NRM. The war’s dynamics were indeed complex, and rooted in a longer history that predated even the NRM government, but undoubtedly it provided a ready excuse for the various shades of authoritarianism that came to define Museveni’s rule.
With war ongoing in the north, any challenge to Museveni’s rule was easily constructed as a threat to the peace already secured in the rest of the country, providing an absurd logic for clamping down on political opposition. More importantly, the emergency state born of it, frequently provided a justification for the president to side-step democratic institutions and processes, while at the same time rationalising the government’s disproportionate expenditure on the military. It also fed into Museveni’s self-perception as a “freedom fighter,” buttressed the personality cult around him, and empowered him to further undermine any checks on his power.
By the late 2000s the LRA war was coming to an end—but another war had taken over its function just in time. From the early 2000s, Uganda’s participation in a regional security project in the context of the War on Terror, particularly in the Somalian conflict, rehabilitated the regime’s international image and provided cover for the narrowing political space at home, as well as facilitating a further entrenchment of Museveni’s rule.
As post-9/11 Western foreign policy began to prioritise stability over political reform, Museveni increasingly postured as the regional peacemaker, endearing himself to donors while further sweeping the calls for democratic change at home under the carpet—and earning big from it.
It is easy to overlook the impact of these military engagements, but the point is that together they accentuated the role of the military in Ugandan politics and further entrenched Museveni’s power to degrees that perhaps even the NRM’s own roots in a guerrilla movement could never have reached.
Policing protest
The expulsion of powerful elites from the ruling circles and the politicisation of military conflict had just started to cement Musevenism, when a new threat emerged on the horizon. It involved not the usual antagonists—gun-toting rebels or ruling party elites—but ordinary protesters. And they were challenging the NRM on an unfamiliar battleground—not in the jungles, but on the streets: the 2011 “Walk-to-Work” protests, rejecting the rising fuel and food prices, were unprecedented.
But there is another reason the protests constituted a new threat. For long the NRM had mastered the art of winning elections. The majority constituencies were rural, and allegedly strongholds of the regime. The electoral commission itself was largely answerable to Museveni. With rural constituencies in one hand and the electoral body in the other, the NRM could safely ignore the minority opposition-dominated urban constituencies. Electoral defeat thus never constituted a threat to the NRM, at least at parliamentary and presidential levels.
But now the protesters had turned the tables, and were challenging the regime immediately after one of its landslide victories. The streets could not be rigged. In a moment, they had shifted the locus of Ugandan politics from the rural to the urban, and from institutional to informal spaces. And they were picking lessons from a strange source: North Africa. There, where Museveni’s old friend Gaddafi, among others, was facing a sudden exit under pressure from similar struggles. Things could quickly get out of hand. A strategic response was urgent.
The regime went into overdrive. The 2011 protests were snuffed out, and from then, the policing of urban spaces became central to the logic and working of the Museveni state. Draconian laws on public assembly and free speech came into effect, enacted by a rubber-stamp parliament that was already firmly in Museveni’s hands. Police partnered with criminal gangs, notably the Boda Boda 2010, to curb what was called “public disorder”—really the official name for peaceful protest. As police’s mandate expanded to include the pursuit of regime critics, its budget ballooned, and its chief, General Kale Kayihura, became the most powerful person after Museveni—before his recent dismissal.
For a while, the regime seemed triumphant. Organising and protest became virtually impossible, as urban areas came under 24/7 surveillance. Moreover, key state institutions—the parliament, electoral commission, judiciary, military and now the police—were all in the service of the NRM, and all voices of dissent had been effectively silenced. In time, the constitution would be amended again, by the NRM-dominated house, this time to remove the presidential age limit—the last obstacle to Museveni’s life presidency—followed by a new tax on social media, to curb “gossip.” Museveni was now truly invincible. Or so it seemed.
But the dreams of “walk-to-work”—the nightmare for the Museveni state—had never really disappeared, and behind the tightly-patrolled streets always lay the simmering quest for change. That is how we arrived at the present moment, with a popstar representing the widespread aspiration for better government, and a seemingly all-powerful president suddenly struggling for legitimacy. Whatever direction the current popular struggles ultimately take, what is certain is that they are learning well from history, and are a harbinger of many more to come.
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This post is from a new partnership between Africa Is a Country and The Elephant. We will be publishing a series of posts from their site once a week.
Politics
The Enduring Blind Spots of America’s Africa Policy
America should move way from making the military the face of its engagement with Africa and instead invest in deepening democracy as a principled approach rather than a convenient choice.

While Donald Trump’s administration completely neglected America-Africa relations, the blind spots bedeviling America’s Africa policy preceded his 2016 election. Correcting the systemic flaws of the past 30 years will require a complete rethink after the controversial President’s departure.
To remedy America’s Africa policy, President Joseph Biden’s administration should pivot away from counterterrorism to supporting democratic governance as a principal rather than as mere convenience, and cooperate with China on climate change, peace, and security on the continent.
America’s Africa policy
America’s post-Cold War Africa policy has had three distinct and discernible phases. The first phase was an expansionist outlook undergirded by humanitarian intervention. The second was nonintervention, a stance triggered by the experience of the first phase. The third is the use of “smart” military interventions using military allies.
The turning point for the first phase was in 1989 when a victorious America pursued an expansive foreign policy approach predicated on humanitarian intervention. Somalia became the first African test case of this policy when, in 1992, America sent almost 30,000 troops to support Operation Restore Hope’s humanitarian mission which took place against the background of the collapse of the Somalia government in 1991.
On 3-4 October 1993, during the Battle of Mogadishu, 18 US servicemen were killed in a fight with warlords who controlled Mogadishu then, and the bodies of the marines dragged through the streets of Mogadishu. The media coverage increased pressure on the politicians and six months later America withdrew from Somalia — a case of the New World Order meeting the harsh reality of civil conflict.
The chastening experience resulted in America scaling back its involvement in internal conflicts in far-flung places. The result was the emergence of the second phase — non-engagement when Rwanda’s Genocide erupted in 1994 and almost a million people died in 100 days revealed the limitations of over-correcting the Somalia experience. This “non-interference” phase lasted until the twin Nairobi and Dar es Salaam US embassy bombings by Al Qaeda in 1998.
This gave way to the third phase with the realisation that the new threat to America was no longer primarily from state actors, but from transnational non-state actors using failing states as safe havens. The 2002 National Security Strategy states: “the events of September 11, 2001, taught us that weak states . . . can pose as a great danger to our national interests as strong states.”
Counterterrorism training and equipping of African militaries is the central plank of this new security policy. As a result, counterterrorism funding has skyrocketed as has America’s military footprint in Africa. As a result, Africa has become the theatre in which the Global forever War on Terror is fought.
The counterterrorism traps
The reflexive reaction to the events of September 11 2001 spawned an interlocking web of covert and overt military and non-military operations. These efforts, initially deemed necessary and temporary, have since morphed into a self-sustaining system complete with agencies, institutions and a specialised lingo that pervades every realm of America’s engagement with Africa.
The United States Africa Command (Africom) is the vehicle of America’s engagement with the continent. Counterterrorism blurred the line between security, development, and humanitarian assistance with a host of implications including unrelenting militarisation which America’s policy establishment embraced uncritically as the sine qua non of America’s diplomacy, their obvious flaws notwithstanding. The securitisation of problems became self-fulfilling and self-sustaining.
The embrace of counterterrorism could not have come at a worse time for Africa’s efforts at democratization. In many African countries, political and military elites have now developed a predictable rule-based compact governing accession to power via elections rather than the coups of the past.
“Smart” African leaders exploited the securitised approach in two main ways: closing the political space and criminalising dissent as “terrorism” and as a source of free money. In Ethiopia, Yonatan Tesfaye, a former spokesman of the Semayawi (Blue) Party, was detained in December 2015 on charges under Article 4 of Ethiopia’s Anti-Terrorism Proclamation ((EATP), arguably one of the the country’s most severe pieces of legislation. But Ethiopia has received millions of dollars from the United States.
The Department of Defense hardly says anything in public but gives out plenty of money without asking questions about human rights and good governance. Being a counterterrorism hub has become insurance policy against any form of criticism regardless of state malfeasance.
Egypt is one such hub. According to the Congressional Research Service, for the 2021 financial year, the Trump Administration has requested a total of US$1.4 billion in bilateral assistance for Egypt, which Congress approved in 2018 and 2019. Nearly all US funding for Egypt comes from the Foreign Military Finance (FMF) account and is in turn used to purchase military equipment of US origin, spare parts, training, and maintenance from US firms.
Another country that is a counterterrorism hub in the Horn of Africa is Ethiopia. For the few months they were in charge, the Union of Islamic Courts (ICU) brought order and stability to the country. Although they were linked to only a few of Mogadishu’s local courts, on 24 December 2006, Ethiopia’s military intervened in Somalia to contain the rise of Al Shabaab’s political and military influence.
The ouster of the ICU by Ethiopia aggravated the deep historical enmity between Somalia and Ethiopia, something Al Shabaab — initially the youth wing of the ICU — subsequently exploited through a mix of Somali nationalism, Islamist ideology, and Western anti-imperialism. Al Shabaab presented themselves as the vanguard against Ethiopia and other external aggressors, providing the group with an opportunity to translate their rhetoric into action.
Ethiopia’s intervention in Somalia could not have taken place without America’s blessing. The intervention took place three weeks after General John Abizaid, the commander of US forces from the Middle East to Afghanistan, met with the then Ethiopian Prime Minister Meles Zenawi. The intervention generated a vicious self-sustaining loop. Ethiopians are in Somalia because of Al Shabaab, and Al Shabaab says they will continue fighting as long as foreign troops are inside Somalia.
America has rewarded Ethiopia handsomely for its role as the Horn of Africa’s policeman. In both Ethiopia’s and Egypt’s case, on the score of human rights and good governance, the net losers are the citizens.
Drone attacks
In keeping with the War on Terror being for forever, and despite departing Somalia in 1993, America outsourced a massive chunk of the fight against Al Shabaab to Ethiopia primarily, and later, to AMISOM. America is still engaged in Somalia where it has approximately 800 troops, including special forces that help train Somalia’s army to fight against Al Shabaab.
America carried out its first drone strike in Somalia in 2011 during President Barack Obama’s tenure. Under the Trump administration, however, the US has dramatically increased the frequency of drone attacks and loosened the oversight required to approve strike targets in Somalia. In March 2017, President Trump secretly designated parts of Somalia “areas of active hostilities”, meaning that the high-level inter-agency vetting of proposed strikes and the need to demonstrate with near certainty that civilians would not be injured or killed no longer applied. Last year, the US acknowledged conducting 63 airstrikes in the country, and in late August last year, the US admitted that it had carried out 46 strikes in 2020.
A lack of transparency regarding civilian casualties and the absence of empirical evidence that the strikes lead to a reduction in terrorism in Somalia suggest that expanding to Kenya would be ill-advised. The US has only acknowledged having caused civilian casualties in Somalia three times. Between 2016 and 2019, AFRICOM failed to conduct a single interview with civilian witnesses of its airstrikes in Somalia.
Despite this level of engagement, defeating Al Shabaab remains a remote possibility.
Containing the Chinese takeover
The Trump Administration did not have an Africa policy. The closest approximation of a policy during Trump’s tenure was stated in a speech delivered by John Bolton at a Conservative think tank decrying China’s nefarious activities in Africa. Even with a policy, where the counterterrorism framework views Africa as a problem to be solved by military means, the containing China policy views African countries as lacking the agency to act in their own interests. The problem with this argument is that it is patronising; Africans cannot decide what is right for them.
Over the last decades, while America was busy creating the interlocking counterterrorism infrastructure in Africa, China was building large-scale infrastructure across the continent. Where America sees Africa as a problem to be solved, China sees Africa as an opportunity to be seized.
Almost two years into the Trump administration, there were no US ambassadors deployed in 20 of Africa’s 54 countries even while America was maintaining a network of 29 military bases. By comparison China, has 50 embassies spread across Africa.
For three consecutive years America’s administration has proposed deep and disproportionate cuts to diplomacy and development while China has doubled its foreign affairs budget since 2011. In 2018, China increased its funding for diplomacy by nearly 16 per cent and its funding for foreign aid by almost 7 per cent.
As a show of how engagement with Africa is low on the list of US priorities, Trump appointed a luxury handbag designer as America’s ambassador to South Africa on 14 November 2018. Kenya’s ambassador is a political appointee who, when he is not sparring with Kenyans on Twitter, is supporting a discredited coal mining project.
The US anti-China arguments emphasize that China does not believe in human rights and good governance, and that China’s funding of large infrastructure projects is essentially debt-trap diplomacy. The anti-China rhetoric coming from American officials is not driven by altruism but by the realisation that they have fallen behind China in Africa.
By the middle of this century Africa’s population is expected to double to roughly two billion. Nigeria will become the second most populous country globally by 2100, behind only India. The 24-country African Continental Free Trade Agreement (AfCFTA) entered into force on 30 May 2019. AfCFTA will ultimately bring together all 55 member states of the African Union covering a market of more than 1.2 billion people — including a growing middle class — and a combined gross domestic product (GDP) of more than US$3.4 trillion.
While Chinese infrastructure projects grab the headlines, China has moved into diversifying its engagement with Africa. The country has increased its investments in Africa by more than 520 per cent over the last 15 years, surpassing the US as the largest trading partner for Africa in 2009 and becoming the top exporter to 19 out of 48 countries in sub-Saharan Africa.
Some of the legacy Chinese investments have come at a steep environmental price and with an unsustainable debt. Kenya’s Standard Gauge Railway is bleeding money and is economically unviable.
A fresh start
Supporting democratic governance and learning to cooperate with China are two areas that will make America part of Africa’s future rather than its past.
America should pivot way from making the military the most visible face of its engagement with Africa and instead invest in deepening democracy as a principled approach rather than a convenient choice.
Despite the elegy about its retreat in Africa, democracy enjoys tremendous support. According to an Afro barometer poll, almost 70 per cent of Africans say democracy is their preferred form of government. Large majorities also reject alternative authoritarian regimes such as presidential dictatorships, military rule, and one-party governments. Democracy, while still fledgling, remains a positive trend; since 2015, there have been 34 peaceful transfers of power.
However, such positive metrics go hand in hand with a worrying inclination by presidents to change constitutions to extend their terms in office. Since 2015, leaders of 13 countries have evaded or overseen the weakening of term limit restrictions that had been in place. Democracy might be less sexy, but ignoring it is perilous. There are no apps or switches to flip to arrest this slide. It requires hard work that America is well equipped to support but has chosen not to in a range of countries in recent years There is a difference between interfering in the internal affairs of a country and complete abdication or (in some cases) supporting leaders who engage in activities that are inimical to deepening democracy.
The damage wrought by the Trump presidency and neo-liberal counterterrorism policies will take time to undo, but symbolic efforts can go a long way to bridging the gap.
America must also contend with China being an indispensable player in Africa and learn to cooperate rather than compete in order to achieve optimal outcomes.
China has 2,458 military and police personnel serving in eight missions around the globe, far more than the combined contribution of personnel by the other four permanent members of the UN Security Council, Russia, the US, France and Britain. China had more than 2,400 Chinese troops take part in seven UN peacekeeping missions across the continent — most notably in Mali and South Sudan. Of the 14 current UN peacekeeping missions, seven are in Africa, consuming two-thirds of the budget.
Climate change and conflict resolution provide opportunities for cooperation. Disproportionate reliance on rain-fed agriculture and low adaptation to the adverse impact of climate change make Africa vulnerable to the damaging effects of climate change, the consequences of which will transcend Africa. Through a combination of research, development, technological transfer and multilateral investment, America and China could stave off the impact of climate change in Africa.
Politics
Hijacking Kenya’s Health Spending: Companies Linked to Powerful MP Received Suspicious Procurement Contracts
Two obscure companies linked to Kitui South MP Rachael Kaki Nyamai were paid at least KSh24.2 million to deliver medical supplies under single-source agreements at the time the MP was chair of the National Assembly’s Health Committee.

Two obscure companies linked to Kitui South MP Rachael Kaki Nyamai were paid at least KSh24.2 million to deliver medical supplies under single-source agreements at the time the MP was chair of the National Assembly’s Health Committee, an investigation by Africa Uncensored and The Elephant has uncovered.
One of the companies was also awarded a mysterious Ksh 4.3 billion agreement to supply 8 million bottles of hand sanitizer, according to the government’s procurement system.
The contracts were awarded in 2015 as authorities moved to contain the threat from the Ebola outbreak that was ravaging West Africa and threatening to spread across the continent as well as from flooding related to the El-Nino weather phenomenon.
The investigation found that between 2014 and 2016, the Ministry of Health handed out hundreds of questionable non-compete tenders related to impending disasters, with a total value of KSh176 billion including three no-bid contracts to two firms, Tira Southshore Holdings Limited and Ameken Minewest Company Limited, linked to Mrs Nyamai, whose committee oversaw the ministry’s funding – a clear conflict of interest.
Although authorities have since scrutinized some of the suspicious contracts and misappropriated health funds, the investigation revealed a handful of contracts that were not made public, nor questioned by the health committee.
Mrs Nyamai declined to comment for the story.
Nyamai has been accused by fellow members of parliament of thwarting an investigation of a separate alleged fraud. In 2016, a leaked internal audit report accused the Ministry of Health — colloquially referred to for its location at Afya House — of misappropriating funds in excess of nearly $60 million during the 2015/2016 financial year. Media stories described unauthorized suppliers, fraudulent transactions, and duplicate payments, citing the leaked document.
Members of the National Assembly’s Health Committee threatened to investigate by bringing the suppliers in for questioning, and then accused Nyamai, the committee chairperson, of blocking their probe. Members of the committee signed a petition calling for the removal of Nyamai and her deputy, but the petition reportedly went missing. Nyamai now heads the National Assembly’s Committee on Lands.
Transactions for companies owned by Mrs Nyamai’s relatives were among 25,727 leaked procurement records reviewed by reporters from Africa Uncensored, Finance Uncovered, The Elephant, and OCCRP. The data includes transactions by eight government agencies between August 2014 and January 2018, and reveals both questionable contracts as well as problems that continue to plague the government’s accounting tool, IFMIS.
The Integrated Financial Management Information System was adopted to improve efficiency and accountability. Instead, it has been used to fast-track corruption.
Hand sanitizer was an important tool in fighting transmission of Ebola, according to a WHO health expert. In one transaction, the Ministry of Health paid Sh5.4 million for “the supply of Ebola reagents for hand sanitizer” to a company owned by a niece of the MP who chaired the parliamentary health committee. However, it’s unclear what Ebola reagents, which are meant for Ebola testing, have to do with hand sanitizer. Kenya’s Ministry of Health made 84 other transactions to various vendors during this period, earmarked specifically for Ebola-related spending. These included:
- Public awareness campaigns and adverts paid to print, radio and tv media platforms, totalling at least KSh122 million.
- Printed materials totalling at least KSh214 million for Ebola prevention and information posters, contact tracing forms, technical guideline and point-of-entry forms, brochures and decision charts, etc. Most of the payments were made to six obscure companies.
- Ebola-related pharmaceutical and non-pharmaceutical supplies, including hand sanitizer
- Ebola-related conferences, catering, and travel expenses
- At least KSh15 millions paid to a single vendor for isolation beds
Hacking the System
Tira Southshore Holdings Limited and Ameken Minewest Company Limited, appear to have no history of dealing in hygiene or medical supplies. Yet they were awarded three blanket purchase agreements, which are usually reserved for trusted vendors who provide recurring supplies such as newspapers and tea, or services such as office cleaning.
“A blanket agreement is something which should be exceptional, in my view,” says former Auditor-General, Edward Ouko.
But the leaked data show more than 2,000 such agreements, marked as approved by the heads of procurement in various ministries. About KSh176 billion (about $1.7 billion) was committed under such contracts over 42 months.
“Any other method of procurement, there must be competition. And in this one there is no competition,” explained a procurement officer, who spoke generally about blanket purchase agreements on background. “You have avoided sourcing.”
The Ministry of Health did not respond to detailed questions, while Mrs Nyamai declined to comment on the contracts in question.
Procurement experts say blanket purchase agreements are used in Kenya to short-circuit the competitive process. A ministry’s head of procurement can request authority from the National Treasury to create blanket agreements for certain vendors. Those companies can then be asked by procurement employees to deliver supplies and services without competing for a tender.
Once in the system, these single-source contracts are prone to corruption, as orders and payments can simply be made without the detailed documentation required under standard procurements. With limited time and resources, government auditors say they struggle especially with reconciling purchases made under blanket agreements.
The agreements were almost always followed by standard purchase orders that indicated the same vendor and the same amount which is unusual and raises fears of duplication. Some of these transactions were generated days or weeks after the blanket agreements, many with missing or mismatched explanations. It’s unclear whether any of these actually constituted duplicate payments.
For example, the leaked data show two transactions for Ameken Minewest for Sh6.9 million each — a blanket purchase order for El Nino mitigation supplies and a standard order for the supply of chlorine tablets eight days later. Tira Southshore also had two transactions of Sh12 million each — a blanket purchase for the “supply of lab reagents for cholera,” and six days later a standard order for the supply of chlorine powder.
Auditors say both the amounts and the timing of such payments are suspicious because blanket agreements should be paid in installments.
“It could well be a duplicate, using the same information, to get through the process. Because you make a blanket [agreement], then the intention is to do duplicates, so that it can pass through the cash payee phase several times without delivering more,” said Ouko upon reviewing some of the transactions for Tira Southshore. This weakness makes the IFMIS system prone to abuse, he added.
In addition, a KSh4 billion contract for hand sanitizer between the Health Ministry’s Preventive and Promotive Health Department and Tira Southshore was approved as a blanket purchase agreement in April 2015. The following month, a standard purchase order was generated for the same amount but without a description of services — this transaction is marked in the system as incomplete. A third transaction — this one for 0 shillings — was generated 10 days later by the same procurement employee, using the original order description: “please supply hand sanitizers 5oomls as per contract Moh/dpphs/dsru/008/14-15-MTC/17/14-15(min.no.6).
Reporters were unable to confirm whether KSh4 billion was paid by the ministry. The leaked data doesn’t include payment disbursement details, and the MOH has not responded to requests for information.
“I can assure you there’s no 4 billion, not even 1 billion. Not even 10 million that I have ever done, that has ever gone through Tira’s account, through that bank account,” said the co-owner of the company, Abigael Mukeli. She insisted that Tira Southshore never had a contract to deliver hand sanitizer, but declined to answer specific questions. It is unclear how a company without a contract would appear as a vendor in IFMIS, alongside contract details.
It is possible that payments could end up in bank accounts other than the ones associated with the supplier. That is because IFMIS also allowed for the creation of duplicate suppliers, according to a 2016 audit of the procurement system. That audit found almost 50 cases of duplication of the same vendor.
“Presence of active duplicate supplier master records increases the possibility of potential duplicate payments, misuse of bank account information, [and] reconciliation issues,” the auditors warned.
They also found such blatant security vulnerabilities as ghost and duplicate login IDs, deactivated requirements for password resets, and remote access for some procurement employees.

Credit: Edin Pasovic/OCCRP
IFMIS was promoted as a solution for a faster procurement process and more transparent management of public funds. But the way the system was installed and used in Kenya compromised its extolled safeguards, according to auditors.
“There is a human element in the system,” said Ouko. “So if the human element is also not working as expected then the system cannot be perfect.”
The former head of the internal audit unit at the health ministry, Bernard Muchere, confirmed in an interview that IFMIS can be manipulated.
Masking the Setup
Ms Mukeli, the co-owner of Tira Southshore and Ameken Minewest, is the niece of Mrs Nyamai, according to local sources and social media investigation, although she denied the relationship to reporters. According to her LinkedIn profile, Ms Mukeli works at Kenya Medical Supplies Agency, a medical logistics agency under the Ministry of Health, now embroiled in a COVID procurement scandal.
Ms Mukeli’s mother, who is the MP’s elder sister, co-owns Icpher Consultants Company Ltd., which shares a post office box with Tira Southshore and Mematira Holdings Limited, which was opened in 2018, is co-owned by Mrs Nyamai’s husband and daughter, and is currently the majority shareholder of Ameken Minewest. Documents also show that a company called Icpher Consultants was originally registered to the MP, who was listed as the beneficial owner.
Co-owner of Tira Southshore Holdings Limited, Abigael Mukeli, described the company to reporters as a health consulting firm. However Tira Southshore also holds an active exploration license for the industrial mining in a 27-square-kilometer area in Kitui County, including in the restricted South Kitui National Reserve. According to government records, the application for mining limestone in Mutomo sub-county — Nyamai’s hometown — was initiated in 2015 and granted in 2018.
Mukeli is also a minority owner of Ameken Minewest Company Limited, which also holds an active mining license in Mutomo sub-county of Kitui, in an area covering 135.5 square kilometers. Government records show that the application for the mining of limestone, magnesite, and manganese was initiated in 2015 and granted in 2018. Two weeks after the license was granted, Mematira Holdings Limited was incorporated, with Nyamai’s husband and daughter as directors. Today, Mematira Holdings is the majority shareholder of Ameken Minewest, which is now in the process of obtaining another mining license in Kitui County.
According to public documents, Ameken also dabbles in road works and the transport of liquefied petroleum gas. And it’s been named by the Directorate of Criminal Investigations in a fuel fraud scheme.
Yet another company, Wet Blue Proprietors Logistics Ltd., shares a phone number with Tira Southshore and another post office box with Icpher Consultants Company Ltd., according to a Kenya National Highway Authority list of pre-qualified vendors.
Mrs Nyamai and her husband co-own Wet Blue. The consulting company was opened in 2010, the same year that the lawmaker completed her PhD work in HIV/AIDS education in Denmark.
Wet Blue was licenced in 2014 as a dam contractor and supplier of water, sewerage, irrigation and electromechanical works. It’s also listed by KENHA as a vetted consultant for HIV/AIDS mitigation services, together with Icpher Consultants.
It is unclear why these companies are qualified to deliver all these services simultaneously.
“Shell companies receiving contracts in the public sector in Kenya have enabled corruption, fraud and tax evasion in the country. They are literally special purpose vehicles to conduct ‘heists’ and with no track record to deliver the public goods, works or services procured,” said Sheila Masinde, executive director of Transparency International-Kenya.
Both MOH and Ms Mukeli refused to confirm whether the ordered supplies were delivered.
Mrs Nyamai also co-owns Ameken Petroleum Limited together with Alfred Agoi Masadia and Allan Sila Kithome.
Mr Agoi is an ANC Party MP for Sabatia Constituency in Vihiga County, and was on the same Health Committee as Mrs Nyamai, a Jubilee Party legislator. Mr Sila is a philanthropist who is campaigning for the Kitui County senate seat in the 2022 election.
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Juliet Atellah at The Elephant and Finance Uncovered in the UK contributed reporting.
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