Politics
Pax Savannah: Adjusting Kenyan Foreign Policy for Prosperity
6 min read.A Pax Savanna doctrine would end the ambiguity of historical non-alignment that makes Kenya “Look East” today and “Look West” tomorrow.

One of the most confounding aspects of Kenyan foreign policy is the fact that there is generally no official doctrine guiding the conduct of the country’s external relations or its decision making. Kenyan international relations aficionados are left to speculate on the actions of the leadership with regards to questions of economics, peace, migration, climate, and culture.
As for the citizens, there is increasing disappointment with the conduct of the country’s foreign affairs due to numerous faux pas, an unresponsive officialdom, minimal camaraderie with fellow African countries on issues, and significant dalliance with the West on issues of global concern.
Remarkably, this could be because Kenya’s current foreign policy document published in 2014 makes no mention of the word “doctrine” despite it being the guiding framework for the country’s diplomatic engagements.
Foreign policy doctrine is the overarching justification grounding the rules upon which political leadership handles situations or explains the actions of one country towards another.
Subsequently, the justifications provided, or the activities carried out in the diplomatic community, tend to confound many observers, be they local or international. For example, there are numerous interpretations of what “pragmatism” means in Kenyan foreign policy. For some, it is “a cunning and ruthless pursuit of her national goals irrespective of ideals” while for others it is mainly an “emphasis on economic considerations when tackling national challenges”, among other interpretations.
In November 2022, President William Ruto’s international relations dealings were reported in the news as both “Look East” and “Look West”, and also as the “Here and There Diplomacy” characterized by conflicting signals, questionable or controversial conduct, and poor communication.
Kenyan foreign policy proclamations and practice, therefore, contradict the country’s projection of consistency in pursuit of stability within its national, regional, continental, and global engagements even while possessing a very realist understanding of threat in its traditionalist diplomatic conduct.
This is despite attaining a “pluralist dividend” following promulgation of the Constitution of Kenya 2010. It is therefore important to recognize that an understanding of opportunities from a post-modernist context can increase the benefits of including non-state actors in Kenya’s foreign policy.
In a sense, their inclusion would infuse new ways of thinking about global power relations, increase the country’s understanding of its potential sphere of influence, encourage consideration of entities outside of officialdom, and the possibility of novel ideas in the country’s external relations.
Kenyan diplomacy in a multipolar world
Shifts in polarity within global developments seem to be a new feature of the post-COVID and post-truth world.
The Russia-Ukraine conflict, the rise of China, disruptive technology, inflationary shocks, continued troubles in the Middle East, energy challenges, inadequate growth, an unexceptional America, demographic pressures, and a strain on natural resources seem to have ushered in a multipolar world by means of force; force, in this instance, being both natural and man-made events resulting in crisis in which one disaster builds into another, making situations worse. This context of polycrisis is particularly affecting power distribution within the international system.
Shifts in polarity within global developments seem to be a new feature of the post-COVID and post-truth world.
A modernization of Kenyan foreign policy is, therefore, required to establish a transformative diplomacy that can consider new nuances, increase sophistication in negotiation, and actualize greater responsiveness in the country’s conduct of its external relations.
Kenya must begin imagining itself on its own terms instead of based on Western “exceptionalist” predetermination illustrated by, for example, the Council on Foreign Relations (CFR) description of the country as an “anchor state” that provides stability.
This categorization is on account of the strategic confidence Kenya offers the US based on its financial services and infrastructural connectedness that make it a “hub of its subregion”. Further, this is due to Kenya’s promotion of regional peace and security among its neighbours in tandem with US/Western interests.
However, this perspective limits Kenya’s ability to become an African exemplar state; the appropriate democratic model within its immediate sphere of influence which is primarily the East African Community (EAC) and the greater Horn of Africa region.
As such, developing a doctrine would help pursue international peace and prosperity as championed by Kenya in response to an increasingly multipolar world through a multilateralism that focuses on building profitable relations as a means to building alliances within the savanna climate countries.
Peace in the savanna equals peace in the world
Generally, Kenya’s diplomatic pillars (peace diplomacy, economic diplomacy, diaspora diplomacy, environmental diplomacy, cultural diplomacy) are captured as a list of priorities, that is, a shared common purpose with the international community as opposed to being a defined, inherent framework for the country’s global ambitions.
In this sense, Kenya identifies issues of concern, spaces for action, institutions to influence, and opportunities for collaboration without giving a clear picture or viewpoint of what a harmonious world looks like according to its national interests.
Considering its history, Kenya must, therefore, develop a doctrine that offers guidance on domestic linkages to its foreign affairs, foundations in regional integration, prospects for new diplomatic constituencies, efforts towards modernization, and responses to emerging threats – essentially, explaining the centrality of Kenyan external relations logic in building profitable relations as a means of acquiring positive and sustainable alliances that benefit the world.
Kenya’s understanding of redistributed power requires a geostrategic reorganization of its motivations for cultural, economic, military, or political distinctiveness towards making an impression on the Savanna Climate Countries.
By distinguishing The Savanna as the space within which to optimize its global footprint, Kenya will be able to deploy an “Africa plus World” strategy that will harness the maritime advantages of the Indian Ocean Rim as a portal to increased economic collaboration in trade, investment, and the development of the country.
A Pax Savanna doctrine offers the language and reasoning of a “looking worldwide” foreign policy position that searches for partnership from all corners of the globe while ending the ambiguity of historical non-alignment that makes Kenya “Look East” today and “Look West” tomorrow.
Such a construct of objectives – a policy imagination of Kenya’s place in the world – must consider the geopolitical ways and means to become a part of either the current global economic system, the emerging alternative world order or, better still, a continental renaissance architecture.
While it interacts with the Bretton Woods system, the country should consider whether it will be a part of BRICKS (Brazil, Russia, India, China, Kenya, South Africa) or BRICSEA (Brazil, Russia, India, China, Southern and Eastern Africa).
This can only be achieved if the country works in tandem with the EAC to become a fast-growing economy that can, together with the BRICS countries, participate in dominating the world by 2050. EAC members’ engagement would be on equal terms with the BRICS member countries based on their combined advantage in terms of land mass, population, and GDP.
Ultimately, through whatever promising form or formation of international politics, Kenya should seek to take up the mantle of championing African prosperity, legitimacy, and welfare both for its own benefit and for the benefit of its continental compatriots.
A Pax Savanna doctrine offers the language and reasoning of a “looking worldwide” foreign policy position.
In doing so, Kenya would provide clarity concerning its participation in the African Continental Free Trade Area (AfCFTA), its intervention in Haiti, and justifications for Double Taxation Agreements (DTAs) or Free Trade Agreements (FTAs), among other actions.
Projection of influence in intergovernmental forums such as the Group of 20 (G20), the principal organisations of the United Nations (the UN General Assembly, the Security Council, the Economic and Social Council, the International Court of Justice, the UN Secretariat, and the Trusteeship Council) and coalitions such as the Group of 77 (G77), among others, must then be channelled towards achieving a Pax Savanna, an “Africa plus World” strategy that focuses on the Indian Ocean Rim as a theatre of specific transformational interest for Kenya.
Transformative diplomacy initiatives as rejuvenation
Non-state actors tend to be viewed or engaged with from a significant distance in Kenyan foreign policy. For instance, in and of their own right, professionals are only mentioned or acknowledged once in the entire 2014 foreign policy document.
This may be a consequence of previous clashes on questions concerning human rights as seen on issues regarding the Kenyan cases at the International Criminal Court (ICC) and the handling of suspects in the ongoing global war on terror.
Regrettably, these lenses of contestation are similarly applied to non-state actors in a whole range of other global spaces such institutional reforms, tax governance, debt sustainability, regional integration, climate change, trade advocacy, consumer rights, gender responsiveness, non-communicable diseases, and civil protection, i.e. emergency response.
Unlike the diaspora whose geolocational and financial influence are well captured (to the point of a ministerial evolution that has seen the creation of a state department for diaspora affairs), the vast human resource experience(s) and occupational positioning outside officialdom are yet to be truly harnessed for purposes of informing the national development agenda. Experts, scholars, practitioners, and students in spaces outside established diplomatic bureaucracy are peripheral entities in Kenyan foreign affairs policymaking.
Non-state actors tend to be viewed or engaged with from a significant distance in Kenyan foreign policy.
Adopting transformation as restorative diplomatic force of interactions will therefore champion more inclusion of non-state actors or professionals in decision-making, thereby helping to move current foreign policy away from its exclusive traditions, practices, and its policymaking roots to a more productive working relationship despite the differences that may emerge from time to time.
Such an approach would encourage the Kenyan government to embrace various platforms that expand access to expertise from the wider diplomatic professional community and from among its citizens. It would offer the government the opportunity to support the inclusion of new foreign policy ideas, and avenues for contribution by non-state actors thereby ending their marginalisation.
Deliberate mapping of Kenyan citizens in academia, non-governmental organisations (international and local), staffers within various diplomatic offices in Kenya, including the United Nations, the private sector, and faith-based organisations, among others, is critical in building support and partnerships in the national interest.
Moreover, such an initiative would infuse new ideas on improving Kenya’s foreign policy through emerging institutions such as the Foreign Service Institute (FSI), National Defence University (NDU) of Kenya, and the International Relations Society of Kenya (IRSK) to build bridges across existing tensions to prevent reversals and orchestrate diplomatic transformation for the modern age.
This would serve as a means of moving beyond the simple recognition and inclusion of multiple actors in decision-making to the establishment of an “Emergence Doctrine” of “The Exemplar State” to become a force for good in Africa and the world.
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Politics
To Kenyan Youth: You My Children of Battle, Are Your Own Heroes
My generation grew up very close to colonialism but with the false impression that independence had made us exempt from it. We are products of the colonial curriculum, never exposed to alternative thinking. We should listen to the young people tell us what they are seeing and what we should do about the problems caused by the system that trained us.

Many with a decent knowledge of neocolonialism and global racism may have been shocked at the amount of Western decadence – from Anglo-American political stars and billionaires – that has flowed into Kenya in the first few months of President Ruto’s tenure.
Without a public discussion, the ban on Genetically Modified Organisms was lifted by decree, with a fairly racist caveat that since we Kenyans are dying of famine anyway, we need GMO foods to fill the gap. Weeks later, this dystopian logic would be openly articulated by the Trade Cabinet Secretary who, in a poor attempt at sarcasm, said in the midst of the morbid laughs of his elite audience: “By just being in this country, you are a candidate for death. And because there are so many things competing to kill you, there is nothing wrong with adding GMOs to that list.”
The introduction of GMOs is just one aspect of Ruto’s dream of turning Kenya into an industrialised country. During his ten-year tenure as Deputy President, Ruto opened hundreds of TVET (Technical and Vocational Education and Training) colleges around the country, even as he boasted of pursuing a Masters and later on a PhD. In between, he repeatedly made remarks that technical and vocational training was better than university education, and that history and other arts and social sciences were teaching Kenyans useless knowledge about Vasco da Gama.
The problem is that a proper history lesson would have taught the president that what we learned in geography in school was simply false. Being only a few years younger than the president, I suspect he believed the usual lies we were taught in geography, which was that the West has “developed” economies because of industrialisation. It was a lie even I believed until, as a lecturer, I witnessed the proletarianisation of doctors and university lecturers. I started to ask questions as to why the few professionals who were employed in Kenya were being reduced to paper-pushing bureaucrats, as the many who were unemployed were insulted, reduced to working in the service industry, or encouraged to seek employment abroad.
After years of listening and researching, I finally understood that the Gilded Age when the US and the UK industrialised was also a time of agony for the poor, but also of the gallant fight by workers for better living and working conditions. More than that, the neoliberalisation that was oppressing professionals was a symptom of the same decay happening in the West.
It’s amazing how the education system successfully compartmentalised our minds, because even though we were told that Europe colonised Africa to obtain raw materials for their industries, it never occurred to me that our colonisation was what paid for the industrialisation Europe was now boasting to us about. In any case, raising that question would have got me physically beaten up by teachers. Mental compartments always require violence. So the violence of the school system had successfully taught me not to draw any lessons outside of what would help us pass examinations. And now I remember that I hated geography when I was in high school.
For many people of my generation, especially people like the president who joined politics in their youth, this Damascus moment has never happened. We have kept holding on to the illusion of development, and the lie that we can either achieve it through social inclusion informed by Enlightenment human rights philosophy, or through industrialisation, through the application of free-market liberalism – no matter the cost – or through a more personalised form of Christianity. The minds of otherwise highly educated Kenyans seem not to notice the chaos of evangelical America, the buffoonery of the British Tories, or, on the other hand, the hypocrisy of “wokeism” and inclusion in the Democrats in the US and the Labour Party expunged of the Corbyn flank.
What explains this hubris?
This question has haunted me for the last 15 years. I have been frustrated by the fact that the same people with whom I went to school seem to think that Kenya’s problems are only with the Kenyans themselves. Very few of us know of Frantz Fanon or Walter Rodney, and those who do will still pivot towards inclusion, rather than radical politics, or towards outright conservatism. It has been a lonely journey of looking for people who will not avoid discussing imperialism and racism in our colonial institutions. Instead, people prefer to talk of politicians being corrupt and of the people being ignorant, because that helps them avoid the role of the middle class in Kenyan political and economic life.
In our discussions, haunted by this question, I asked Mordecai Ogada if the children born in the late ’60s and in the ’70s had underestimated the impact of colonialism despite not being born during colonial rule.
This is what he said:
“We grew up in the era where the best schools were the ones the wazungu went to. The best school was the Prince of Wales [Nairobi School] or Duke of York [Lenana School]. The best hospital was the wazungu hospital [Nairobi Hospital]. There was distinction in being a church member at All Saints Cathedral. You needed to attend church at Holy Family Basillica. So we grew up with that aroma of colonialism. It had died, but its stench was still hanging around. We grew up with it, thinking we’re independent, but no.
We’re actually in denial, because to escape from colonialism, you have to accept that it is there. You can’t solve a problem without admitting that it is there. Look at how many years it has taken to just have people accept that there is racism in conservation. Yet everywhere you look, it’s right there in your face. It’s not subtle or covert. It’s overt and in your face.”
My generation grew up very close to colonialism but with the false impression that independence had made us exempt from it. We were therefore taught the colonial curriculum – like about industrial revolution being the gold standard of economic development – and we were never exposed to alternative thinking.
It is a tragedy, because we were too young to know otherwise.
The problem is that we who think this way are teaching another generation to think the same way. I was surprised when some young students of economics responded to my discussion of Thatcher’s destruction of the working class in the 1980s with the slogan “Kenya is a capitalist country and communism does not work”. These are youth born in the 2000s, long after the structural adjustment programmes (which they are not taught about).
People prefer to talk of politicians being corrupt and of the people being ignorant, because that helps them avoid the role of the middle class in Kenyan political and economic life.
That is how we arrive at a president with the ambitious plan to industrialise Kenya and hoping to get support from the very countries that de-industrialised in the ’80s because they feared democracy and a vibrant working class more than they feared de-industrialization. The president is stuck in the geography curriculum of the 1970s, being advised by economists who admire the University of Chicago graduates who wreaked havoc in Latin America in the 1980s, with the religious fervour of the evangelical movement that rose up as a backlash against the civil rights movement of the same period. The president’s biggest detractors are the civil society who are using the victories of the ’90s as the blueprint for freedom – and some of them, especially in the media, are stoking the fires for a constitutional meltdown.
Kenya is in an intellectual time warp.
Binyavanga Wainaina continually lamented about this intellectual stagnation. In an article titled Schooling for small minds, he observed that Kenya had become this country that crushed any form of creativity and independent thinking. He said, “We took the colonial system, which was designed to produce dutiful people who don’t ask questions, and perfected it.” In a YouTube series titled We must free our imaginations, which extend this thinking, he said:
“The same colonial school that said ‘bring the obedient African children so that you can become clerks, and then we drum a syllabus into you so that you sing God save the queen’, is still the same idea [as telling us] that you don’t have an imagination. You can’t imagine outside those ma-parameters. You are scared of imagining. Where that’s happening is in the middle class. Down in the villages in Africa, guys are imagining and doing all kinds of shit. But who has the opinion? The middle class.”
The century-old industrial “revolution” as an economic blueprint is right there in the ma-parameters. We’ve tried the human rights model of constitutionalism, and it has tamed the political class, but now we have transformed it into an end in itself. We are crazy for replacing our education system based on philosophies that informed the evangelical “family values” and Booker T. Washington schools.
My generation grew up very close to colonialism but with the false impression that independence had made us exempt from it.
We need new ways to see our history and new inventions. Human rights is good, but it doesn’t address these problems. Singing about the “secular state” is a poor substitute for a revolutionary theology. Those calling those who disagree with Azimio tribalists, and those who disagree with the Kenya Kwanza government “rich idlers and Twitterati with a bowl of pizza and fish fingers” or “upper deck”, are just the same middle class trading insults with each other. Worse, those insults are really about who has the right credentials to talk about the majority of Kenyans. One side waves human rights, the other brandishes elections.
Yet what that whole strata of society really needs is a major reckoning, a repentance and a dismantling of the colonial pedestals in our minds. Kenyans of my generation – and that includes the president – must unlearn what we were taught in school. And perhaps we should not be so presumptuous as to believe that we know the right solutions to apply to the problems caused by the same system that trained us. I wish we would listen to the young people tell us what they are seeing and what we should do. As Binyavanga said, we need new ideas and new stories. Perhaps we should have the audacity to say to Kenya’s youth the words of Nikki Giovanni: “You my children of battle, are your own heroes. You must invent your own games and teach us old ones how to play.”
Politics
Hijacking Food Policies to Feed Agribusiness
AGRA’s activities in Africa have resulted in increased hunger and deprivation yet the foreign-funded organization continues to be used to exert undue influence on African government policies in a bid to make them agribusiness-friendly.

Donors, governments and business leaders had another lacklustre African Green Revolution Forum (AGRF) this year from 5 to 8 September in Dar es Salaam, Tanzania. There was little fanfare, few major announcements and no hint of meaningful input from small-scale farmers, the supposed beneficiaries of the erstwhile Green Revolution for Africa. Tanzanian farmers’ request for a seat at the table, in the form of a more critical side event, was denied.
Some say that if you don’t have a seat at the table, you are probably on the menu. That’s the way Zambian farmers are feeling. Zambia is one of several countries targeted for the so-called “agro-poles”, 250,000-acre blocks of land often taken from local communities to attract agribusiness investment. On the menu indeed.
“Where are the farmers?” asked Tanzanian farmer leader Juma Shabani at a sharply critical August 30 press conference organised by the Alliance for Food Sovereignty in Africa (AFSA). “They are clearly excluded in the coming 2023 AGRF meeting in Tanzania, a country with more than 70 per cent of its population engaged in agriculture.”
At the August 30 press conference, farm leaders from Kenya, Uganda, Mali, Zimbabwe and Zambia denounced the failures of the Alliance for a Green Revolution in Africa (now simply known by its acronym, AGRA, after it withdrew the words “green revolution” from its name). And they decried the undue influence the foreign-funded organisation has on African government policies.
“AGRA’s direct intervention and influence over African government policies, particularly in seeds and biosafety, have tilted the scales in favour of commercial seed providers and Green Revolution technologies,” reads the AFSA press release. “This level of interference has squeezed out alternative voices and approaches like agroecology.”
This is the third consecutive year the food sovereignty alliance and its allies have protested Green Revolution proponents’ zealous faith in their seeds, fertilisers, and pesticides. The only changes farmers have seen are cosmetic. The words “green revolution” have been removed from the forum, which is now called the African Food Systems Summit. And AGRA now stands, literally, for nothing. But Green Revolution policies were on full display at the Summit, despite their proven failures.
Hunger has grown to alarming levels across Sub-Saharan Africa. AGRA’s 13 focus countries have seen rising deprivation as the heavily promoted seeds and fertilisers fail to catalyse a productivity revolution. The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation and other AGRA sponsors promised in 2006 to double productivity and incomes while halving food insecurity by 2020. Instead, the number of chronically hungry has risen by 50 per cent in AGRA countries, according to the United Nations.
Summit host Tanzania has seen the number of “undernourished” jump 34 per cent since it joined AGRA. An estimated 59 per cent of Tanzanians suffer moderate or severe levels of food insecurity.
The hungry and food insecure, many of them small-scale farmers, didn’t get seats at the AGRF table, but they are on the menu as the Green Revolutionaries plan their next corporate-backed effort to displace small-scale farmers with industralised farms.
The latest assault is being led by the African Development Bank (AfDB) under its “Feed Africa” initiative. It is supported by the Gates Foundation, the US Agency for International Development (USAID) and AGRA itself, which under its self-proclaimed “AGRA 3.0” strategy is serving as the catalyst in pressing African governments to make their policies more friendly to agribusiness.
A damning donor evaluation last year acknowledged that AGRA had failed to achieve any of its objectives in improving farmer productivity and welfare. But, noted evaluators, it was often successful at changing policies. So AGRA has intensified its work to influence farm policies.
Zambia, which recently rejoined AGRA, is a particular target, and AGRA 3.0 seems willing to hijack more democratic policy efforts.
Zambia had been developing its second National Agriculture Investment Plan (NAIP II) since 2021, the basic framework for agricultural development. After much productive public consultation during the evaluation of NAIP I, Zambian advocates and farmers were surprised to be presented with a completely different investment framework written with support from FAO-sponsored consultants and the resident AGRA consultant who has been attached to the Ministry of Agriculture since 2020.
The Comprehensive Agriculture Transformation Support Programme (CATSP) was in no way based on the emerging consensus and recommendations from the NAIP I evaluation. The massive document calls for a broad set of pro-business policy reforms designed “to enable the private sector” to take over agricultural production and marketing.
The focus is on commodity value chains for a narrow set of commercial crops. Look for more maize, soybeans and wheat, not the sorts of nutritious, climate-resilient foods such as millet and sorghum. The plan expands the development of 250,000-acre “farm blocks” for industrial farms, often on land taken from local farmers and communities.
A damning donor evaluation last year acknowledged that AGRA had failed to achieve any of its objectives in improving farmer productivity and welfare.
Green Mbozi, the Permanent Secretary for Technical Services in the Zambian Ministry of Agriculture, told participants at a meeting convened by the Economics Association of Zambia that “inefficient smallholder farmers will be phased out (stop producing) to pave way for large and commercial farmers to produce efficiently to lower the cost of food”. The CATSP document and its annexed Policy Implementation Instruments are being rushed through, with a “national validation” scheduled for 5 October 2023, a move seen by many grassroots organisations as unfortunate.
These are the kinds of policies that come from AGRA’s top-down approaches to policy development. The new strategy was prepared by foreign consultants with limited stakeholder consultation. Most smallholder farmers, civil society organisations and faith-based institutions were not at that table, and the few who were either were brought in by cooperating partners or were known to be Green Revolution allies. The final document reflects this exclusion, as smallholder interests are not represented.
USAID has shown its commitment to supporting the plan’s implementation once it is approved. The African Development Bank is financing such schemes across the continent, as the international NGO GRAIN documented in a recent report. Its director, former Nigerian Agriculture Minister Akinwumi Adesina, boasted that African agriculture will be “the new oil”.
Judging by the strong words at the food sovereignty alliance’s August 30 press conference, African farmers will not tolerate another extractive corporate scheme that fails to benefit the poor. They again demanded that private and bilateral donors recognise the proven failures of the Green Revolution approach and shift their support to farmer-centred ecological agriculture. Farmers working with agroecologists are getting far better results than AGRA ever did.
The simple and low-cost innovation of “green manure cover-cropping” has scientists working with some 15 million small-scale maize farmers in Africa to plant local varieties of trees and nitrogen-fixing food crops in their maize fields, tripling maize yields at no cost to the farmer.
Some Zambian farmers have shifted from failing Green Revolution approaches. Organisations such as Kasisi Agricultural Training Center stopped promoting such practices when their agronomists discovered farmers were paying higher input costs but getting little in return. Kasisi now trains farmers in organic farming, with far better results.
The Zambian Alliance for Agroecology and Biodiversity works with a wide network of local “seed savers”, trying to halt the disappearance of local varieties of food crops lost to Green Revolution subsidies and promotion. They are restoring diversity to farmers’ fields.
African farmers will not tolerate another extractive corporate scheme that fails to benefit the poor.
As Mamadou Goïta of Mali’s Institute for Research and Promotion of Alternatives in Development said at the August 30 press conference, “Farmer groups have never accepted these technological fixes. People have been working on their own food systems, to push back on what AGRA was planting.”
“Africans love agriculture, it is the backbone of our economy,” said event moderator Susan Nakacwa, of the international NGO GRAIN. “But when it comes to agricultural policies, this love is not shown back to farmers.”
It is time for donors to take small-scale farmers off the menu. Allowing foreign consultants to hijack policies developed over years by the full range of stakeholders – including farmer groups – as they have in Zambia, is an insult to Zambia’s sovereignty and democratic participation. USAID and other donors should stop putting Zambia’s farmers on the menu, threatening their lands and livelihoods.
Give them back their seat at the table. Better still, let them into the kitchen to plan their own sumptuous menu of African foods that respect local cultures, restore the land, and make farmers more resilient to climate change, not more vulnerable.
They could even decide to use a few Green Revolution ingredients. Or not. It would be their choice. That’s food sovereignty: the right to choose free of corporate pressure and foreign influence.
Politics
Citizenship is a Right, Not a Political Tool
If it appears that citizenship by birth can be granted to groups on the basis of discretion and not as a legal right, that can undermine the perceived authority of the constitution and the rule of law more generally.

On 28 July 2023, President William Ruto declared the Pemba community to be an “ethnic community of Kenya”. At a citizenship award ceremony in Kilifi County he read aloud from a proclamation issued in January, which states:
“I, William Samoei Ruto, President and the commander-in-Chief of the Kenya Defence Forces, having considered the said petition and the consequent Parliamentary Report in light of the Constitution of Kenya, our National Values, and the Principles of Governance, by the authority vested in me by the Constitution, do recognise, proclaim and order:
1. That Kenyans of Pemba heritage constitute a community that is one of the ethnic communities of Kenya.”
This is the second group which a president has formally proclaimed to be a tribe or ethnic community of Kenya in recent years. Uhuru Kenyatta did the same for Kenyan Asians in 2017, and gave less formal forms of recognition to other groups in speeches and statements. In 2016, registration of the Makonde people was declared to be compulsory following a cabinet decision, and Uhuru handed out certificates of citizenship to community members at a function in 2017. Uhuru also supported citizenship for Shona people and in 2020, issued certificates and ID cards to them at a public ceremony on Jamhuri Day.
But citizenship is not granted to groups. Indeed, there is much that is not well understood about how citizenship functions in Kenya.
Citizenship is the relationship between an individual and the state. It is a social contract and a symbiotic relationship where the state recognizes the rights and entitlements of an individual while at the same time the individual recognizes their responsibilities to the state. It also expresses the relationship of an individual to a national community. It is the legal recognition of belonging. When presidents talk of granting citizenship to communities, they are affirming that belonging in order to right some historical injustices. But they are also (perhaps unintentionally) giving a misleading interpretation of the way that citizenship law works in Kenya – or indeed in most other countries.
In this article we examine the use of presidential decrees of nationality, and their relationship not just to a politics of belonging, but to the laws of Kenya.
How citizenship status really works: by birth vs by registration
Citizenship status derives from the Constitution of Kenya 2010, the Citizenship and Immigration Act 2011, and the regulations that define the procedures to apply for recognition or grant of citizenship. It is important to distinguish between citizenship by birth and citizenship by registration.
Citizenship by birth means citizenship that is automatically attributed to a child at birth. It does not require an application but is acquired simply by operation of the law. Of course, a person who is attributed citizenship by birth will in practice later have to apply for a national ID card to be able to prove the status when needed, but if the relevant facts are established, the person cannot in law be denied the documents. According to the constitution, a person is a citizen by birth if either their mother or father is a Kenyan citizen. Birth on Kenyan territory does not give any rights to Kenyan citizenship.
The next step, of course, is to prove that either the mother or father is Kenyan, and this is where it may become complicated for those whose parents do not have identity documents. The burden of proof of the relevant facts is on the individual who claims to be a citizen. This is not always obvious. On the one hand, there are real challenges in interpreting the law on automatic or voluntary acquisition of Kenyan citizenship upon independence in 1963, and up until an amendment to the constitution in 1985 that removed rights to citizenship based on birth in Kenya. This amendment was stated to be retroactive to the date of independence – against the general principles of the rule of law. On the other hand, very many people who are undoubtedly Kenyan citizens in law have historically held no identity documents.
Citizenship by registration, as opposed to by birth, is citizenship that a person who is not already a citizen has to apply for. It depends on an administrative process. For some people, citizenship by registration is available (in principle) on simple application, for example if they have been married to a Kenyan for seven years.
However, for others the process is much more discretionary and can be refused on a wide range of grounds. For example, someone who is a legal resident of Kenya for seven years can apply for citizenship, but must satisfy a list of conditions including being “capable of making a substantive contribution to the progress or advancement in any area of national development within Kenya” (section 13 of the Citizenship and Immigration Act). Again, the burden of proof that the conditions are fulfilled lies with the individual.
Very many people who are undoubtedly Kenyan citizens in law have historically held no identity documents.
As we know, members of some communities who have been living in Kenya for a very long time were not previously recognised as Kenyan. In recognition of this, the Citizenship and Immigration Act 2011 created special temporary procedures to enable such a person to apply to register as a citizen. These procedures were for people who have been living in Kenya continuously since independence in 1963 and who did not have a claim to citizenship in Kenya or any other state, or who did not hold an identity document recognising citizenship in any country. Descendants of people fulfilling these conditions were also eligible. The term “stateless” is commonly used to refer to such people in Kenya (although the law is more complicated). Just as with a normal application for registration, the process is an individual application, the burden of proof of the relevant facts is with the individual, and no membership of a community is mentioned.
There was a legal window of five years for this process, and in that time practically no use was made of it – a few people tried to apply, but there was no procedure in place to treat the applications. Diana Gichengo of the Kenya Human Rights Commission at the time was quoted in the Daily Nation (4 October 2016) saying, “It is unfortunate that the deadline has elapsed without a single person being registered.” It was thanks to the efforts of the Makonde community and their famous march, and the civil society groups that supported them, including the KHRC, that the interior secretary agreed to take action and to extend the registration deadline, using the additional three-year extension available in the law. This extension expired in 2019.
What has been the procedure applied in recent cases?
In none of the cases of the Makonde, the Shona, or the Pemba – or Kenyan Asians – did the president “grant” citizenship to all members of those communities. Instead, the presidential declarations, preceded by a parliamentary committee report in the Pemba case, and lobbying from civil society (as well as the UNHCR), generated the political will to find the legal means to resolve their statelessness. It is still the case that every individual had or will have to go through their own process, and provide proof of their own birth, parentage and so on.
The nature of these registrations was different in each case. The Makonde and Shona people were registered as citizens during the special window provided in law for the registration of stateless people (although the ceremony for the Shona took place after it had expired). They had to first apply for citizenship and swear an oath of allegiance. Only once citizenship was granted for each individual were they issued with ID cards.
For Pemba people, the proclamation by President Ruto took place after the expiry of that special window. This meant that they would not be able to apply for citizenship in the same way. Instead, it seems that the government is taking the approach that they were citizens by birth and simply lacked recognition of that fact – despite the previous statement by the cabinet secretary that this was not the case. Accordingly, it seems they will simply be issued with ID cards without swearing an oath – if they can fulfil whatever evidential requirements are put in place. By issuing ID cards to members of a community on the basis that they are citizens by birth, the government admits that they have been legitimate Kenyans all along but have been denied citizenship for all these years.
It is still the case that every individual had or will have to go through their own process, and provide proof of their own birth, parentage and so on.
The government could have introduced a bill in parliament to amend the Citizenship and Immigration Act (Section 15(2)) to further extend the window for registration of stateless people, but this has not yet happened. The reasons for this are not transparent. If this window can be extended, there are other communities who could also benefit from targeted registration processes – including people of Rwandan and Burundian descent (with the exception of a handful of Rwandans who have been issued with ID documents).
What is the relevance of “communities” or “tribes” of Kenya for citizenship?
Kenya’s citizenship law does not contain any mention of “tribes” or “ethnic communities”. What, therefore, is the relevance of the recent proclamations and declarations?
They are important because, despite the lack of relevance of ethnicity for citizenship law, membership of an “ethnic community” has historically had official and unofficial significance in the processes of acquiring identity documentation.
The Registration of Persons Act 1947 is still in effect, and until a 2018 amendment, required a person to declare their “race or tribe” to acquire a national ID. This is, of course, a hangover from colonial administrative practices, including for the infamous kipande system to ensure that men did not move from their Native Reserves without the permission of the settler authorities.
Though there is, since 2018, no longer any legal or regulatory requirement to include ethnicity on application forms or in a population or citizenship register, it continues to happen. The National Registration Bureau is not transparent about why it collects this data, or what impact it has on an individual’s application. But we know from the experiences of several marginalised communities that members of some ethnic communities continue to face “vetting”, requiring additional forms of proof of identity and parentage that can be impossible fulfil. When they can’t meet these sometimes unduly onerous requirements, they can find themselves stateless.
In practice, the communities most affected by these unofficial and discriminatory practices are ethnic groups that are vaguely perceived, en masse, as not belonging to Kenya either now or at the time of independence: Nubians, Makonde, Shona and Pemba are the most well known but not the only examples. This leads to a situation in which public debates take place about an entire community’s belonging and history in Kenya. These debates then shape public perceptions of whether these people “deserve” citizenship or not, even though this should really be a question of each individual’s biography.
Members of some ethnic communities continue to face “vetting”, requiring additional forms of proof of identity and parentage that can be impossible fulfil.
Take Shona people, for example. They tell their history as having come from Zimbabwe before independence, as missionaries of the Gospel Church of God. Pemba peoples have sought to present themselves as long-term inhabitants of the coast, not of Pemba Island, and therefore indigenous to what is now Kenya for centuries. They use their fishing prowess to further support this point. Nubian people point to having been settled in Kenya long before independence, and to their support for Tom Mboya and the Kenyan nationalists.
In all these cases, these communities – as communities – have been in Kenya for generations, they have made it their home, and they have strong ties and allegiances here. This is in the spirit of what citizenship is meant to be, even though the law is actually about individuals. In this sense, ethnic community is something of a vehicle to a generalised sense of belonging and a widespread political acceptance thereof, and this can be useful. But it does not, and should not, supplant the notion that citizenship is individual.
The president has no powers to grant citizenship
While it is welcome that the president took an inclusive tone in his address to the Pemba community, he overstated his powers. The Constitution of Kenya 2010 sets up the backbone of citizenship acquisition in Kenya and it doesn’t give the president any powers to confer citizenship or declare “ethnic communities of Kenya” in any official way. Nor did the drafters ever dream of giving such power to the president, as it could reduce nationality to a political tool. This is not to discredit the president’s roles in advancing the political will to help end statelessness in Kenya, but rather to examine the sustainability and fairness of such initiatives, and to clarify the limits of the executive in this area.
As described above, entitlements to citizenship are outlined in the constitution and in laws. If it appears that citizenship by birth can be granted to groups on the basis of discretion and not as a legal right, that can undermine the perceived authority of the constitution and the rule of law more generally. Such powers were not given to the president because they are not meant to be discretionary, and there are meant to be safeguards in place to ensure all those entitled to citizenship can get it. If we were to centre these powers in the presidency, what would the procedure be for application? What would the appeals mechanisms be if you have been denied the opportunity due to your political inclination or other discriminatory grounds?
While it is welcome that the president took an inclusive tone in his address to the Pemba community, he overstated his powers.
So why have both Uhuru and Ruto acted as if they have more powers than they do? The answer is, of course, political. It is a way for presidents to continue to gather political support. The “launch” or “citizenship declaration” events become like rallies. This is especially so since devolution. The blow to Kenya’s executive delivered by devolution has perhaps been removing opportunities for the president’s “benevolent” flights every other week from one corner of the country to the other, launching “development”: schools, hospitals, water projects, agriculture projects. The executive has been forced to be creative in the ways that they connect to the wananchi on the ground. Such a proclamation as made by Ruto on the Pemba or the directives issued by Uhuru in favour of the Makonde and Shona gives the illusion of the president as still a dispenser of state goodies in a decentralised system of patronage.
For the local politicians involved, their role in lobbying the parliament and the executive is also, at least in part, for political benefit. Where the executive used to play the biggest role in handing out political favours, this has now shifted to the county-level political class like members of parliament, senators and governors. The Makonde trek was flagged off by Kwale governor Salim Mvurya who said at the time, “My government fully supports this registration and we are going to fight tooth and nail until you get your rights.” Later, a kicker in the local daily on Makonde’s recognition read, “Nkaissery, Mvurya ask community to return the favour by voting Jubilee in next year’s elections”
There are two take-home messages here.
One is that in making our judgments about the presidential citizenship declarations, we must take into account that although they have been inclusive for some, they also reproduce ethnic patronage politics more generally, and that is not always such a good thing.
The second is that Kenyans must remember there are checks and balances in place to ensure the proper conferral of citizenship in line with the law, and it is not up to the president. This is especially important for those whose citizenship is still denied.
Citizenship and IDs are given to individuals, not to groups
The practice of conferring citizenship looks – on the surface – as if it has been conducted on a community by community basis. This is how the president, the media, civil society groups and the UNHCR have presented the process for the Pemba people.
However, citizenship is an individual status. Despite appearances – the big ceremonies and targeted registration drives – every Makonde, Shona and Pemba individual had to go through their own process to either prove their right to citizenship by birth, or by registration.
Importantly, this means there are people in all these communities who, because of the inability to acquire sufficient proof, still do not have any citizenship. Civil society groups and bureaucrats must be careful to ensure nobody falls through the cracks, and that these individuals receive assistance in building their case to get their Kenyan documents when they are entitled to them.
There is no such thing as a register of Kenya’s ethnic groups
It is also important to recognise that, despite the presidential proclamations and other gazette notices of “tribes of Kenya”, there is actually no single, authoritative register of Kenya’s ethnic groups. When people refer to “the 42 tribes” and add 43 (Makonde) and 44 (Asian), this draws on the number of ethnic groups counted in the 1969 census, but that is usually not acknowledged. And the census is not a singular, fixed and definitive list of the ethnic groups in Kenya. It changes every decade, in fact, and now counts well over 100 if you include “sub-tribes” (and even if you don’t, the number is still not 42, or 44).
The idea, then, of giving a “tribe” a “code” is something of a fiction. It is a political stunt.
There are other lists of ethnic groups in use, including by the National Registration Bureau (though they are not transparent about this) and the Independent Electoral and Boundaries Commission to keep track of ethnic representation in political parties, and by the Public Service Commission to keep track of ethnic diversity in public service employment. But none of these are the same as each other, and some groups find themselves on one and not on the other. Being “recognised” with a code does not guarantee access to jobs or electoral constituencies.
Most importantly for this article, there is absolutely no list of ethnic groups that would mean that if your group were on it, you automatically get citizenship.
Where to from here?
The approach of the government and politicians has painted a misleading picture of citizenship, enabling its politicisation. It is our hope that there can be a more sensitive and informed discussion of citizenship and inclusion in Kenya that might adhere to the following principles:
Stop promoting the idea that the president grants citizenship to groups.
While it is great that presidents talk in inclusive terms, and they can continue to drum up political support for registration drives, they and others need to be more careful and clear that they are only implementing the law.
The executive’s “granting” of citizenship through declarations and orders for stateless communities without clarifying their legal basis makes citizenship acquisition look like a game of musical chairs.
Push the bureaucracy to do its job on citizenship
The National Registration Bureau and associated bodies have learnt a lot in these processes. Although they have targeted particular communities based on the political will generated by the presidential declarations, that does not mean these same capabilities cannot be put to wider use. Civil society must continue its important work of pushing NRB in this direction.
Individuals who believe they are Kenyan citizens by birth should have access to the same processes that seem to be proposed for Pemba people. The NRB has shown that there are ways of dealing with difficult situations where individuals may lack all the formal documents necessary, and it should make more use of them.
Being “recognised” with a code does not guarantee access to jobs, or electoral constituencies.
In some cases, an individual’s right to citizenship by birth is reasonably contested, and the NRB may deem they require “vetting”. However, vetting should only be directed at establishing if a person is a citizen by birth under the law. It should never be used because of an individual’s membership of an ethnic group. Vetting procedures should also be reviewed to be more transparent and less discriminatory, as recommended by the parliamentary committee considering the issue of ID cards for Nubian people.
In cases where individuals are applying for citizenship by registration, these processes could also be made more accessible, learning from these recent experiences, including by extending the timeline for the registration of stateless persons indefinitely. While the law unfortunately provides for discretion in some cases, this does not mean procedural improvements would not help in many of them.
Problematic as the misleading “mass grant” narrative is, can some of the gains of these processes be put to work for those who have previously faced mass exclusion? We hope so.
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