You can count me among those who deeply regret the Donald Trump administration’s decision to effectively demolish USAID – the United States Agency for International Development.
For while it existed in its old form, you had to be a very incompetent journalist – or one totally indifferent to opportunities for foreign travel – if you did not at some point get an invitation to take one of the many trips to the US that USAID sponsored.
Diplomatic missions from other rich nations also sponsored visits to their countries. But the US had – by very far – the most such opportunities.
None of these USAID “study tours” exist now, as far as I am aware.
So younger journalists would not be able to engage in the kind of conversation I am about to summarise here, with reference to the United Nations Environmental Programme (Unep), which, as you all know, is based right here in Nairobi.
My story begins with a recent interview in a local newspaper, in which the former Principal Secretary of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Ambassador Macharia Kamau, explained the role he played in helping keep Unep in Nairobi, during the Kibaki presidency.
Now something he did not mention in the interview was the subject of my conversation with a diplomat not very long after the 2007-08 post-election violence.
My diplomat friend asked me if I was aware that there had, for some time, been a campaign to have Unep moved to some European city. Initially, the reason given was the inadequacy of Kenyan infrastructure. But the campaign had intensified as a direct response to the sheer savagery of the politically instigated violence of 2008.
At the height of this violence, elaborate arrangements had been made to evacuate virtually all European nationals living in Kenya, if the violence had appeared close to getting out of hand.
But whereas the diplomats representing the various European nations may in time have returned once peace was restored to Kenya, Unep would most likely have moved out for good as there were plenty of cities in Europe eager to host it.
This is where my lament over the diminished travel opportunities for younger journalists comes in.
For, out of my ignorance, I asked my friend, “Would it not take very long to build a brand-new Unep complex in some European city?”
He laughed and asked me, “Which of the major UN offices have you visited?”
And I was able to answer that, thanks to the generosity of USAID, which had sponsored a one-month tour of five American states, I had been inside the UN headquarters in New York.
He then told me that only Nairobi and Geneva (I think) had sprawling campuses for the UN offices. Elsewhere, the UN’s major offices consisted of huge high-rise office blocks of the kind I had seen in New York. And Europe had plenty of such buildings, some half empty, which could be made available at very short notice if the UN wanted to move Unep there.
Anyway, thanks largely to the US State Department’s intervention, Kenya’s deeply divided political class was made to see sense and to put the country’s stability above personal ambitions. And thanks to the efforts of Ambassador Macharia Kamau and others, Unep remained in Nairobi.
Currently, far from Unep leaving Nairobi, the good news we hear is that there will be an influx of international UN staff into Kenya, and that the Unep Gigiri campus is undergoing a major expansion to accommodate all these additional technocrats.
So, here is my question: What if Unep had indeed been translocated to some European capital, because Kenya (post-2008) was considered to be no longer safe for such a large number of foreigners?
What would the impact have been?
Well, I think that apart from the irreversible loss of national prestige, the negative impact would have been principally an economic one.
The foreigners who live in Kenya because one or more of their family members are working at the Unep complex, may only add up to a few thousand individuals, but they represent massive purchasing power, especially when it comes to high-value consumer products.
By some accounts, the foreign exchange they bring into Kenya – their salaries, which they mostly spend right here – accounts for a US dollar amount in the top five of such sectoral inflows.
If this is true, then the negative impact would be roughly the same as the collapse of one of Kenya’s leading economic sectors.
