The visionary Nkrumah played a critical role in inspiring change in Africa, being a founding member of the Organisation of African Unity together with Haile Selassie, Julius Nyerere and others.
Back in 1900, Sylvester Williams and others organised what is considered the first Pan-African meeting seeking to end slave trade, by leveraging on communicating information on all subjects affecting the rights and privileges of Africans who were subjects of the then ruthless British Empire, appealing for freedom from colonialist. It takes one person taking responsibility and initiative to inspire definitive change.
Nevertheless, for decades, African leaders have been staggeringly inept in handling debt, trade and other crucial matters as they have done business with the West in trust of their people. Borrowing from western governments, especially from the Bretton Woods institutions, has put many African countries in a shameful and cowardly dungeon of manipulation by western powers and interests.
As a result, African nations and others in the developing world have been made to pay for the fragility for the longest time, even as they cannot leverage properly on the great resources the maker endowed us with. Western nations have always overstepped their spaces for many years even after African countries attained their independence, dangling carrots and carting away Africa’s resources.
While African states have self-rule, many of them struggle with poverty, disease, low levels of education, political problems with many of these problems never ending despite the help of the West. Many African nations cannot stake an honest claim that they are completely independent as they remain heavily dependent on the West in many aspects, especially in economic aspects.
African leaders speaking in critical international meetings choose to cow in the defining moments and at negotiating tables where the needs and aspirations of their people require of them to speak the truth. They have consequently undertaken complacent action in place of firm constructive positions for the relief and advancement of people. Many are sinking deeper into debt, leaving their own people in rage because they face uncertain futures.
A wise man does not gamble and wish for good fortune, it is said. Clearly, Ruto took leadership of Kenya with a clear agenda – to not gamble at the international level. He wishes that Africans exorcise the feeling of confinement, and he is taking decisive positions and action in this regard, awakening memories of Nkrumah, Patrice Lumumba, Nelson Mandela, Nyerere and others.
Many other African leaders have been ready to mortgage the future on what appears to be present day success, something which Ruto can see through, giving us a refreshing recollection of the pioneering Pan-Africanists.
The African Union has been in a revival patch and has been strengthening over the last few years, but firmly taking responsibility on matters climate change has taken things to a whole new dimension. It is not a secret that multilateral development banks — the two Bretton Woods institutions and the African Development Bank — will play a major role in the collective process of addressing the climate catastrophe by being at the centre of climate financing.
At the Paris Climate Summit, Ruto was assertive that the global financial infrastructure must be reformed for developing countries to effectively participate in finding the solution to the climate debacle facing the world.
"The current financial architecture is unfair, punitive and inequitable," he weighed in, as the room went silent. The head of state has chosen to not sit pretty and wonder how things went wrong but be utterly fearless to act. He is adding some steel to an AU that was being overrun by the challenges of inability to negotiate.
The western nations may not be angling for one last gargantuan payday in the climate change intervention arrangement — they have benefited massively from Africa for a long time through unfair trade frameworks and the unreserved exploitation of African resources, such as minerals, but clearly, they had rather the lopsided scenarios persist to the detriment of Africa and the third world.
Ruto has been able to outline Africa’s enormous potential as its key negotiating point. He is emerging as a real book-balancer and not one more African leader pandering to the West, unworried about sliding down their pecking order.
Unlike the Paris Summit where very few commitments were made, the summit in Kenya emerged with the Nairobi declaration solid in real terms. It called for a $650 billion Special Rights Drawing Liquidity mechanism for building resilience to climate shocks.
Multilateral Development Banks were asked to scale up concessional financing to $500 billion a year. Ruto and the other African leaders further demanded new debt relief interventions and instruments to pre-empt debt default so that extensions include a 10-year grace period.
Just like the slavery and colonial times, the West refuses to take full responsibility for being the producers of more than 90 per cent of emissions that are spoiling the broth for all earthlings. Instead they demand that African nations develop cleaner ways, and the commitments made for support do not fully materialise.
Ruto has been firm that the ‘addiction’ to fossil fuels must come to an end, and calls for a quickening of renewable energy production –mostly wind and solar energies. Although the future is still shrouded in uncertainty, speaking forthrightly is an important component in the process of instilling a balance.
Leading Africa in taking global responsibility is highly commendable, especially because the President leads a country whose energy sources are more than 90 per cent renewable. Africa stands at a vantage point in championing the climate intervention with our youth, who comprise more than 70 per cent of the population.
Political commentator
