The last few weeks have tested Kenya’s foreign relations. Recent
actions by some of the country’s leading foreign policy actors and agents have
exposed flaws in the management of Kenya’s international relations.
The revealed
challenges range from lapse of individual judgement, largely a factor of idiosyncratic
attributes, to foreign policy systemic weaknesses.
On April 1, Foreign Affairs Principal Secretary Korir Sing'Oei,
posted a tweet in which he rebuked Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC)
for what he termed “unjustified attacks of critical infrastructure of GCC
countries on not only civilian security, but economic and environmental
security of the Globe.”
Predictably, the Republic of Iran, through its Embassy
in Kenya, responded, diplomatically refuting the PS’s position.
While acknowledging Iran’s lengthy response, the PS cared to “emphasise
that Kenya remains non-aligned in the conflict”. Even for a sophisticated mind,
nothing in the PS’s earlier tweet hinted at a sense of Kenya’s neutrality. Not
even remotely. It easily qualifies as a lapse of communication judgement.
Just last week, none other than the country’s diplomat-in-chief, President
William Ruto himself, was at it again. During his recent official visit to
Italy, the President, while addressing Kenyans resident there, questioned the
quality of Nigeria’s English. For the President, it must have had an immediate intended
impact, judging by the laughter in the room.
It is conceivable that the President was just returning fire.
Earlier, Nigerian President Bola Tinubu had been quoted as taking aim at
Kenya’s energy crisis.
President Tinubu argued that even though Nigeria was
feeling the pain occasioned by the Middle East war, it has been doing better than
Kenya. But was Kenya’s response worth it? Would completely ignoring President
Tinubu have been better?
And speaking of the energy crisis triggered by the war in the
Middle East, President Ruto’s justification of higher energy costs in Kenya was
just as ridiculous as it was diplomatically unwise.
On one level, he argued
that Kenya is a middle-income country, unlike its neighbours that are
categorised as least-developed countries. Kenya’s fair comparison would therefore
be, according to the President, with other middle-income countries.
On another level, the President attributed the higher energy cost
in Kenya to the country’s more expansive road network requiring maintenance—20,000km under tarmac and a further 6,000km under construction. According to
the President, Kenya’s road network under tarmac is more expansive than the
rest of the East African Community’s (EAC) combined.
The President’s assertion attracted the attention of Tanzania, with
the Minister for Works, Abdalla Ulega, challenging Ruto on both
accounts. He clarified that, like Kenya, Tanzania is classified as a lower-middle-income country. He also disputed Ruto’s figures.
Any keen observer would by now easily argue a persuasive case for Ruto’s challenges in steering the country’s foreign policy. Examples
are on full display, including Sudan, the DRC and the Middle East. His
approach appears more impulsive and isolated than calculative and integrative.
But perhaps a more worrying defect is in the system. The country’s foreign service appears
to have been re-purposed to serve political considerations. Evidence undeniably
points to the service being a dumping yard for political rejects and those
discredited in other spaces.
One only needs to look at the chaos surrounding the nomination of
the immediate former KRA Commissioner-General Humphrey Wattanga. He was
initially nominated to serve as High Commissioner to South Africa, only to
later be quietly moved to Canada. There is urgent need to restore sanity to the
country’s foreign service.
The writer is a political commentator