OGUTU: Kenya’s foreign affairs in a mess, urgently in need of sanity and order

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