Why Kenya's attendance of G7 summit is important

President Uhuru Kenyatta (sitting, fourth from right) and other world leaders at a Group of 7 session in Taormina in Sicily, Italy in May 2017. PHOTO | SAMUEL MIRING'U | PSCU

What you need to know:

  • It is a great opportunity for Kenya to assert its own foreign policy interests among the global powers while at the same time gaining from their interests in Kenya and Africa.

  • The Group of 7 members remain pacesetters for overarching global affairs despite the so-called “decline of the West” narrative.

One of the defining moments of Kenya’s diplomacy and international relations this year is the attendance of President Uhuru Kenyatta at the just concluded G7 summit in Taormina, Sicily, Italy. One can visualise Mr Kenyatta fraternising with G7 leaders: Donald Trump (USA), Angela Merkel (Germany), Justin Trudeau (Canada), Paolo Gentolini (Italy), Theresa May (UK), Shinzo Abe (Japan), Emmanuel Macron (France).

It is a great opportunity for Kenya to assert its own foreign policy interests among the global powers while at the same time gaining from their interests in Kenya and Africa.

The G7 nations remain pacesetters for overarching global affairs despite the so-called “decline of the West” narrative.

A creature of the economic and specifically oil crises of the 1970s, the grouping had its inaugural meeting in France in 1975.

Since then, its annual summits have shaped historic and historical global developments, never mind it’s designed as an easy-going and informal organisation whose decisions are non-binding setup.

While the core of the G7 is the sustenance of the well-being of the member states, its actions reverberate around the world. Over the past 43 years, the G7 has left a global footprint with some of the highlights being: Reforming world institutions such as the IMF, World Bank and the UN; transformation of the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade into the World Trade Organization; strategising the collapse of communism; easing financial debt on poor countries; negotiating climate change pacts; responding to global security issues such as terrorism … name them! The economic and political fortunes of Africa and Kenya have been inevitably tied to G7 agency.

CLOSED CLUB

For years, the G7 was firmly a closed club. But with the Cold War over, Russia’s Boris Yeltsin was invited to attend the summits in the early 1990s and as a full member in 1997. This set a precedent for the practice where non-founding members could make a showing at the summits.

The spectre of expanding the club was, however, not in sync with the G7’s exclusivity which would have watered down its agency and prestige.

The G7 thus latched on a comprise mechanism referred to as “outreach”, where leaders of non-member countries are invited on an ad hoc basis, based on the theme of a particular summit. The onus for invitation of guests rests on the hosting head of state and it is under this consideration that Italian Prime Minister Paolo Gentolini invited President Kenyatta along with his colleagues from Ethiopia, Niger, Tunisia and Nigeria.

Under the “outreach” approach, the African leaders have become common invitees. Olusegun Obasanjo (Nigeria), Thabo Mbeki (South Africa) and Abdelaziz Bouteflika (Algeria) attended the parleys in Okinawa, Japan, in 2000 and in Genoa, Italy, in 2001.

The 2001 Genoa summit – with former Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi playing host – was definitive for Africa. At this point in time, Mr Obasanjo, Mr Mbeki and Mr Bouteflika were the leading lights in the reformation of the Organisation of African Unity, re-engineered as the African Union (AU) in Durban, South Africa, in 2002. A key mechanism of the new AU, the New Partnership for Africa’s Development, received support from the G7 summit in Kananaskis, Canada, in 2002 when the G7 leaders endorsed their own $6 billion African Action Plan.

FIRST TIME

Mr Kenyatta’s attendance of the 2017 event is the first time for a Kenyan leader.

It remains to be seen as to whether Kenya will be at the G7 table again next year as have done leaders from Nigeria (Obasanjo, Umaru Musa Yar’adua, Goodluck Johnson and Muhammadu Buhari) and South Africa (Mbeki, Kgalema Motlanthe and Jacob Zuma). It would appear Kenya has been losing out at the G7 engagement level until this year.

Indications are that President Kenyatta was invited for two major reasons. Foremost is Kenya’s battle with violent extremism, a phenomenon that has in part contributed to high levels of African migrations to Europe. Often, the beachhead of the risky ventures across the Mediterranean is Italy.

This explains why Italy saw it fit to invite Kenya. Relatedly, G7 leaders are increasingly thinking proactive. They want to stem the migration problem at source.

The many technologies that Kenyan innovators have created are thought to hold the promise for responding to the poverty that triggers the desperate migrations. In all likelihood, Kenya might gain new rounds of funding its high tech particularly from European members of the G7.

Bob Wekesa is a post-doctoral fellow at the University of the Witwatersrand in South Africa.