Kenya needs new form of democracy, Uhuru tells US audience

WASHINGTON DC

President Uhuru Kenyatta has said Kenya must devise a new form of democracy that promotes inclusivity rather than designating some groups as winners and others as losers. President Kenyatta spoke in Washington DC on Wednesday.

Outlining his government's Building Bridges Initiative (BBI), President Kenyatta said the initiative is aimed at building an alternative to a “divisive political structure that has often sparked conflicts in the last 30 years.”

ECONOMIC GROWTH

To sustain economic growth, Kenya must “first and foremost achieve a social framework for our people that best fits our national circumstances,” Mr Kenyatta said.

The winner-take-all model of elections has proved unsustainable in Kenya, the President told a standing-room-only audience of about 300 that included dignitaries.

Two former US ambassadors to Kenya as well as Washington's current envoy, Kyle McCarter, were on hand, along with a large contingent of Kenyan officials and some members of the Trump administration.

“We have to look for a different model that allows for much greater inclusion,” the Kenyan leader declared. “Democracy,” he said, “is not a one-size-fits-all outfit.”

DIVISIVENESS

But he refrained from indicating what a new model might look like. Offering specifics at this stage could lead to unhelpful discord, Mr Kenyatta suggested.

The President also spoke of the need to avoid divisiveness in Kenya's international relations.

He rejected any return to the “proxy wars” of the US-Soviet Cold War era that, he said, had negatively affected Africa economically and politically.

Kenya experienced great difficulty as it “tried to chart a path between two battling giants,” Mr Kenyatta recounted.

Today, he added, “proxy actors are behaving as though Africa is for the taking.”

“I want to tell you it is not.”

COLD WAR

In a dialogue following Mr Kenyatta's 20-minute speech at the Atlantic Council, he was asked by the think-tank's programme director, Bronwyn Bruton, to comment on US-China proxy battles in Africa.

“I see no threat in that,” the President responded, “There is room enough for all of us.”

“We don't want to go back to the Cold War of the '60s, '70s and '80s where we were forced to choose which side we were on.”

The US possesses great strengths, Mr Kenyatta noted, but “on the other hand you have China building a hospital in seven days.”

The Kenyan leader's overarching theme in his address was that the US should view Africa, and Kenya in particular, through a lens of mutual prosperity and security.

MUTUAL GAINS

“You must look at Africa as the world's biggest opportunity,” he said. “And Kenya can be a key country in converting that opportunity into mutual gains.”

“You will need to listen and to engage with what we in Africa want and what we need.”

A deepening of Kenya's trade relationship with the US can help achieve greater prosperity for both countries, Mr Kenyatta said.

But he added that he would “neither confirm nor deny” reports that Kenya has been chosen as the first sub-Saharan country with which the US will seek to negotiate a bilateral free-trade agreement. The Kenyan government clearly does not wish to pre-empt an official announcement by the Trump administration.

TRADE DEAL

Asked by Ms Bruton whether a US-Kenya trade deal would impede Africa's construction of a continent-wide free-trade framework, Mr Kenyatta said Kenya would not impede that movement but would instead seek to act as a “pacesetter” for all of Africa.

He likened Kenya's positioning to that of runner Eliud Kipchoge who succeeded in October in becoming the first marathoner to break the two-hour barrier.

“Kipchoge succeeded because he had pacesetters,” Mr Kenyatta remarked.

The African continent is not homogeneous, he further observed. Its countries are “not at the same levels of development,” the President said.

“Some are more ready than others” to begin the process of forging new trade arrangements in the run-up to the scheduled expiration in five years of the US's Africa Growth and Opportunity Act (Agoa) preferential trade programme.

LEARNING PROCESS

“It shouldn't be looked at as Kenya breaking away but as taking the first step to deepen engagements outside the African continent,” Mr Kenyatta suggested.

Kenya, he added, should be seen as initiating “a learning process” that can make it easier for other African countries to develop new trade arrangements.

Similarly, Mr Kenyatta speculated in his opening address, “BBI in time may emerge as a unique model that can be adopted elsewhere on the African continent.”

On the topic of mutual security, the President warned that high levels of youth unemployment in Kenya and the rest of the sub-Saharan region “will produce an Africa of many security crises that will leave no corner of this world untouched.”

Young people in the US enjoy job opportunities, he said, but the youth unemployment rate in Kenya constitutes “an unsustainable situation” that must be urgently addressed.

CORRUPTION

“Extremists, militants and criminals are already uniting to challenge the stability of states in Africa and around the world,” he noted.

In regard to the specific threat posed by Al-Shabaab, Mr Kenyatta said the international community and Somalia's own government must combat the corruption that allows the terrorist organisation to raise money “through contraband and penetration of business” and the public sector.

The President also suggested, without elaborating, that “a lot of the difficulties in Somalia are the result of proxy conflicts.”
Asked by an audience member about Kenya's policy on climate change, Mr Kenyatta assured his listeners that he believes “climate change is real.”

CLIMATE CHANGE

That affirmation could be seen as standing in contrast to President Trump's claim that climate change is “a hoax.”

January is normally the driest month of the year in Kenya, the Head of State noted, but this year January has registered as “the wettest month we have ever experienced.”

Inordinate amounts of rainfall caused by climate change stand as a reason why Kenya is now suffering an enormous locust infestation, Mr Kenyatta said.