The Kenya brand is shining, but ethnic nationalism haunts it

It is Benedict Anderson (1983) who popularised the idea that our modern nations are “imagined communities”, invented or constructed by the people who perceive themselves as part of that group with a shared identity and destiny.

INCLUSIVE VERSION

In that context, nation-states are no more than brands vying for space and recognition in the geopolitical market place. Over five decades ago, Kenya’s founding fathers branded the country as the land of justice, unity and liberty as essentials for peace and prosperity, engraving and immortalising the brand in the country’s National Anthem.

A distinctly inclusive version of nationalism has given the Kenyan brand, like all other national brands, its shine. But a particularly populist and parochial variant of nationalism has come back with a vengeance to haunt national brands across the world.

Globally, one of these national brands now under attack from a populist variant of nationalism is the American brand (democracy, rights, liberty, opportunity and equality), arguably the most successful brand in human history. Robert D. Kaplan, the author of The Coming Anarchy (2013), has recently bemoaned the “Decline of the American Brand” (The American Interest, April 2, 2018) as the columnist, Matt Bai, declares that “Donald Trump is destroying the American brand.”

The Kenyan brand has morphed over time. In the age of liberation, Kenya was a ‘model of emancipatory violence’ in what Caroline Elkins (2014) rightly christens as “Britain’s Gulag”. A youthful Nelson Mandela encountered the Kenyan brand in Field Marshal Dedan Kimathi and the Mau Mau. Inspired by this narrative of Kenya’s triumph over a brazenly brutal Empire, he formed Umkhonto We Sizwe (the Spear of the Nation) to fight apartheid.

POWER CALCULATIONS

After independence, Tom Mboya’s The Challenge of Nationhood, itself a bold and bravura collection of speeches, offers a special lens through which to understand the challenge of setting the contours of the Kenyan brand.

But Jaramogi Oginga Odinga’s Not Yet Uhuru (1969) is emblematic of the disintegration of the nationalist consensus, the fragmentation of the nationalist elite and the disillusionment that followed.

While the Kenyan dream of justice, unity and liberty succumbed to authoritarian undertows, Kenyan quickly acquired a new brand as a symbol of capitalist success in the former colonial dependencies.

Initially, the intellectual knights of the “Second Liberation” focused more on the question of who a Kenyan is than the Kenyan brand. However, Mukhisa Kituyi’s Becoming Kenyans (1990) and Lynne Wanyeki’s Being a Kenyan reflected the enduring quest for inclusivity.

The calamitous 2008 post-election violence, which signified the assault of ethnic nationalism on civic nationalism, came as a wake-up call to the elite to revitalise the Kenyan brand, paving the way for the establishment of Brand Kenya Board (BKB) in March 2008.

But the agency has increasingly given a pride of place to “economism” — the imperative “to attract tourists, stimulate inward investment, boost exports and, attract students and workers” — rather than the essential characteristics, values, and attributes of the country.

Although reflecting the post-bellum struggles, compromises and power calculations of the elite in the Coalition Government, Kenya’s 2010 Constitution was a tour de force in setting the contours of the Kenyan brand for the 21st century. The coming to power of the Uhuru Generation — Kenya’s Baby boomers, or those people born worldwide in the immediate post-war era between 1945 and 1964 — has not only added shine to the Kenyan brand but thrust it into the global stage.

HOME-GROWN PACTS

In his inauguration speech on April 9, 2013, President Uhuru Kenyatta declared Kenya’s future as inextricably joined to that of the East African region and the whole of Africa.

Today, Kenya is investing in strengthening the EAC, IGAD and the African Union as instruments of regional stability, beachheads in the war against terrorism and viable frameworks of regional socio-economic transformation and integration. After the 2017 elections, the truce between President Kenyatta and his erstwhile opponent, Raila Odinga, has given the Kenyan brand a whole new conceptual shine and impact.

In a recent visit to Mogadishu, my hosts intimated that their recovery trajectory is inspired by the “Kenyan model” of freedom, democracy and stability as a foundation for sustainable economic progress. “In the 1960s, Somalia invested in the largest army in the region, Kenya invested in development”, said a senior government official. “Like Kenya, we now want to invest in peace and development,” he added.

As this column argued earlier, conciliatory ‘handshake’ is Africa’s most successful political idea (SN, March 13, 2018). Once parodied as “weak and vacuous”, the African State has become increasingly resilient and able to thwart and heal itself from crisis.

The idea of home-grown pacts — the African solution to African problems — is now driving peace processes, and even revolutions, across the continent.

2022 ELECTION

In Kenya, it prevented the slide to a Hugo Chavez-type of populism in Venezuela. In Ethiopia, rival ethnic elites in the ruling party agreed on Abiy Ahmed Ali as Prime Minister in April 2018. For the first time, an elected government in Somalia is almost completing its four-year term since 2012. This follows an informal “handshake” in Villa Somalia between President Mohamed Farmajo and Prime Minister Hassan Khayre.

In the Democratic Republic of Congo, respect for the Constitutional Court ruling upholding the disputed victory of President Félix Tshisekedi in the December 30, 2018, election has pulled the country back from the brink.

Thus, despite the surge of parochial ethnic nationalism and exclusive politics ahead of the 2022 election, the Kenyan brand will prevail.

Professor Peter Kagwanja is a former Government Adviser and currently Chief Executive of Africa Policy Institute (Kenya).