Washington
CNN
—
When Kenyan President William Ruto arrived in Beijing seven months ago, he was greeted by a red carpet on the runway and a cordon of Chinese troops standing at attention. One aim of his three-day state visit in October was to secure an additional $1 billion in Chinese loans to help complete infrastructure projects.
On Wednesday, when he arrived at Joint Base Andrews to begin a state visit, this time to Washington, he again found red carpets and troops. But this time, a special envoy, first lady Dr. Jill Biden, was sent to greet his plane.
President Joe Biden this week took a stand at the pinnacle of American diplomacy as he looks to strengthen ties with the East African nation, designating Kenya as a major non-NATO ally and making it the first country in sub-Saharan Africa to do so at the White House. He also hosts state dinners at sunset in the south garden.
Mr. Biden welcomed Mr. Ruto’s visit to the White House and lavished praise on his Kenyan colleague, including for Kenya’s leadership in the “historic African Green Industrialization Initiative.”
“Together, the United States and Kenya are committed to solving the challenges that matter most to the lives of our people: health security, economic security, cybersecurity, and climate security,” he said. “Mr. President, your bold leadership in this area has been significant and particularly impactful.”
Standing in the way of all this pomp and circumstance is China’s growing role in Africa, which has become a central testing ground for the world’s two largest economies vying for economic and geopolitical influence.
Government officials have acknowledged that a central factor in scheduling the state visit to Kenya was a desire to counter China’s influence and financial influence on the African continent, which surpasses the United States in direct investment. .
For decades, China has provided high-interest loans to low-income African countries to help finance the development of domestic projects, including flagship infrastructure projects in China’s Belt and Road Initiative. These include a high-speed rail line from Nairobi to Mombasa, which the Kenyan government financed with a multibillion-dollar loan from a Chinese state-owned bank.
From 2000 to 2022, the Chinese government lent African countries $170 billion to fund these efforts, including $6.7 billion to Kenya, according to Boston University’s China Loans to Africa Database. These loans left African countries with high debts that they were unable to repay, leading many to seek relief from sovereign states.
African countries are now being forced to choose between paying off their debts and pursuing development.
“This is a tough situation for them,” said a senior U.S. government official. “I hope they can achieve their ambitions.”
During this state visit, the US and Kenya are expected to unveil the ‘Nairobi-Washington Vision’, calling on creditor countries, and perhaps especially China, to provide subsidies, budgetary support and debt suspension to ease the burden. .
Meanwhile, Ruto is calling on African leaders to rely more on low-interest loans from Western countries and the World Bank to finance development.
“There’s a lot of China fatigue in Africa,” the former senior administration official said. “The administration sees an opportunity there.”
And the U.S. is already stepping up to the occasion: At last year’s G20 summit, the U.S. and the European Union announced they would support the construction of a rail corridor linking Angola, the Democratic Republic of Congo, and Zambia, which would make it easier to ship the region’s critical minerals to Western countries.
In his talks with Biden, Ruto has sought to highlight Kenya, and the entire African continent, as a region worthy of investment. At a CEO gathering at the White House on Wednesday, Ruto told Biden that outdated perceptions of the continent were changing.
“It’s past time to think of Africa as a place of war and destruction rather than opportunity. We are making that a reality,” Ruto told the president during the meeting, a senior US administration official said. I summarized what was said.
Still, Ruto’s visit to Washington comes amid political instability in many African countries. While last year’s military coup toppled the government and exposed the fragility of the rule of law, traditional US allies on the continent have shown a new willingness to break with the United States. One of the aims of Thursday’s state visit is to demonstrate the ability of democracies like Kenya to serve their people.
Biden hosted a summit of African leaders at the White House at the beginning of his term, but has since been busy with conflicts in the Middle East and Ukraine. Angolan President João Manuel Gonçalves Lourenço has been the only African leader to meet at the White House since the December 2022 meeting in which Biden vowed to be “fully committed” to Africa.
“It’s no secret that a lot has happened in the world over the last year and a half,” a senior administration official said this week, pointing to a spate of Cabinet and senior government visits to Africa as evidence of the Biden campaign’s efforts. He pointed out that.
But a string of foreign conflicts prevented Biden from making the trip himself, something he had vowed to do within a year of the summit. National security adviser Jake Sullivan told reporters on Wednesday that he remains committed to visiting Africa as president, but gave no timetable.
Biden, welcoming Ruto to the White House on Wednesday, said he plans to visit Africa next year after securing re-election.
“I’m going to be there in February,” Biden told reporters. It was unclear if Biden was joking. He was then asked how questions about his travel plans were “relevant.”
A presidential trip to Africa, whether related or not, would come only after Chinese President Xi Jinping visited Africa last year to meet with leaders of BRICS emerging economies.
Advisers said Biden intends to keep his focus on Africa, especially as Russia and China compete for strategic influence. Biden aides have also made comparisons with former President Donald Trump, who privately called some African countries “shitholes” and never visited the continent himself.
Thursday’s state visit to Washington will be the first by an African leader since 2008.
“I believe what emerges today is not questions about U.S. engagement, but answers that the United States actually offers for Africa, for African people, in this case the country of Kenya, but also with Kenya the broader continent of Africa,” Sullivan said Wednesday.
Biden and his team’s choice of Kenya for a state visit on Thursday is a signal that they view Ruto and his country as one of the most important U.S. allies in a region where loyalties to Washington have shifted.
Kenya is a key US partner in the fight against al-Shabab militants in neighboring Somalia, and earlier this year launched a US-led international mission aimed at repelling attacks on Red Sea shipping lanes by Yemen’s Houthi rebels. joined the coalition.
“Across the world, Kenya and the United States stand together against the continued terrorism of ISIS and al-Shabaab in East Africa, the aggression Russia is inflicting on Ukraine, and the violence that has overthrown too many democracies in both regions. President Biden said Thursday as he welcomed Ruto to the White House.
Kenya is also preparing to send 1,000 paramilitary police officers to Haiti to quell gang violence, a mission largely funded by the United States.
A delegation of Kenyan “command staff” arrived in Haiti this week ahead of a Kenyan-led multinational security assistance force, according to the country’s law enforcement officials. Delegates are scheduled to assess the readiness of foreign police equipment and facilities this week, an assessment that will be critical in determining the timeline for deployment, a person familiar with the preparations told CNN. told.
But despite strong support from the United States and other regional powers, the mission has been plagued by uncertainty and legal challenges for months. After Haiti’s former prime minister, Ariel Henry, resigned in March, the mission was further delayed until a transitional governing council was established.
“This is not something that’s entirely linear. The operating environment in Haiti is dynamic, to say the least, and it will require an adaptive and flexible approach, but it will be guided by certain core capabilities and activities,” Sullivan told reporters at the White House on Wednesday.
This story was updated Thursday with additional developments.
