President Biden Woos Kenya Ruto at White House in Rare State
President Biden Woos Kenya Ruto at White House in Rare State visit. US President Joe Biden is rolling out the red carpet Thursday for his Kenyan counterpart William Ruto with a diplomacy-heavy state visit and a lavish White House dinner with all the trimmings.
It is the first state visit to Washington by an African leader in more than 15 years.
As Biden seeks to counter geopolitical headwinds across the continent, he will formally ask Congress to grant Kenya the status of “major non-Nato ally,” according to a senior administration official.
The label officially confers military and diplomatic privileges on the countries – currently 18 around the world – that are so designated, albeit without any formal security guarantees.
Kenya would become the first sub-Saharan African nation on the list.
“Democracy is obviously on the back foot globally and we see Kenya as an important, stable democracy in East Africa,” said the official, who spoke on condition of anonymity.
Hence the pomp and circumstance that awaits Ruto on Thursday – a day after he met with Biden at the White House – during a visit expected to touch on the issue of global peace and security, and notably an upcoming role for Kenya in a mission to restore order to chaos-torn Haiti.
Ruto will first be received with military honors in the morning, followed by a bilateral meeting with Biden, then a joint press conference, before a gala dinner featuring the two first ladies.
On the menu: Heirloom tomato soup, fruitwood-smoked beef short ribs and butter-poached lobster, with banana ganache for dessert. Entertainers will include country music star Brad Paisley and a gospel choir.
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President Ruto’s visit does not simply represent America’s renewed commitment to the African continent, a promise President Biden made almost two years ago at the U.S.-Africa Leaders Summit.
Tightening U.S.-Kenya relations is also about building and safeguarding a more resilient global economy led by the United States. Investing in emerging economies like Kenya is an insurance policy against geopolitical shocks, namely from China and Russia.
In recent weeks, the focus of the insurance policy has been America’s domestic industrial strategy, specifically the Biden administration’s latest round of tariffs on selected imports from China.
But the strategy is global in nature, and must be understood that way. As Biden’s top national security advisor Jake Sullivan put it in his landmark speech at the Brookings Institution last year, “it isn’t feasible or desirable to build everything domestically.
Our objective is not autarky—it’s resilience and security in our supply chains.”
That’s where countries like Kenya come in. Emerging economies including India, Brazil, Indonesia, and Kenya are poised to contribute to the global value chain in strategic sectors like batteries for electric vehicles, chips for critical technologies, and mineral and metal mining and processing.
With their human capital, natural resources, and manufacturing potential, deepening U.S.-commercial ties with emerging economies have the potential to help American companies, and the global economy, become more resilient against geopolitical uncertainty.
Tech CEO-turned U.S. Ambassador to Kenya Meg Whitman, who has led Fortune 500 companies including eBay and Hewlett Packard Enterprise, is not shy about touting Kenya’s vast insurance potential for the United States.
Last month at the annual American Chamber of Commerce Business Summit in Nairobi, Ambassador Whitman made a convincing appeal to American investors about why Kenya should be their next target destination.
Her selling points were in lockstep with the Biden administration’s larger economic agenda: supply chain resilience and climate-friendly economic growth.
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Most critically, Kenya offers American companies opportunities to diversify their supply chains away from Asia while shrinking their carbon footprint—over 90 percent of Kenya’s power is sourced from renewable energy.
Kenya, with the help of the US and other partners, also seeks to become a hub for green-powered data centers, mineral and metal processing, and green manufacturing, including producing batteries and electric vehicles.
Kenya has already emerged as a leading tech market in Africa, being the continent’s largest destination for start-up financing and home to the first semiconductor manufacturer on the continent.
Kenya has just as much to gain, if not more, from its relationship with the United States. Increasing U.S. investment in Kenya will be the focus of Ruto’s visit, including the renewal of the African Growth and Opportunity Act which is set to expire in 2025 and furthering the Strategic Trade and Investment Partnership, a trade deal focused on addressing non-tariff barriers and boosting two-way trade.
But while President Ruto’s affinity for the United States will be on full display this week, Kenya won’t be closing the door on business opportunities with America’s geopolitical rivals anytime soon.
From Kenya’s vantage point, the United States is an important economic and security partner. Based on sheer trade volume alone, it would seem Kenya views China, the EU, India, and the UAE that way too.
Just in October, President Ruto was on his way to China, Kenya’s top overall trading partner, for an official visit to discuss Chinese investment in Kenya, the most famous projects of which include the Standard Gauge Railway, the Nairobi Expressway, and the Lapsset Corridor, all aimed at boosting connectivity and commerce across the region.
“It’s a delicate balance,” President Ruto explained last week to a group of Harvard Business School students in Nairobi, responding to a question about how Kenya balances its relationships with the United States and China. “We want to be friends to all and an enemy to none.