Kenya’s President Uhuru Kenyatta (left) greets his Ugandan counterpart,
Mr Yoweri Museveni, after the former’s swearing-in in Nairobi. PHOTO |
FILE
The East African edition of May 11-18 led with a story that would have set off alarm bells among senior policy makers in Nairobi.
Rwandan and Ugandan businessmen were quoted expressing enthusiasm for the ambitious $11 billion (Sh957bn) Bagamoyo port project, which is to be built with Chinese money in the historic town not far from Dar es Salaam.
The port will have a capacity 33 times bigger than Mombasa port.
On paper, that would not be such a big problem if the Mombasa and planned Lamu ports were to remain in business.
But the most disconcerting aspect of that story was the fact that the key countries the Kenyan port serves – Rwanda and Uganda – were openly stating that they wanted to shift their business to the rival route to the sea offered by Tanzania.
Three months on, the picture looks very different.
In perhaps the most significant diplomatic success of the Jubilee administration, the Rwandese and Ugandans appear to be firmly back in the Kenya camp.
Uganda’s President Yoweri Museveni and his Rwandan counterpart Paul Kagame were in Mombasa on Wednesday for the launch of a new berth, which will see the port have the capacity to handle 200,000 more containers than its current capacity.
The meeting was a follow-up to another summit in Kampala in the last week of June where President Museveni, who was previously championing a railway line from Tanga to Musoma, agreed to fast-track the construction of a line from Mombasa to Kampala and Kigali through Malaba.
In part, Kenya has gained from the growing fallout between President Kagame and Tanzania’s Jakaya Kikwete who have been bitterly at odds over a proposal by Mr Kikwete that the authorities in Kigali should talk to members of the FDLR party who are blamed for the 1994 genocide.
But analysts say the new dynamics in the region are also a reflection of the significant break from the laid back style the country and region had known under President Mwai Kibaki and the far more assertive, hands-on approach of President Uhuru Kenyatta.
In the span of under four months since he took office, President Kenyatta has visited the Kenya Ports Authority several times — once as president-elect on March 19. He also hosted port officials at State House Nairobi in June when he directed KPA to synergise operations to enhance efficiency.
His repeated visits and the public demands for greater accountability from the port management coupled with personal engagement with Mr Kagame and Museveni have helped Kenya inch ahead of Tanzania in the race for regional trade.
“Uganda, Rwanda (and other landlocked countries) are shareholders in the modern transit state project that President Kenyatta wishes to implement,” says financial analyst Aly Khan Satchu. “The President is prepared to use his political capital and that is a good thing. I think he understands investor relations extremely well and that is what we have seen at play here.”
During his time in opposition, Mr Kenyatta famously attacked President Kibaki for his “hands off, ears off, everything off” approach to leadership.
Yet supporters of Mr Kibaki say his policy of letting various individuals take responsibility for their own dockets, which was a big break from the Moi presidency, scored some success.
The economy was revived and there was major infrastructure expansion under his watch.
Mr Kibaki’s hands-off approach, however, was criticised for the seeming chaos that attended his time in office.
“The problem with the Kibaki presidency is that people could get away with murder,” says Prof Winnie Mitullah of the Institute of Development Studies at the University of Nairobi. “You would hear, for example, that someone had edited the draft constitution at the Government Printer and other such strange things and you would have no idea who to blame.”
Prof Mitullah says there is a discernible shift under Jubilee.
“The way the President and Deputy President William Ruto campaigned, you could tell they are a very different breed. They are very hands-on and now you know when big decisions are taken they have given their okay.”
There have been subtle changes from the Kibaki era under Mr Kenyatta, some of them trivial, like chatting convivially with journalists at State House and others more substantial.
Stark contrast
President Kenyatta’s highly visible reaction to the blaze which destroyed the international arrivals terminal at Jomo Kenyatta International Airport, for example, stood in stark contrast to the laid-back stance of his predecessor.
This new hands-on style could have its pitfalls. Prof Peter Kagwanja, head of the Africa Policy Institute, says one drawback of an exceedingly assertive approach to management is that it could slow down the growth of institutions and may also lead to a “centralisation of responsibility” “Under Kibaki you could tell who was performing and who was not. There was great latitude for various office holders and, in turn, there was individual accountability,” says Prof Kagwanja.
The scholar, who was an early adviser to President Kibaki, says that there is a danger in reading too much into the differences in style between Mr Kibaki and Mr Kenyatta.
“The two are very common. They are looking East because that is where everyone is going now to raise capital for development. But their approach to economics is the same. They believe in the Washington Consensus and want to implement economic policies which drive development. There is very little difference between them when it comes to their approach to leadership.”
Prof Kagwanja says Mr Kenyatta, who has paid scant attention to party politics since taking office, could fall prey to the same problems Mr Kibaki found himself in during his first term when the economy expanded rapidly but he still suffered a humiliating reversal in the referendum on the constitution in 2005 and survived by a whisker in his battle for re-election in 2007.
“Kibaki believed in a style of leadership dominated by economic issues. His view was that national leadership consists of 90 per cent development and 10 per cent politics. Kenyatta is following in his footsteps. If you ask me, that’s not the wisest approach. Ninety per cent of a leader’s time will be consumed by politics and 10 per cent development. Development comes logically. Once the broad model is set, it’s the task of technocrats to deliver.”
Perhaps the biggest break between President Kibaki and Kenyatta is in their personalities.
Kibaki kept a stately distance from wananchi and did not go for the political gestures other national leaders are renowned for.
Kenyatta is a much warmer personality, a factor which Mr Satchu says could have had a hand in the changed tone of relations between Nairobi, Kampala and Kigali.
But, in the next few months and years, the focus will turn on the question of whether the deals the Kenyatta administration has struck with its new friends in Kigali and Kampala, including the construction of the railway by March 2018 and a pipeline between Kampala and Eldoret, will be implemented or whether they will remain elaborate plans on paper like many other East African Community initiatives.
No comments :
Post a Comment