Kenya's beleaguered president Ruto chose a live interview to defend his record, but did his claims add up?
- The president was right about Kenya's public wage bill, debt levels, fertiliser prices, agricultural imports, judicial funding and inflation.
- But he was wrong about youth unemployment, tax revenues and debt repayment, and the current price of the staple food maize meal.
- Ruto also inflated tourism figures and how much he had increased funding for cash-strapped universities.
Under siege from young citizens furious over tax plans widely seen as punitive, police abductions and the killing of protesters, Kenyan president William Ruto sought to take his case directly to the people.
In a live television interview with three editors at State House in the capital Nairobi on 30 June 2020, Ruto made claims about his performance, the state of the country's books, food prices, and budget allocations, among others.
We used our artificial intelligence tools to extract verifiable claims from the interview for a closer look.
A defining feature of the protests has been that they are led by young people, often called Gen Z, for whom unemployment is one of the main grievances.
Kenya's constitution defines the youth as those aged 18 to 34. However, the broader definition of young people, including by organisations such as the UN, includes adolescents from the age of 15.
Ruto's claim was a hybrid of several different categories. We unravelled it:
- The most recent official data is the labour force report, published by the Kenya National Bureau of Statistics (KNBS) in February 2023. It covers the last three months of 2022 and found that 3.5 million young people "were not in the education system and were not working or being trained for work". They are formally known as youth not in education, employment or training (NEET). Making up 19% of the 18.4 million young people aged 15-34, they represent a significant loss of potential economic productivity and are at greater risk of social exclusion.
- The report also measured the total number of unemployed in Kenya at 2.97 million.
- The most recent national census, conducted in 2019, put the total number of Kenyans with diplomas, certificates and degrees at 4.23 million.
The country's total number of those without jobs, the young people not in education employment or training and even the number of those with diplomas, certificates and degrees - are all lower than Ruto's figure. - Makinia Juma.
Ruto gave the interview on the last day of the 2023/24 financial year. Kenya's fiscal year runs from 1 July to 30 June.
The Kenya Revenue Authority (KRA) collects taxes for the government. These include income or direct taxes, VAT, excise duties and customs duties.
At the end of the last financial year, which ended on 30 June 2023, Kenya had a total revenue of KSh2.2 trillion (about US$15.7 billion then).
The latest data from the national treasury, published in May 2024, shows that the KRA collected KSh1.93 trillion in taxes against a target of KSh2.1 trillion.
In addition, Kenyan law requires the finance minister to publish a "statement of actual revenues" showing the total amount of taxes collected and other sources of revenue, including grants.
The latest report published on 14 June 2024 showed that tax revenue collected as at 31 May 2024 was KSh1.93 trillion against a revised target of KSh2.5 trillion.
At an average of KSh175.5 billion per month, this means that the tax authority will have to collect KSh370 billion in June to meet Ruto's stated target.
The parliamentary budget office, an independent body that advises lawmakers on the economy, had in February 2024 projected a revenue shortfall of KSh330 billion by 30 June 2024.
Ruto's claim that the country had collected KSh2.3 million in taxes this year is not supported by data. -Makinia Juma.
Ruto said that out of the money collected in taxes, "KSh1 trillion went to debt financing".
Kenya's controller of budget publishes annual reports on government spending.
The latest, published in May 2024, covers the first nine months of the 2023/24 financial year. It showed that of the KSh1.54 trillion collected in taxes as of 31 March 2024, KSh1.24 trillion, or 80.5% of the total taxes, was spent on public debt.
As of 31 May 2024, taxes collected were KSh1.93 trillion and the government spent KSh1.5 trillion or 75% on debt repayment.
While Ruto's larger point was to show Kenya's debt burden and the pressure on revenues, he grossly understated the actual figure - he was off by KSh455 billion. - Makinia Juma.
The salaries commission sets the salaries of Kenya's state officers and advises the government on how to pay its workers.
The commission's most recent wage bill bulletin, published in April 2024, projected the public wage bill at KSh1.1 trillion in 2023, rising to KSh1.17 trillion in 2024.
The agency's data came from the annual KNBS economic survey and the national treasury. The 2024 survey, the most recent, put the wage bill provisionally at KSh832.7 billion.
The commission's data shows that the wage bill first reached KSh1 trillion in the 2021/22 financial year. The claim is mostly correct. - Makinia Juma.
Ruto put debt at KSh1.8 trillion in 2013, when he was first sworn in as deputy president.
The data supports his claim. Public debt was KSh1.89 trillion in June 2013, according to the public debt register and the annual debt reports that the treasury regularly submits to the national assembly.
The central bank's figures put public debt at KSh1.79 trillion in December 2012 and KSh1.89 trillion in June 2013. - Makinia Juma.
According to the treasury's debt report, public debt stood at KSh10.3 trillion as at June 2023, more than five times the 2013 figure of KSh1.89 trillion.
As of 30 March 2024, the public debt was KSh10.4 trillion, a figure corroborated by central bank data. Ruto's figures check out.
(Note - the dollar growth in public debt is much smaller, from $20.6 billion in 2013 to $73 billion in June 2023). -Makinia Juma.
The rolling demonstrations were initially a response to the deeply unpopular Finance Bill 2024, which Ruto withdrew. But in his televised roundtable, Ruto said the consequences would be that Kenyan traders would "continue to import potatoes from Europe when we have potatoes in ... Nyandarua".
The Kenyan county is a leading producer of potatoes.
The finance bill sought to limit the excise tax levied on imported potatoes to only those coming from outside the regional trading bloc, the East African Community.
In early 2022, when multinational fast food chain KFC said it had run out of potato imports, there was an uproar about why it was importing the commodity when Kenya had plenty. At the time, one economist said that he was shocked Kenyans didn't know the country imported potatoes.
According to the KNBS Economic Survey 2024, Kenya produced 2.3 million tonnes of potatoes and imported 2,000 tonnes in 2023.
The reputable Observatory of Economic Complexity platform, which tracks international trade data, shows that Kenya imported potatoes from the Netherlands, Tanzania, France, China, and the UK in 2022, the latest year for which data is available.
Furthermore, 2021 data from the World Integrated Trade Solution, the global trade database, also lists European countries (the Netherlands and the UK) as exporting potatoes to Kenya.
Dr Timothy Njagi, a researcher at the Tegemeo Institute, an agricultural policy think tank in Kenya, has written about potato imports. In a text, he told Africa Check that the two sources should settle the question of the origin of Kenya's potato imports.
While the claim is correct, only a tiny proportion of the total potato consumption is imported - 2,000 tonnes or 0.001% of the 1.98 million tonnes consumed as "food, seed, or other uses". -Alphonce Shiundu.
Responding to a remarkable exchange in which the editors told him that "a lot of Kenyans [didn't] associate the truth" with him, Ruto denied this and quickly pivoted to his record.
"I told the people of Kenya that I would reduce the prices of fertiliser from KSh7,000 to KSh2,500. I don't know how that is a lie because they buy it at KSh2,500," Ruto said. "Whether you believe me or not, facts will not change".
Ruto did tell Kenyans on 13 September 2022 that he would cut the price of fertiliser from "KSh6,500 to KSh3,500". In August 2023, Ruto said that subsidised fertiliser prices had been reduced to KSh2,500 for a 50-kilogram bag.
According to the National Agricultural Information System, the government's database of market prices of agricultural commodities, fertiliser retail prices ranged from KSh4,000 to KSh9,000 in July-August 2022, depending on the retail outlet and type.
Further, the last report of the national cereals board (NCPB) showed that prices were between KSh4,400 and KSh7,500 on 27 May 2022, before Ruto took office. The NCPB confirmed this price to Africa Check by email.
However, data from the agriculture ministry shows that market prices for unsubsidised fertiliser remain between KSh4,500 and KSh7,500.
Ruto's claim on input price, which we have previously fact-checked, is mostly correct. -Tess Wandia.
"Unga" is Kiswahili for maize flour, a staple in the country.
For historical maize prices, the Tegemeo Institute's Dr Njagi , who has researched maize prices in Kenya, previously referred us to a ministry of agriculture database.
On 12 September 2022, the day before Ruto was sworn in, a two-kilogramme packet of maize flour sold for between KSh193 and KSh256 in Nairobi supermarkets. These prices remained the day after he took office. -Tess Wandia.
The day after Ruto's TV roundtable, we checked the prices of a two-kilogramme maize flour packet in at least three major supermarkets in Nairobi: Carrefour, Naivas and Chandarana.
- At Carrefour, the highest price was KSh245 and the lowest was KSh114.
- At Naivas, the highest price was KSh235 and the lowest was KSh118.
- And at Chandarana, the highest price was KSh189 and the lowest was KSh123.
While Ruto's main point was that the price of maize flour had dropped, we have not seen any brand sold for KSh100. And in its June 2024 bulletin, the country's statistics office recorded that maize flour retails at an average of between KSh127 and 134.
Ruto's claim is incorrect. -Alphonce Shiundu.
Tourism is a major foreign exchange earner and employer in Kenya. Ruto claimed the number of tourists visiting the country had doubled under his tenure, from a million in 2022 to two million in 2023.
Some of his reforms included scrapping visa requirements for visitors to Kenya, and replacing them with an electronic travel authorisation. This only took effect in January 2024.
Kenya's statistics bureau often tracks tourist numbers and reports them in its flagship economic survey publication. The most recent showed that the country had 1.54 million tourists in 2022 and 2.1 million tourists in 2023.
Yes, tourism has increased, reaching two million in 2023. But more than one million tourists visited Kenya in 2022.
Ruto underestimated the 2022 figure. This inflated the actual increase from 35.4% to 100%, giving a misleading picture.
The Tourism Research Institute has published its 2024 report which shows a slightly lower increase in the number of tourists from 1.48 million in 2022 to 1.96 million in 2023. -Alphonce Shiundu.
Ruto said his historic state visit to the US in May had borne fruit as he had signed a deal to have Kenya access funding to make semiconductors under the CHIPS Act.
The legislation, formally known as the Creating Helpful Incentives to Produce Semiconductors (CHIPS) and Science Act, aims to boost US semiconductor manufacturing capacity.
Semiconductors are materials with electrical conductivity between a conductor (such as copper) and an insulator (such as glass). This unique property makes them essential for a wide range of electronic devices.
During Ruto's trip, the White House published a factsheet stating that it was working with the US Congress to allocate $1 million to Kenya "to promote resilient semiconductors supply chains, build secure and trusted ICT ecosystems, and complement U.S. domestic manufacturing capacity".
"This would make Kenya the first country in Africa to benefit from funding through the CHIPS and Science Act," the White House said. -Alphonce Shiundu.
As of 30 June 2023, the last financial year under Ruto's predecessor, Uhuru Kenyatta, the controller of budget reported that the public universities and university colleges had pending bills worth KSh48.3 billion.
Ruto set up a presidential working party on education reforms, which then reported that the debt stood at KSh61.8 billion as of December 2022.
The claim is mostly correct. -Alphonce Shiundu.
In the TV interview, Ruto said he had increased the budgets for public universities by KSh40 billion ($308 million) "because education... is very important".
Did he?
On 21 June 2024, at a graduation in Garissa University, Ruto put this figure at "KSh4 billion". He said the extra amount came after meeting university vice-chancellors in May.
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Confusingly, his office, State House, reported "KSh400 billion" on its YouTube account.
We found that the supplementary appropriations act, signed into law on 10 June 2024, allocated an extra KSh4.97 billion.
Ruto's previous statements and the supplementary budget both show that the additional allocation was KSh4.97 billion, not KSh40 billion. -Alphonce Shiundu.
Inflation measures "how much more expensive a set of goods and services has become over a certain period, usually a year", according to the International Monetary Fund.
The country's data agency publishes annual and monthly inflation figures. The most recent data shows that in June 2024 inflation was 4.6%.
The data also shows that inflation was 9.2% in September 2022 at the start of Ruto's term in office, with food inflation the highest at 15.5%.
We rate this claim as correct. -Makinia Juma.
Ruto said he had increased the budget for the judiciary, a contentious issue in the country, from KSh18 billion to KSh25 billion.
The 2022/23 appropriations act, the law that authorises public spending, allocated KSh16.4 billion to the judiciary and KSh587 million to the Judicial Service Commission (JSC), the administrative arm of the judiciary.
It wasn't KSh18 billion.
In February 2023, the national assembly's budget committee added KSh2.84 billion for the judiciary to "cater mainly for operations and maintenance".
This increase from KSh16.4 billion to KSh19.23 billion was also recorded in the controller of budget's annual report for 2022/23. The JSC also received an increase of KSh300 million, from KSh590 million to KSh800 million.
The 2023 appropriations law allocated KSh22.3 billion to the judiciary, of which KSh20.4 billion was for recurrent expenses and KSh1.85 billion for capital expenditure.
The judiciary has been allocated Sh24.7 billion in the 2024/25 budget. We are yet to see the signed appropriation act, which will contain the final figure, but it is close to what Ruto mentioned.
We rate this claim as mostly correct. - Makinia Juma.
Ruto said the country was spending almost half of its revenue on salaries and wages. Data from the salaries commission showed that the wage bill in the 2022/23 financial year was KSh1.1 trillion, against total revenues of KSh2.36 trillion, or 46.6%.
In its April 2024 wage bill bulletin, the commission estimated that the ratio of the wage bill to revenue would fall to 39.2% in 2023/24.
We rate Ruto's claim mostly correct. - Makinia Juma.
Ruto claimed that the law does not allow for more than 35% to be spent on public salaries.
Kenya law stipulates that the amount to be spent "on wages and benefits for its public officers shall not exceed a percentage of the national government revenues as prescribed in the regulations".
The regulations also state that "compensation of national and county government employees shall not exceed 35% of either level of government equitable revenue share."
Prof XN Iraki, who teaches economics at the University of Nairobi in Kenya, has previously told Africa Check that spending more than 35% of revenue would starve the country of its development funds.
We rate this claim correct. -Makinia Juma.
