Efforts to co-opt opposition and externalize blame are familiar tools in Kenyan politics, but may be ill-equipped to address the demands of a new youth protest phenomenon and the realities of Kenya's fiscal struggles.
Protests led by Kenya's 'Gen Z' population continue to exert pressure on President William Ruto as he approaches the end of his second year in office.
Demonstrations began in June, initially targeted at austerity-led tax increases but swiftly expanded to address widening societal inequality and perceived government apathy. Popular anger at brazen public displays of wealth among Kenya's political elite and a president seen as focused more on his international profile than domestic challenges has been further fuelled by a state security response that has seen at least 50 demonstrators killed.
Familiar elite bargaining
Having misjudged the depth of citizens' anger, Ruto and his political allies have been left playing catch-up with a haphazard range of concessions: chief among them the dismissal of almost the entire cabinet.
Of the president's now 22 nominations for a new cabinet, 10 were present before protests began - though all but two of these have been given new roles. The technocratic competence of several of the 12 new appointees, however, has been overshadowed by the nomination of four senior leaders from the Orange Democratic Movement (ODM), the party led by his 2022 presidential opponent Raila Odinga. In this sense Ruto has reverted to a familiar Kenyan political playbook of elite bargaining, aimed at forestalling opposition mobilization.
Related contentKenya's 2022 elections: Prospects and challenges for shared prosperityIt is far from clear that such an approach can deliver the same results this time around. Ruto built his rise to the presidency in part upon a rejection of the co-optation of opposition politicians, even describing this in a Chatham House address in 2022 as 'mongrel government'.
And hoping to head off public anger by co-opting the ODM may represent a misreading of newly decentralized patterns of protest. An ODM presence in government was already foreshadowed by Ruto supporting Odinga's bid for the African Union Commission chairperson role - but young protestors across Kenya lack a clear figurehead, have distanced themselves from the machinations of opposition politics, and rejected any positioning based on ethnic divisions.
External diversions and the IMF blame game
Yet this emerging style of dissent is also not without its vulnerabilities. Another tool at Ruto's disposal may be to divert blame towards external actors - as already seen in accusations towards the Ford Foundation. With Kenya's debt burden at the centre of its economic challenges and higher revenue targets a condition for support under an IMF programme worth nearly $5 billion, the IMF has been accused by commentators of entrapping Kenya and conducting 'economic experiments'.
A closer look at Kenya's debt burden reveals that responsibility should primarily fall upon Kenya's leaders.
Stringent IMF targets being passed on to citizens has revealed the limits of the IMF's narrow crisis management perspective and generated justified resentment, even if other lenders have been similarly inflexible: Kenya missed the first phase of a debt pause during the COVID-19 pandemic over fears it could trigger a recall from bondholders, and China unilaterally refused to extend debt suspension as infrastructure loans came due in mid-2021.
But a closer look at Kenya's debt burden reveals that responsibility should primarily fall upon Kenya's leaders. The previous Kenyatta administration - with Ruto's active endorsement as deputy president - oversaw a huge surge in borrowing that raised Kenya's debt-to-GDP ratio from 42 to 69 per cent between 2013 and 2020.
Many of the largest external loans came with variable interest rates. Of $5 billion lent by China EXIM Bank for Kenya's railway project, $3.4 billion came at rates of 3.6 or 3 per cent above a floating benchmark. When signed in 2014 and 2016 this benchmark rate was below 0.5 per cent - it now stands at over 5 per cent.
In parallel, Kenya piled on expensive commercial debt. A $2 billion Eurobond issued in 2014 was long identified as a major liquidity risk ahead of its repayment in June 2024, and over $2 billion of syndicated loans arranged by the Trade and Development Bank between 2015 and 2019 were also set at variable interest rates up to 4 per cent higher than Chinese loans. The result has been Kenya spending around 60 per cent of annual government revenues on debt servicing, with almost half of this estimated to be on interest alone.
And rather than generating growth and employment opportunities for Kenya's population, this borrowing was largely used to prop up Kenya's currency and chase political legacy infrastructure projects. The most expensive of these, the flagship railway project, failed to meet tendering standards mandated by Kenya's constitution and saw costly loan funds largely repatriated by foreign contractors.
The IMF's single-minded pursuit of preventing Kenyan default should not divert demonstrators from focusing on wider failures by Kenyan leaders, notably a decade of unproductive debt accumulated with no regard to the inequality it was entrenching, and Ruto's reluctance to do the hard work of cutting government wastage and corruption.
Beyond politics as usual?
The Ruto administration's reversion to familiar measures indicates they are not yet convinced that a real turning point in Kenyan politics is underway. The profiles of ODM leaders nominated to cabinet - featuring players in coastal and western Kenya - may already showcase the manoeuvring of regional support bases ahead of the next election.
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Emerging talk of another constitution-making process may provide a natural platform for opportunism by Kenyan politicians. Other Ruto concessions, such as a promised debt audit, appear to deliver confusion and the duplication of existing mandates ahead of real accountability.
Some Ruto strategists downplay the prospect of a truly nationally unified youth movement as an urban myth; instead highlighting the starkness of Kenya's rural-urban divide. Their cynicism may not be entirely unwarranted. Kenya remains a country split by contradictions, in which a larger share of the population have a smartphone than have access to safe drinking water. Some may remember how predictions of a 'Karua wave' with the announcement of Odinga's 2022 running mate amounted to little, despite civil society backing and projected excitement among urban middle classes.
But only months ago the same political players were caught completely off guard by the eruption of the protests, and the debt crisis that precipitated much of Kenya's current revenue challenge will not subside anytime soon - even if the IMF can offer greater leniency on taxation conditions.
While Ruto now hedges his bets across a 'broad-based' government and a wide but shallow range of concessions, Kenya's youth-led movement may not have the same luxury to divide its focus. Maintaining a cohesive agenda in the face of such pressures will be the decisive test of whether politics as usual really can reassert control.
