When\u00a0Kenyan President William Ruto\u00a0touched down in Beijing seven months ago, he was welcomed on the tarmac with a red carpet and cordons of Chinese troops standing at attention. Among the goals of his three-day state visit in October: securing another $1 billion in loans from China to help complete infrastructure projects.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
On Wednesday,\u00a0when he arrived at Joint Base Andrews to begin another state visit \u2013 this time to Washington \u2013 he again found a red carpet and troops. This time, however, a special emissary was sent to greet his plane: first lady Dr. Jill Biden.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
President Joe Biden is leaning on the highest trappings of American diplomacy this week to boost ties with the East African nation, including designating Kenya a major non-NATO ally \u2013 the first in sub-Saharan Africa \u2013 and hosting a sunset state dinner on the White House South Lawn.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Biden offered effusive praise for his Kenyan counterpart, including for Kenya\u2019s leadership on \u201ca historic African green industrialization initiative\u201d as he welcomed Ruto to the White House for the visit.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cTogether, the United States and Kenya are working to deliver on the challenges that matter most to our people\u2019s\u2019 lives \u2013 health security, economic security, cybersecurity, and climate security,\u201d he said. \u201cMr. President, your bold leadership on this front has been important and particularly impactful.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Looming over the pomp and circumstance is China\u2019s expanding role in Africa, which has become a central testing ground for the world\u2019s two largest economies as they jockey for economic and geopolitical influence.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Senior administration officials acknowledge a central factor in scheduling a state visit with Kenya was the desire to counter China\u2019s influence and financial leverage on the African continent, which has outpaced the United States in direct investment.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cFor many, many years, it was really the Chinese who showed up in Africa and in Kenya,\u201d US Ambassador to Kenya Meg Whitman told CNN in an interview. With the first state visit for an African leader in nearly two decades, \u201cthere\u2019s a specific message to Kenya and to the continent, which is: America wants to be your partner.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
For decades, China has been making high-interest loans to low-income African nations to help them fund development for domestic projects, including some flagship infrastructure projects within China\u2019s Belt and Road Initiative. Among those:\u00a0A high-speed rail route from Nairobi to Mombasa\u00a0that the Kenyan government funded with billions in loans from Chinese state banks.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
A decade after the construction of that railway, Kenya and the US plan to announce that an American company will be building a roadway along that same corridor.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cThat\u2019s a great opportunity for America to start bidding on these big government contracts that make a difference to the infrastructure\u201d in Kenya, Whitman told CNN.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
From 2000 to 2022, Beijing lent $170 billion to African nations \u2013 including $6.7 billion to Kenya \u2013 to fund these initiatives, according to Boston University\u2019s\u00a0Chinese Loans to Africa database. Those loans saddled Africa with costly debt that countries have been increasingly unable to service, leading many nations to seek relief from their sovereign lenders.\u00a0Kenya\u2019s debt is projected to reach a level of 74% of its economic output, with the country paying an increasing share of government revenue on rising interest costs.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cToo many nations are forced to make a choice between development and debt, between investing in their people and paying back their creditors,\u201d Biden said during a joint press conference with Ruto.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Kenya has been forced to choose between servicing its debt and advancing its development, one reason Kenya\u2019s Ruto has continued to seek new funds from Beijing.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cThese countries, I think, have to stay friends with as many people as they can,\u201d Whitman told CNN of Ruto\u2019s continued financial relationship with Beijing. \u201cThe needs are great \u2026 we have to come with a better offer.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
During the state visit, the US and Kenya are set to announce the \u201cNairobi-Washington Vision,\u201d calling on creditor countries \u2013 and likely China in particular \u2013 to provide grants, budget support and debt suspension to help alleviate the burden.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Ruto, meanwhile, has called on African leaders to lean more heavily on Western nations and lower-interest loans from the World Bank to fund their development.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cThere\u2019s some real China fatigue in Africa,\u201d said a former senior administration official. \u201cThe administration sees an opening there.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
And the US has already begun stepping into that opening. At the Group of 20 summit last year, the US and European Union announced they would back the buildout of a rail corridor connecting Angola, the Democratic Republic of Congo and Zambia that would facilitate the transit of the region\u2019s critical minerals back to the West.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
In his meetings with Biden, Ruto has sought to emphasize Kenya \u2013 and the broader African continent \u2013 as an area worthy of investment. In a gathering of CEOs on Wednesday at the White House, he told his American counterpart that old perceptions of the continent were changing.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cYou\u2019re all past thinking about Africa as a place of war and destruction instead of opportunity, and we\u2019re making that real,\u201d Ruto told the president during the meeting, according to a senior US administration official who paraphrased the leader\u2019s remark.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Still, Ruto\u2019s visit to Washington comes at a moment of political instability in many African countries. Military coups over the last year have toppled governments and underscored a fragile rule of law, while traditional American allies on the continent have demonstrated new willingness to break from the United States. One of the goals of Thursday\u2019s state visit is to demonstrate the ability of democracies \u2013 like Kenya\u2019s \u2013 to deliver for their people.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Biden, who hosted African leaders at the White House for a summit earlier in his term, has been consumed since then by conflicts in the Middle East and Ukraine. Since the December 2022 gathering, during which he declared he was \u201call in\u201d on Africa, he\u2019s hosted only one African leader for talks at the White House: Angolan President Jo\u00e3o Manuel Gon\u00e7alves Louren\u00e7o.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cIt\u2019s no secret that the world has had a lot going on the last year and a half,\u201d a senior administration official said this week, pointing to a stream of Cabinet secretaries and other senior administration officials who have visited Africa as a sign of the Biden team\u2019s commitment.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Yet the spate of foreign conflicts has prevented Biden himself from paying a visit, which he vowed to do within a year of the summit. He still intends to travel to Africa as president, his national security adviser Jake Sullivan told reporters on Wednesday, though he couldn\u2019t say when.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Biden said as he welcomed Ruto to the White House on Wednesday he planned to visit Africa next year \u2013 after, he hopes, securing reelection.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cI plan on going in February,\u201d Biden told reporters. It wasn\u2019t clear whether Biden was joking; he asked afterward how questions about his travel plans were \u201crelevant.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Relevant or not, a presidential trip to Africa would come only after Chinese President Xi Jinping visited the continent last year for talks with leaders of the BRICS emerging economies.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Advisers say Biden remains intent on focusing attention on Africa, particularly amid jockeying for strategic influence from Russia and China. A comparison with former President Donald Trump \u2013 who privately referred to some African countries as \u201cshitholes\u201d and never himself visited Africa when in office \u2013 is also not lost on Biden\u2019s aides.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Thursday\u2019s state visit to Washington will be the first for an African leader since 2008.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
When\u00a0Kenyan President William Ruto\u00a0touched down in Beijing seven months ago, he was welcomed on the tarmac with a red carpet and cordons of Chinese troops standing at attention. Among the goals of his three-day state visit in October: securing another $1 billion in loans from China to help complete infrastructure projects. On Wednesday,\u00a0when he arrived […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":38982,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2,16,15],"tags":[7,26,25],"class_list":{"0":"post-38981","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-featured","8":"category-news","9":"category-politics","10":"tag-apie-project","11":"tag-news","12":"tag-politics"},"yoast_head":"\n