How former Kenyan president Mwai Kibaki looked east to China

Published: May 03,2022

Mwai Kibaki pictured with Chinese the commerce minister Chen Deming in Nairobi in 2009. Photo: Xinhua

The former Kenyan president Mwai Kibaki, who died last week aged 90, made a major economic shift to Asia with his “Look East Policy”, which is credited with attracting Asian capital to a series of major projects such as ports, highways and airports.

In the early days of his tenure, the West was diplomatically and economically dominant in most African countries but in many cases cut funding while demanding democratic reforms.

Kenya and many others turned instead to countries like China, who promised not to interfere in their internal affairs. By 2009, China had overtaken the United States to become the biggest trading partner in Africa.

Kibaki, who was laid to rest on Saturday, entered into trade and economic partnerships with several Asian countries, mostly China, India, Japan and the United Arab Emirates.

Of those countries, China became the biggest trading and economic partner – coinciding with the global financial crisis of 2008-2009.

As Western countries looked inward to concentrate on reviving their economies, China had a large current account surplus that created foreign earnings that had to be invested overseas.

Beijing also encouraged its companies to search for business and invest overseas as part of the country’s “Go Out” strategy that has seen more than 10,000 companies invest in Africa.

Paul Nantulya, a research associate at the Africa Centre for Strategic Studies at Washington’s National Defence University, said relations between Kenya and China had continued the upward trajectory established under his predecessor, Daniel arap Moi.

Nantulya said Moi’s tilt towards China was part of his “Look East Policy” following the cooling of relations with Kenya’s traditional Western partners such as the United States and Europe over human rights violations and corruption.

Under Kibaki, who was in office between 2002 and 2013, the partnership expanded into critical areas such as technical and higher education, agriculture, horticulture, public security and policing, and – most importantly – infrastructure, Nantulya said.

Kibaki had a strong incentive to “look east”, especially during his second term which was marred by a particularly nasty election campaign in 2007 that led to violence in the Rift Valley and put Kenya on the edge of civil war for the first time since independence, Nantulya said.

“Western governments were very critical of Kibaki and his allies and shared the widespread sentiment in the country that they lost that election and tried to keep themselves in power by force,” he said.

Nantulya said Kibaki accelerated Kenya’s engagements with China, for political reasons and because of the general reluctance by Western partners to finance major development programmes given how Kibaki secured his second and final term.

By the time he left office, Kibaki had borrowed about US$1.59 billion, according to data by the Boston University Global Development Policy Centre.

Two-way China-Kenya trade increased from US$250.45 million in 2003 to US$2.84 billion at the end of 2012 at the tail end of Kibaki’s term, according to the China Africa Research Initiative (CARI) at the Johns Hopkins University School of Advanced International Studies.

Chinese-funded projects included roads, energy and aviation projects, and Lamu Port – part of a transport corridor intended to stretch from South Sudan to Ethiopia – whose first phase was completed last year.

“[Under Kibaki] we saw major Chinese state-owned companies like China Roads and Bridges entrenching themselves in the Kenyan economy and establishing high-level political connections with Kenya’s governing elite as well as business and personal relations with the country’s financial elite and captains of industry,” Natanulya said.

The trend continued under his successor, Uhuru Kenyatta, who borrowed about US$7.67 billion between 2013 and 2020, according to Boston University Global Development Policy Centre data.

Chinese companies now hold a firm grip on Kenya’s infrastructure construction, especially in building roads and highways, railway and ports.

John Githongo, a former permanent secretary for governance and chief corruption-buster in Kibaki’s government, said the tilt to the east made pragmatic sense for an economy with a structural infrastructure deficit.

Githongo said that at the time the West was focusing on the Middle East and Afghanistan, while “China expanded the options available to Kenya in terms of development finance and, in a sense, when you include deepening relations with India, Turkey, the UAE etc, it was a common-sense renewal of relations going back several hundred years between the nations of the Indian Ocean Rim”.

Kibaki tried to assert a more independent foreign policy with respect to the West than Moi had done, said Macharia Munene, a professor of history and international relations, at United States International University.

“This annoyed the Western powers who like controlling other states. Being friendly to China or any other country was an independent choice,” Munene said.

“China was more accommodating in terms of delivering, prices and respect for the host country than countries in the West, which hardly deliver on promises and show disdain for Africans … All that Kibaki asked is that all countries be responsible and be treated the same without preference to any.”

Throughout Kibaki’s presidency, Kenya was able to fund on average 90 per cent of its public sector expenditure thanks to a more efficient and less corrupt tax collection programme, according to Michael Chege, a political economy professor at the University of Nairobi, who was one of Kibaki’s advisers.

The remaining 10 per cent was raised from multilateral development banks and bilateral lenders such as Japan and the EU.

He said Kenya started looking for infrastructure support from China when it realised that Western funds were going predominantly to social sectors such as health, education, and governance.

“It didn’t dispense with Western aid. Instead, it turned increasingly to China for infrastructure funding, and to Japan as well. In the end, Kenya was paying for most of its government expenditure. But aid from both East and West also rose. Surprisingly,” Chege said.