 "EXCLUSIVE We are changing narrative for Africa as investment destination, not one for aid: Kenyan Prez William Ruto")
Kenyan President William Ruto was on a two-day visit to India during which he held several bilateral meetings with Prime Minister Narendra Modi. The two leaders talked about strengthening India-Kenya ties.
Palki Sharma: President Ruto, welcome to India. How are you doing, Sir?
William Ruto: I’m good. Thank you very much. It was a wonderful visit to India. I’m truly grateful to the government, people, Prime Minister, President of India for receiving me and for all the conversations we’ve had, and all the discussions we’ve had. I am very confident that it’s going to be a new chapter in India-Kenya relations.
Palki Sharma: Tell me about your conversations and meeting with Prime Minister Modi. What is your equation with him?
William Ruto: We had a wonderful conversation with Prime Minister Modi. I have a lot of admiration for Prime Minister Modi… the way he has managed to pick up India, and the way he is focused on matters that affect common people, and the way he believes, like me, in bottom-up… you know, what we are trying to do… what benefits the majority of citizens. So, we had a robust conversation on a wide ranging subjects, issues that are of mutual benefit between Kenya and India, ranging from agriculture.
We are great agricultural countries, both Kenya and India, and we discussed about what we can do with the programme that I have in Kenya, how I can work with India to escalate some of the things we want to do in agricultural mechanisation, vaccine manufacture, training using the leather institute here and the footwear institute here for our leather programme in Kenya.
What we could do between our two dairy boards. Already, there’s been an interaction between our two dairy boards and we have agreed on how they are going to work together on manufacture of vaccines, on working on genetics for our breeds, and also for manufacture of agricultural equipment.
Impact Shorts
More ShortsWe have agreed on what we can do around trade in agricultural commodities. For the first time, we are exporting avocados to India from two months ago. There are some tariff negotiations that Prime Minister Modi has agreed to consider. At the moment, avocados from Kenya are attracting about 30 per cent tariff. He has agreed to look into that so that we can use it to balance the trade between Kenya and India.
We have agreed with him also on the programme we have on universal health coverage in Kenya. There is a lot we can learn in the health space from India. India is a great country on health matters. Many Kenyans come to India to look for medical attention. And, we have agreed on how we can work on digitisation, telemedicine. We already have a programme in Kenya for digitising health services.
We’ve already passed new legislation that will anchor our health provision in Kenya. We have agreed on how we can partner and also build capacity for our medical personnel. India has great experience. We’ve agreed that in Kenya we are going to reduce the bureaucracy to allow more Indian specialists to work with their Kenyan counterparts in our referral hospitals, both public and private.
We’ve also agreed that, we will eliminate bureaucracy for Kenyan health professionals, nurses, clinical officers, doctors to come for short courses in India—three months, six months and one year. That will go a very long way in actualising my plan on universal health coverage and making sure that we deliver health, especially from the bottom, going up.
As you are aware, we have this programme in Kenya, which is truly bottom-up. We have just enrolled 100, 000 community health workers in villages.
We also had a robust conversation about digital government. India has made huge strides in making sure that they can deliver government service efficiently, cost effectively, and also eliminating bureaucracy and pilferage and corruption. That is precisely what I want to do in Kenya. Already, we have digitised almost 90 per cent of government services in Kenya following in the footsteps of India.
I sent a team from Kenya, about eight months ago, to come and pick lessons from India. So, we are using the Indian experience in our digitisation of government service, in our unique personal identifier, the same way you have it here in India. We’ve begun the process in Kenya of a digital identity. Of course, some people have taken us to court, but you see, it’s the normal journey of a democracy. Some people will go, you know, try and test here and there… what India has done is phenomenal. That with a population of 1. 4 billion people. Because you can identify citizens digitally, you can deliver service much more efficiently.
We’ve signed an MoU between Open University of Kenya and the Indira Gandhi National Open University of India to again build a collaboration that will leverage on experiences, especially from the longstanding delivery of courses digitally and online by the Indian counterpart. We also, agreed that India will extend a credit line of about $250 million, which is about 37, 38 billion Kenyan shillings that will go a long way in leveraging our food security intervention, especially around mechanisation and improving the breeds we have.
All matters to do with seed development, on areas of pulses on areas of edible oil. We’re going to be focused on sunflower. We’re going to be focused on soya and India has great experience. In fact, I was finalising a small meeting with my team and we have agreed that actually next week we’ll have the first Kenyan team. I will be sending here the principal secretaries of two ministries to come just and conclude what we agreed so that we can get to work, especially on matters that we have agreed with Prime Minister Modi.
So, I had a wonderful experience with Prime Minister Modi. As I told you, he’s a great inspiration on what he does. And of course, I was asking him… well, it’s tough doing things for 50 million people, I don’t know how he does for 1. 4 billion! It’s quite something.
Palki Sharma: What did he tell you then? The answer to that?
William Ruto: He gave me some tips, not for the media.
Palki Sharma: It sounds like you got a lot of work done in a very short visit and a lot of deals. A few decades back, the developing world was looking at Western models of development and growth to be emulated. Do you think now the India model is something that countries like Kenya and others resonate with more?
William Ruto: Well, we all share the same history. You know, India was a British colony just like Kenya. India was lucky to have made strides ahead of us so there is a lot of commonality. In fact, that’s what I was saying yesterday. There is a lot of commonality between India and Kenya. It’s easier for us to work with Indian experience because we can relate to it. We have the same legal system. We speak English. We share common history. We are neighbours, so to speak. So there’s a lot that we share and it is easy to relate to the progress India has made because they were around the same spot with us a few years ago.
So, yes, it is much more comparable. It’s much more easy to learn from what India has done and we are sharing experience. There are a few things India will learn from Kenya as we make this journey.
Palki Sharma: One of the key announcements yesterday was about fighting terrorism and defence forces of both countries coming together. That’s a very, very important subject for India because we’ve been at the receiving end of state-sponsored terrorism from a neighbour that was not just supported, but also funded, first by the US, and now by China. Do you think the international community needs to do more to call out such actors?
William Ruto: Terrorism is a global phenomenon and is a crisis that affects many parts of the world. The same way India has suffered terrorism, we too have. We have neighbours that have serious challenges of terrorist groups in Somalia, in various parts of our region. It’s necessary that we build a coalition of countries so that we share experience, we share intelligence, we share information, we collaborate, we synergize so that we can deal with terrorism because terrorism has no borders.
There is no terrorism for developing or developed world. There is no terrorism for Kenya or India. Terrorists are terrorists. Unless we come together, we are, most likely, not be able to make progress in the fight as we should, specifically, because we share the Indian Ocean, and sometime because terrorists use the oceans to block goods to cause trouble. So it is necessary that our defence forces from India and from Kenya work together to protect our sea routes so that we can keep trade moving.
I must commend India for working with us in using their capabilities. They worked with Kenya to survey our maritime resources and to provide technical expertise for us to see what is the wealth of the resources that we have in our waters. That information is useful to Kenya because one of the areas that I intend to focus is the blue economy. In my estimation from experts that I work with is that we could grow our revenues from blue economy from about 20 billion Kenya shillings to about 120-130 billion Kenyan shillings per year if we have the correct information and working with India.
We have managed to gather a lot of useful information for our blue economy, but also to deal with the challenge of terrorism in our waters.
Palki Sharma: Do you think that in the eyes of the international multilateral institutions—the Western-led institutions—all terrorists and all terrorism-related challenges are seen equally? Are they sympathetic to your challenges as much as they are to perceived threats in the West?
William Ruto: Well, you know, countries are driven by national interest most of the time and that is why countries will relate, will react, will deal with situations with the perspective of their national interest. So, they may not necessarily be as enthusiastic to deal with a certain situation because maybe it doesn’t affect their interests as much as another’s situation.
And, that’s the nature of the world, you know! We have national interests and then we have interests that converge and bring us together as humanity. Of course, we should be able to deal with terrorism as terrorism; work together, all of us, in a coalition as nations, as progressive people to say no to bad people.
But, sometimes that’s not the case. I don’t think blame game or finger pointing will do much. I think we just have to continuously build a coalition, work together like the way we discussed this with Prime Minister Modi. It will take us a step in the right direction. Then, we will keep building these blocks until we manage the situation from where I sit.
Palki Sharma: Would you say the way to doing it would be to getting your rightful place at the table, at the decision-making table? Prime Minister Modi and India were instrumental in getting the African Union into the G20. Is that something that you discussed? And, do you think that is one way to, sort of, get the proper representation that Africa deserves?
William Ruto: That’s correct. In fact, I did commend my brother Prime Minister Modi for his efforts in championing the place of Global South, specifically the place of Africa in the global geopolitics.
It is here in India that Africa got the opportunity to be a permanent member of the G20. We believe that positioning is going to not only bring voice, but African perspective, into the conversation and African interests and African issues into the equation. It is one step in the right direction.
We also discussed with Prime Minister Modi what we need to do about the United Nations Security Council. We need a much more democratic, a much more fit for purpose UN Security Council because it cannot be that five countries, somehow, are the only ones who will have this much power about issues that happen globally, complete with Veto powers on blocking issues that they may not necessarily think are important, but a matter of life and death for others.
So, we are very well aligned with India, as Africa and as Kenya for that matter, on the reform of the whole UN system.
The international financial architecture… you must be aware that this is one push that I have made, Africa has made, and we are building a big coalition.
Initially, many people dismissed it… that this is not going to happen, but we became persistent. Today when we had the COP28 in Dubai, everybody had come around to say, ‘okay, we think you have a point’. We think it is time to rethink the international financial architecture. We think we need to democratise decision making.
We think we need to build a bigger coalition and a new charter on financing, especially climate sensitive, climate positive growth, sensitive financing.
So, finally, through building a coalition, raising our voices, we are finally influencing the way the world looks at issues.
India is instrumental because India is a big voice. Prime Minister Modi is a very progressive voice. So, with his voice in championing the African cause at G20, the coalition was built to change the international financial architecture complete with refinancing the multilateral development banks and also making sure that we have new sources of revenue. It’s a must that we have to discuss, carbon trading, carbon taxation.
In fact, we launched a programme with France and a few other countries on a framework that we will report one year from now on a new charter on carbon taxation, carbon trading and carbon pricing as new sources of revenue to fund climate positive growth.
So we’re discussing G20, we’re discussing international financial architecture, we are discussing UN reform. These are all areas on which we have common ground. Prime Minister Modi, myself, India, Kenya, Africa, Global South, we’re all alike.
Palki Sharma: We’ve been telling our viewers about how you are leading the climate fight in Africa. You hosted the first climate summit as well. I’ll come to that. But, you mentioned the global financial architecture. The joint statement I see mentions a project financing in Kenyan Indian rupees. There’s been a lot of talk of that as well of de-dollarisation. Do you see a future, not very far away, devoid of the hegemony of the US dollar?
William Ruto: I think we must not bring, an ‘us versus them’, ‘this versus the other’. We have no problem with the US dollar. But, we want a currency neutral trade, you know! We want to diversify currency. For example, for us in Africa, we are working with the AfriExim Bank to have a pan-African payment and settlement system where trade in Africa will be in local currency, but the settlement can be done at a higher level by a centralised system.
So, AfriExim is providing a facility because we lose about 5 billion dollars every year in Africa just in exchange rates. We are saying we want trade, we want commerce, we want transactions to be currency neutral for us.
We want to trade in our local currencies. And in fact, the conversation I was having yesterday with Prime Minister Modi is that even the facility that will be extended to Kenya, the 250 million facility, we want it in Indian Rupees. Why should we go and look for dollars when we can have the facility in Indian Rupees?
We have a lot of trade; we have commodities we buy in Indian Rupees. Why should we change Kenya shilling to US dollar, from US dollar to Indian rupees? Why don’t we just agree that we can do trade between Kenya in shillings and in Rupees? So, this is what we are, what the conversation we are having.
Yes, there will be a de-monopolising currency, you know, but the real aim is not to replace dollars with Rupees or Dollars with Shillings; the real aim is, we need to diversify currency. We need to neutralise currency, so that we concentrate on doing trade rather than on currency exchange.
Palki Sharma: You recently also said that the world is now looking at Africa as an opportunity and not as a source of problems. We see a growing interest—there are European players like France, there’s the US, there’s China, there’s Russia. Do you also then see a new scramble for Africa, sort of, taking shape?
William Ruto: Scramble would be the wrong word. Maybe, a new focus, you know. What we are saying as African leaders is, and I will tell you what I have said often, that there is an African proverb: ‘until the lion learned to write his own story, all stories glorified the hunter because he was the one writing’. So this time round, we’re going to write our own story.
For a long time, people wrote stories about Africa, and they said Africa is a place of disease, poverty, conflict, problems. We’re telling them Africa is much more than that. Africa is a continent of huge renewable energy resources: 60 per cent of the world’s potential.
Africa is a region of 40 per cent of mineral resources globally, including those that are important and significant for energy transition. Africa has 60 per cent of the world’s arable and cultivated land that can be used for smart agriculture to feed the world. Africa has the largest, the youngest, population globally at the mean age of 19 and growing. It’s not only a workforce, but it’s also a market. Africa has the largest natural assets for carbon sequence sequestration.
So, we are repositioning Africa, not in the eyes of others, who know very little about us, but in our own perspective, knowing exactly the wealth that we have. And, we are saying that with these assets, we want to engage with the rest of the world in a win-win outcome. We want to work with others. We come with our assets. We do not want to ask for favours. We do not want to ask for aid. We are not looking for donations. What we want is an engagement on how are we going to create investment opportunities.
It is the reason why, in the COP28 in Dubai, we came as African leaders and we said: ‘look, this is our Africa green industrialisation initiative’.
We have this investment grid. You know, opportunities. You can invest in our renewable energy, geothermal wind, solar. You can invest in value addition and processing of our minerals. We do not want to export iron ore from Mauritania or from Kenya or from another place to China or Europe. We are going to use our renewable energy to process our iron ore and sell you green steel. We are not going to be exporting bauxite. We want to process our own bauxite and export aluminium.
We have supported, for example, Europe. We have supported other regions. We’ve given them our raw materials and we have been very faithful. We have also bought their finished products. It is time that we exchange; this time around they buy our finished product and they export to us their technology, and we agree on an investment programme.
So, we are changing the narrative for Africa, and we are repositioning Africa as an investment destination, not as a destination for aid or a destination for donations.
Palki Sharma: Are you going to be sending cheetahs to India?
William Ruto: Well, we’ve joined the big cat coalition because we are a great nature country. We have our wildlife; we share in protection of wildlife globally. Kenya is a front country in protecting our assets, and the sale of animals is not a very simple thing.
Palki Sharma: Some of them were relocated to India from Namibia and South Africa.
William Ruto: There are conventions that cover how countries work around wildlife and those conventions must be respected. I am sure whatever came from Namibia or other countries, there must be a framework.
Palki: You’ve played a very active role. You’ve been in office not very long, but you’re looking at helping Haiti by sending police force from Kenya, you’re looking at mediating in Sudan, in Niger, and your critics say that while you’re looking at these international issues, you’re probably not doing, according to them, enough at home. You promised to bring down the cost of living. Do you believe you’ve been able to make enough progress? And, what is your response to people who say that you’re not resolving the discontent at home?
William Ruto: Kenya is not an island. Kenya is a country in a context. To be able to get Kenya moving, we have to build a big coalition of support. India must be in the equation to support what we’re doing… the US, others, China… You know, we build a big coalition, and that’s my aim. My aim is that the Kenya project is a project that goes beyond our borders. We have a big relationship with others who influence how much progress we make. Unless I build a big coalition of support for Kenya, we will not achieve what we want to achieve.
I have been very careful to balance all the issues and everything I do. I have, at the back of my mind, the interests of Kenya. How do I use every opportunity to further the interests of Kenya? My trip to India, for example, has a lot, maybe everything, to do with the progress we made in Kenya. Sharing experience around our digital space, working with our agriculture.
Looking at our health, it’s all about how do I position Kenya to leverage on experience, on capacity, on support from other countries. As you are aware, that the cost of living is not a country specific issue. The cost of living is a global phenomenon. I speak to many leaders. And, what they speak, as though they are speaking for me because it’s a challenge we have to confront.
Commodities went up because of the challenges we have with COVID and the war in Europe and all that. But, let me tell you, I did commit to the people of Kenya that my belief is that we have to enhance our production.
We cannot continue to import stuff. In fact, that’s something Prime Minister Modi believes. In fact, he has changed India from a net importer of rice to a net exporter of rice today. That is the mission I have for Kenya and you don’t become a net exporter of anything by not concentrating on production.
So, my focus is how do we support farmers? Let’s reduce the cost of fertilizer. Kenyans will tell you… in the last one year, I have brought down the cost of fertilizer from 7,000 Kenya shillings to 2,500. In fact, this year we have increased our production, for example, of maize by 40 per cent because of the interventions I have put in place.
That speaks the language of cost of living because for 50-52 per cent expenditure of most households is on food. If you reduce the cost of food, you affect significantly their cost of living.
The other intervention that we are working on is how do we create more jobs because when you increase money in people’s pockets, that is how you deal with the cost of living. In the last one year, because of the programme we have rolled out, and I have four programmes that I target to create jobs in Kenya. One of them is housing. We’ve already rolled it out. We have 120, 000 people who were jobless a year ago. Today they have jobs. My programme is that in the next five years, I should have half a million people working in our housing plan.
The other intervention that I am working on is to make sure that we create more jobs abroad. We are working on eight different bilateral labour agreements… with Saudi Arabia, with the UAE, with Germany. In fact, I was in Berlin, about two weeks ago and that was the conversation between me and Chancellor Scholz.
Kenyans are very hardworking people. Kenyans are probably the best workers anywhere. In fact, we have the best human capital and we spend a lot of money sharpening it. We spend 5 billion dollars every year to educate our children from primary school all the way to university. So, the export of labour.
I am targeting to export more Kenyans because they are a very good resource. And, then we are working on the space of creating digital jobs—e-commerce, making sure that we have more BPOs, business process outsourcing—where we are expanding that space. It’s the reason why we are creating 1,450 ICT hubs across Kenya to have more young people working.
So, I am thoroughly focused on making sure that I deal with the challenge of cost of living as I grow the country. And finally, I am very well focused on reducing the cost of medical attention. You know, many Kenyans spend their life savings, sell property, they sell their valued assets to go to hospital.
It is the reason why we’ve changed the law around delivery of health. We have new laws now that I have signed into place and we are rolling out universal health coverage. This is a programme we have tried and failed twice. I want to promise you and promise the people of Kenya that we will not fail this time. I am certain, I am clear, on how we will drive this to make sure that the people at the bottom of the pyramid pay less and progressively we make sure that health delivery leaves nobody buying and bring integrity into the whole system. We want to get rid of pilferage, we want to get rid of wastage, and that is why I am digitising, and learning from India to digitise, the whole health space to make sure that delivery is cost effective, efficient and corruption free.
Palki Sharma: I think your message is reaching out to millions of our viewers in Kenya, and, I cannot let you go without asking about the role of Indians in Kenya in cementing this relationship between the two countries. That is my final question.
William Ruto: We have a great Indian diaspora in Kenya. They have worked with us since 1911. They came to build the railway and they found that there was a great place to stay. So, they chose to stay with us in Kenya. They are now very good business people, very good farmers, very good citizens, very good leaders. In fact, we have many of them in our parliaments and in our institutions and in the private sector, in the public sector; we are working with them. So, the Indian diaspora is a great resource to Kenya. They bring on board the diversity of Kenya and, today, they stopped being Indians.
They are now Kenya’s 44th tribe and they are perfectly Kenyan with us. They’ve been a great bridge between India and Kenya.
Palki Sharma: Some of them are friends and they call Kenya home. I’ve heard great things. But, thank you so much for your time, President. I know you’ve been pressed for time, but you’ve made time for us, and it’s been a great conversation.
William Ruto: Thank you very much, my dear.
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