Disenchanted young Kenyans came out in number in June and July to say no to President William Ruto’s 2024 Finance Bill and the general style of his governance.
He was rattled and did not travel abroad for at least a month. However, Rutohas retaken to the skies in what looks like an ambition to become the most-travelled head of state.
Since calming the waters with his broad-based government that brought the leading opposition, the Orange Democratic Movement (ODM) party to his side in August, Ruto is again latching on to every opportunity to travel abroad.
In just under two months, Ruto has been to Rwanda, China, Germany USA and Haiti. Where next, is anyone’s guess, but more trips are certainly loading.
Maybe it is high time Kenyans revisited the proposal to entrench a cap on the president’s international travel in the constitution.
Offended by Ruto’s seemingly insatiable appetite for international trips, some Kenyans led by popular comedian Eric Omondi, had considered pushing for legislation to cap the chief executive’s trips to five per year.
They said, and a lot more Kenyans seem to agree with them, that the trips were a big drain on the economy with barely anything to show for them. Ruto, like Uhuru Kenyatta before him, insists that the trips immensely benefited Kenyans by, among others, clinching international employment deals.
For instance, on a visit latest visit to Germany, Ruto claimed that a total of 250,000 Kenyans were expected to get jobs in the European state. However, the German government denied the claim, clarifying that the agreement did not include any numbers.
“All applicants must fulfil the strict requirements of the German Skilled Immigration Act,” Germany’s Ministry of Interior and Homeland reported on platform X.
Could Ruto travels be controlled by law? It would certainly be a tall order trying to get Parliament to enact any law not favourable to Ruto. Indeed, one of his first tasks upon his rise to power was to secure a parliamentary majority through hook or crook.
The numbers have now been bolstered by his newfound camaraderie with ODM. As it were, Ruto has now effectively emasculated both the National Assembly and the Senate, to ensure every Bill he fancies sails through the two houses.
Ruto rode to power in August 2022 on the promise of uplifting the masses he referred to as hustlers by, among others, reducing the state’s profligacy. Together with his Deputy Rigathi Gachagua, they used every opportunity to lampoon the preceding government for sinking Kenya into a debt pit and emptying the National Treasury. One is constrained to wonder where the millions of dollars for foreign trips were coming from.
According to the Africa Uncensored online, immediately after Ruto took power, he and his deputy embarked on an extensive series of 51 trips to 34 countries, averaging about four per month.
The significant globetrotting occurred despite President Ruto’s earlier commitment to cut recurrent expenditures by over $ 2.3 billion. Unsurprisingly, there was a significant surge in Kenya’s travel expenses, coupled with a blatant disregard for the established policies, for the two years Ruto has been president.
Between September 2022 and November 2023, Ruto’s most frequented destination was the US, which he visited thrice, two of those trips dedicated to attending the annual United Nations General Assembly (UNGA) in New York.
Additionally, Ruto visited the UK, Tanzania, Uganda, and Ethiopia three times in the same period for regional heads of state meetings and bilateral discussions. Meanwhile, Gachagua’s travels within the same period included visits to Italy, Rwanda, Belgium, and Colombia, along with a vacation trip to South Africa in December 2022.
Before the youth uprising at the end of the first half of 2024, Ruto had made at least 20 international trips, including the latest to Italy and Switzerland. In Italy, Ruto attended the G7 Summit, despite Kenya not being a member of the seven most developed countries.
He then proceeded to Switzerland for a meeting on the Ukraine and Russia war—another waste because Kenya did not influence the ending of the war. It was instructive that the trips to Italy and Switzerland, which followed another to South Korea, came even before the dust had settled over the cost of his travel to the US.
Uhuru Kenyatta was another ‘flying president’ but Ruto is sure to outdo him should he also serve for 10 years. Other former presidents are no match for the two in matters of international travel.
Uhuru, who served the maximum 10 years in office between 2013 and 2022, made 92 trips in his first five-year tenure. The trips were just some seven away from tripling the 32 his predecessor Mwai Kibaki undertook in his 10-year reign. Daniel Moi in 1978 to 2002, before Kibaki (2002 – 2013) was another travelling president.
That there is no positive correlation between international travel and the health of the Kenyan economy is a no-brainer. Moi, despite his globetrotting, left behind an economy that was in recession.
Uhuru bequeathed Kenya a messy debt-ridden economy that may take generations to fix. The least travelled Kibaki’s economic performance recorded an impressive post-Moi recovery and growth, though most of it would be sunk in the 2007/8 post-election violence.
The founder of the nation, Jomo Kenyatta, who was a flight freak, recorded impressive successive economic performances, though much was still a colonial legacy. By the above logic, it would indeed be a pleasant surprise if Ruto’s international travels turned around Kenya’s economic fortunes.
