By Charles Omondi
The accusation of Kenya’s President William Ruto’s involvement in the war in Sudan refuses to go away, with a former United Nations official, Dr Mukhisa Kituyi, being among the latest to join the fray.
Featuring on the popular Citizen Television’s JK Live on May 27 night, the former United Nations Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTAD) Secretary General listed President Ruto’s dalliance with the Sudanese paramilitary Rapid Support Forces (RSF) among the numerous diplomatic blunders characterising the Ruto rein. The blunders, Dr Kituyi asserted, were informed by the President’s unwillingness to heed advice of professionals.
The development, Dr Kituyi lamented, had diminished Kenya’s international stature and cost the country’s interests abroad dearly. He singled out the export of tea to Sudan worth $11.33 million annually, which has since been suspended.
Kenya is a leading exporter of tea, with Sudan ranked among the top destinations. The severe disruption of the trade by diplomatic tensions and the ongoing civil conflict, have hit Nairobi’s economy hard., especially considering that the tea sector was under pressure; with the emerging markets growing, global supply chain disruptions and shifting regulations.
RSF, an offshoot of the former Janjaweed (an extremely racist outfit killing black people), the former UN agency boss said it was extremely reckless of the Kenyan leader to support its leaders, and facilitate their international travel.
President Ruto last year found himself in the eye of a storm for hosting RSF leaders in Nairobi, an act that the Sudanese authorities considered as an interference in their internal affairs.
The incident so infuriated the Sudan government, which proceeded to recall its ambassador to Nairobi. Khartoum also banned Kenyan tea imports, occasioning the East African state huge foreign earning losses.
However, the Ruto administration defended itself, insisting the RSF’s visit was intended to facilitate dialogue and peace, but not to endorse the paramilitary group.
This was after the head of Sudan’s ruling military junta, Gen Abdel Fattah al-Burhan, had rejected President Ruto as the head of the Intergovernmental Authority on Development (IGAD) mediation on the Sudan conflict.
Early this year, Kenya’s oldest and second-most popular daily, The Standard, reported that RSF’s Algoney Hamdan Dagalo Musa and controversial Zimbabwean businessman Wicknell Chivayo, who is a regular visitor to Kenya, had been granted Kenyan Passports.
Algoney is reportedly the holder of a Kenyan passport number AK1586127. He is also said to hold two different Sudanese passports. Algoney is the RSF procurement chief and younger brother of the group’s commander, Mohammed Dagalo, also known as Hemedti.
The Standard said the US State Department of Treasury’s Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC) on October 8, 2024, imposed sanctions on Algoney for allegedly masterminding the supply of weapons that fuel the Sudanese conflict.
The Kenya government, the paper said, allegedly deployed an intricate web that bypassed protocols and guidelines to issue travel documents to foreigners.
Kenya’s former deputy president and now a fierce critic of the Ruto administration, Rigathi Gachagua, too, waded into the controversy, following the expose.
In another live Citizen Television show, Gachagua claimed that in addition to facilitating the RSF officials’ travel, President Ruto had provided accommodation to Hemedti and his four wives in an up-market Nairobi area.
American Global Human Rights Foundation (HRF) had demanded that Kenya be held accountable for issuing passports to individuals linked to RSF.
The Standard, in a follow-up story, quoted an HRF press statement expressing alarm over reports that Nairobi had issued passports to “a sanctioned Sudanese war-financier and other individuals linked to Sudan’s genocidal RSF”.
RSF has, since April 2023, been engaged in an egregious power struggle with the Sudan Armed Forces (SAF), which has occasioned what is regarded to be thousands of lives and has been described in many circles as the worst global humanitarian crisis in recent times.
According to the UN estimates, over 33.7 million people—more than two-thirds of Sudan’s population—needed urgent aid, with millions facing famine conditions. Over 14 million people, the agency says, have been forcibly displaced, including over 9 million internally and nearly 4 million who have sought refuge in neighbouring countries like Chad, South Sudan, Egypt and Central African Republic and Ethiopia.
