KENYA: LOOK EAST MY SON

New African, Jul 2006 by Kabukuru, Wanjohi

Kenya is the latest African country to fall for the charms of the world's emergent superpower, China. Wanjohi Kabukuru reports from Nairobi on what this portends for the East African country.

In August last year, President Mwai Kibaki made a high profile visit to China, where he met President Hu Jintao, Premier Wen Jiaba and other top officials. The visit was the first by a Kenyan president to China in 11 years. By the time Kibaki left Beijing, he had secured a princely $8m grant and a loan of $27m for improvements to Nairobi's power distribution system. Kibaki had also signed a contract with the Chinese technological giant, Huawei Technologies Company, to provide wireless telecoms to all government district offices and link them with the central government in Nairobi. Now it is boom time in Nairobi for Chinese companies, with Huawei Technologies clearly in the lead.

Since Kibaki came to power four years ago, Huawei Technologies has been involved in the modernisation of Telkom Kenya. In 2004, the company won a $34m bid from Kenya's biggest mobile operator, Safaricom, to reconstruct and update the company's Intelligent Network infrastructure. Not long after this, Kenya Airways - the national carrier - was granted landing rights in Hong Kong and Guangzhou in southern China.

Two years ago, just as Kenya was smarting from the injurious effects on its tourism sector of negative travel advice by Western governments (especially by the US and the UK), China granted Kenya the Preferred Tourist Destination Status, which saw arrivals from China doubling.

Currently the Chinese state-run television (CCTV) programming takes up several hours a day on the state-owned Kenya Broadcasting Corporation (KBC). China Radio International (CRI) established its first FM broadcast station outside China in Nairobi, in February this year. A Confucius Institute has been established at the University of Nairobi. And there are more to come.

In April this year, the Chinese president, Hu Jintao, visited Kenya to cement the growing relations between the two countries. He returned to Beijing with an offshore oil exploration deal in which the state-controlled Chinese National Offshore Oil Corporation (CNOOC) has been granted six oil prospecting blocks covering over 1 I 5,343 square kilometres in Kenya's north and south coasts, outclassing a bevy of Western oil prospecting conglomerates.

What did the Chinese pay for these? Kenya's planning minister, who also doubles as the acting minister for energy, Henry Obwocha, said the Chinese would foot the exploration bill and would only pay it reserves were discovered. "We have not made the agreement on money value. The Chinese will pay for the exploration expenses. If they don't find oil, they make a loss but if they do we will go into production-sharing agreements, Obwocha explained.

China also agreed to refurbish and maintain the Chinese-built Moi International Sports Complex, revamp Nairobi's road network - from Jomo Kenyatta International Airport to the United Nations Complex in Cigiri - and street lighting. In return, Kenya reiterated its stance on a one-China policy, opposing independence of Taiwan which China considers as part of greater China.

Kenya and China have had long relations going back in time. Historians suggest it goes back six centuries, during the exploits of the Chinese navigator Zheng He. The two countries established diplomatic ties soon after Kenya's independence in 1963. Lately the ties have moved several notches higher, and both countries seem eager for a more convivial relationship.

Says Guo Chongli, the Chinese ambassador to Kenya: "Nowadays, cooperation between the two countries in various fields such as politics, trade, economy, education, culture and public health has been developing closer and closer, especially after President Kibaki took office at the end of 2002."

It is the same story with other Asian tigers, namely Thailand, Indonesia and Japan. Why has this happened? Is Kenya changing its foreign policy, ditching the West in favour of the East?

According to Raphael Tuju, Kenya's foreign minister, "the eastward-looking" strategy is not a policy to be "debated, but a pragmatic and fundamental decision that Kenya must make". It is significant to note that when Tuju - who is increasingly becoming influential in the Kibaki government - was minister for tourism, he skipped an important annual International Tourism Bourse in Berlin, Germany, to head a Kenyan delegation to China and Japan.

Kenya's diplomatic paradigm shift started quietly soon after President Kibaki came to power. The "Look East Policy" changed gears when Western diplomats posted to Nairobi (notably the former British high commissioner Edward Clay and the outgoing US ambassador William Bellamy) persistently justified their countries' belligerent policies towards Kenya in public speeches in which they lectured Kenyans on corruption, good governance and human rights, disregarding the Vienna Convention which lays down guidelines on diplomatic etiquette. Their replacements, Adam Wood for Britain, and Michael Ranneberger for the US, have been much wiser, keeping their diplomatic brief and, so far, have refused to do an Edward Clay or William Bellamy.