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Published 5th July 2024

Vol 65 No 14

Kenya

How the fiscal squeeze threatens the patronage machine

Pic: @WilliamsRuto
Pic: @WilliamsRuto

After dropping the planned tax hikes, President Ruto insists he is listening to the protestors’ calls for change

As they regroup from the political defeat of 26 June, President William Ruto and his finance minister Njuguna Ndung’u are torn between the demands of a highly organised protest movement with national support, and an economy that is heading towards a cliff edge unless it can pick up more multilateral support. Ruto’s and Ndung’u’s immediate task is to raise the US$2.4 billion in tax hikes they were forced to drop after protestors stormed parliament on 23 June.

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After the protestors won the tax war

Nairobi, 2 July 2024. Pic: Donwilson Odhiambo / SOPA Images via ZUMA Press / Alamy
Nairobi, 2 July 2024. Pic: Donwilson Odhiambo / SOPA Images via ZUMA Press / Alamy

Wrongfooted by national demonstrations, state security officers are suspected of sabotage and running agents provocateurs

After their protests forced President William Ruto to abandon the government’s Finance Bill and its planned US$2.4 billion tax rises, the Generation Z activists face their own political...

Gargantuan debt servicing poses threat

Copyright © Africa Confidential 2024
Copyright © Africa Confidential 2024

The lessons of Kenya’s crisis loom large as Luanda officials search for a way to cut repayment demands

Angola is Africa’s second-biggest oil producer but is facing what is arguably the continent’s worst debt crisis. Unlike fellow heavily indebted economies in Ghana and Zambia, the way...

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THE INSIDE VIEW

Ahead of Britain’s general election on 4 July, climate activists were lobbying the Labour Party, the probable winners, to step up action on policy and finance. In early July, with his official residence being battered by Hurricane Beryl, Prime Minister of St Vincent and the Grenadines Ralph Gonsalves called the UN COP Climate summits ‘largely a talking shop’.

The next summit, COP29 will be hosted this November in Baku. If elected, Labour’s candidates for For...

Ahead of Britain’s general election on 4 July, climate activists were lobbying the Labour Party, the probable winners, to step up action on policy and finance. In early July, with his official residence being battered by Hurricane Beryl, Prime Minister of St Vincent and the Grenadines Ralph Gonsalves called the UN COP Climate summits ‘largely a talking shop’.

The next summit, COP29 will be hosted this November in Baku. If elected, Labour’s candidates for Foreign Secretary, David Lammy, and Energy Security and Net Zero Minister, Ed Miliband, will attend. Both have been talking up Labour’s climate ambitions.

Britain needs to change course on climate, Miliband said, after Prime Minister Rishi Sunak dropped London’s earlier Net Zero carbon emissions targets. Lammy would work closely on climate policy, arguing: ’We need climate action and international law to stop the darkness getting so much worse.’ He said in June that he would broadly support Kenya’s William Ruto and Mia Mottley of Barbados in their campaign to overhaul the global financial architecture.

Jonathan Reynolds, a candidate for the Business and Trade portfolio, said he wanted to overhaul Britain’s infrastructure, drawing heavily from the US Inflation Reduction Act with its attempt to integrate trade and industrial policy into foreign policy. This means that Africa’s mineral wealth may be linked to restructuring debt deals with Britain.

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Political glitches hold up reforms

Fear of popular protest deters the government from cutting fuel subsidies and privatising state assets

Midway into his second term, President João Lourenço has spent more time trying to consolidate his grip on the ruling Movimento Popular de Libertação de Angola (MPLA) than...

Tinubu’s government braces for Kenya-style protests

As anger grows over worsening living conditions and grand corruption, state security battens down the hatches

The mass protests in Kenya which forced William Ruto’s government to scrap US$2.4 billion of tax hikes, albeit after 20 citizens lost their lives, have prompted calls for...

ISIS breaks out of its Puntland base

Fighters from ISIS or Da’ish are extending operations beyond the Puntland enclave to challenge Al Shabaab, the main Islamist militia in Somalia

The isolated Horn of Africa branch of ISIS or Da’ish, outnumbered and outgunned hitherto by Al Shabaab, the trustiest affiliate of the rival Al Qaida franchise, has been...

Pro-Kigali propagandists caught using Artificial Intelligence tools

A new report suggests the Rwandan government’s backers on X have been using Large Language Models to flood the platform

A coordinated online campaign promoting the Rwandan government’s projects and policies has been caught using Large Language Models (LLMs), including ChatGPT, and related Artificial Intelligence tools to mass-produce...

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Pointers

End of the loan line

Mozambique has reached a US$220 million out-of-court settlement with three more creditors in its $2 billion hidden loans case, which was heard last year in London’s High Court....

Ghazouani gets second term

Appeals may lead the Constitutional Council to tweak the initial figures released by the electoral commission, but the outcome of the presidential contest is not in doubt. After...

What price an Africa agenda?

If, as expected, Labour secures its first stint in office for 14 years following Britain’s general election on 4 July, one of its foreign policy challenges will be...

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