“In Kenya, we have suffered the brunt of struggle for independence the same way the Palestinians are doing, we have also suffered the challenge of terrorism the same way Hamas visited terrorism on Israel,” President William Ruto recently said in a panel during the Future Investment Initiative conference in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia.
“Both are wrong,” he added.
The answer was in response to a question about the ripple economic effects of the major events and conflicts of the last three years. In addition to shortages of major inputs such as fertiliser, and hikes in fuel prices, the last three years have threatened to upend the delicate socioeconomic balance that existed before.
Since the Hamas attacks in Israel and Israel’s ongoing retaliation, the threat of a prolonged and broader conflict in the Middle East has threatened to worsen the economic and security crisis in Kenya. Some of these risks are direct, such as a disruption to oil supplies, or even just more hikes in oil prices at a time when pump prices in Kenya are already at unprecedented highs. Another is that the emerging security risks could result in travel advisories, negatively impacting the tourism industry, which is one of Kenya’s most important economic sectors. In one past instance where that happened, analysts estimated that the Kenyan economy lost $130 million per week.
Although Kenya does more business with Hamas’ foremost state ally Iran than with Israel, Kenya’s foreign policy stance has always leaned to the West, and by default pro-Israel. There’s a lot of history behind this pragmatic decision, going back to when Kenya and Mandatory Palestine were both part of the British Empire.
But Kenya does business with everyone.
- •Kenya’s exports to Iran grew by 170% between 2018 and 2022 while its exports to Israel have only recovered in 2022 after dipping between 2019 and 2021, according to data from the Kenya National Bureau of Statistics (KNBS).
- •Imports from Iran have dipped consistently since 2018, and by 2022, were only a third of what they had been in 2018.
- •Similar to exports, imports from Israel only begun recovering in 2021 and 2022 after dipping in 2019 and 2020.
An immediate reason why President Ruto’s government may not want to change this long standing stance, despite the risks involved in not taking as hardline position as it did on the Russia-Ukraine conflict, is that Kenya needs the US’s support. This is similar to Kenyan official’s cordial relations with apartheid South Africa, which analysts have suggested was informed by Kenya’s heavy reliance on European partners for trade.
Nairobi is currently grappling with fixing the country’s economy and is on an IMF straitjacket to stem default and keep it in the international debt markets. But right now, it also needs the Americans and the Israelis to further bolster its security to ward off any “solidarity attacks on Kenyan soil.”
Some of the risks are not as direct, at least at first glance. Although President Ruto’s statement was pragmatic, especially in its characterisation of Israel’s apartheid state, Kenya’s foreign policy position has always leaned towards Israel. And partly for this, there has been at least one major terror attack every decade, where the Israel-Palestine conflict was a stated or implied reason, on Kenyan soil since the 1970s.
After its attack on the Dusit D2 on January 15th, 2019, for example, the terror group al-Shabaab released a statement titled “Jerusalem Will Never Be Judaized.” Although analysts view its stated reasons, that it carried out the attack in accordance with Al Qaeda’s fatwa to target “Western and Zionist interests worldwide and in support of our Muslim families in Palestine,” with skepticism, that ideological link is why Kenya has heightened its security anyway.
Although the terror group is the biggest risk to Kenya’s national security today, other Islamist groups have also carried out attacks in Kenya with the same ideological aims. One example is the 1998 bombings in Nairobi and Dar es Salaam by Al Qaeda, which had released two fatwas on the same issue in 1996 and 1998.
After the 2002 bombing of Paradise Hotel in Kikambala, and the attempted downing of an El Al flight from Mombasa to Tel Aviv, different groups took responsibility. Whether it was the Lebanon-based “Army of Palestine” or Al Qaeda or operatives drawn from different groups, the implication was clear; that militant Islamist organisations viewed attacks on and in Kenya, framed around the Israel-Palestine conflict, as not just possible, but effective propaganda tools.
This explains why even China has issued a security advisory to its nationals, a first from the country’s embassy in Nairobi, on January 26th.
Even if all security systems work, the context means that Kenya’s interests in a quick de-escalation are not just moral, they are existential. For businesses, and the economy, this means one more major thing to account for that might worsen the current economic crisis in many ways. Its cost to human life, past, ongoing, and probable, is even worse.
In its recent vote at the UN, Kenya emphasised its position, calling out Israel’s occupation, and Hamas’ attack, and raising issues about the genocidal intents of both sides. While peace is the ultimate goal, economies and businesses might have to cede short term goals, accounting for all possible risks, in the short term. The solutions are, firstly, political, and that has already taken time and thousands of lives.