US elevates security relationship with Kenya; designates Kenya as a non-NATO ally
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Kenya designated a major non-NATO ally by the US during President William Ruto's state visit
Kenya designated a major non-NATO ally by the US during President William Ruto’s state visit.
The United States will designate Kenya as its first major non-NATO ally in sub-Saharan Africa, the White House said as President Joe Biden on Thursday welcomed President William Ruto for a state visit.
The significant strategic move signals the shifting of U.S. security cooperation to East Africa just as U.S. troops prepare to depart Niger, leaving a vacuum that Russian forces have begun to fill.
The designation gives non-members of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization access to military and financial advantages that NATO members enjoy, but without the mutual defense agreement that holds NATO together.
A senior administration official told reporters late Wednesday that Biden would inform Congress of the designation, which takes 30 days to take effect.
The official said the move aims at “elevating and really acknowledging that Kenya is already a global partner of ours.”
In the meantime, Ruto and Biden are using their daylong deliberations to iron out Kenya’s plan to send 1,000 security officers to the fragile, chaotic Caribbean nation of Haiti.
The initiative, toward which the United States has pledged $300 million in support, faces stiff political and legal challenges in Kenya.
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The mission was also delayed when Haitian armed gangs took control while the nation’s leader, Ariel Henry, was visiting Kenya in March. Henry resigned in April and has not returned to the island.
Washington also made millions of dollars of commitments toward a number of efforts the U.S. sees as key to development.
Those include areas like democracy, health, education, arts and culture, climate management, trade, technology, and the one item Ruto said was his main priority on his four-day swing through the United States: work to restructure African nations’ crippling debt to the world’s largest creditor, China.
But the lengthy list of American pledges was absent the roads, bridges, and railroad projects that African leaders have long said they need to keep up with their exploding populations.
For those, they turn to China’s sprawling Belt and Road Initiative, which counts the African continent as the largest beneficiary of its massive, $1 trillion global project.
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