Who gained, who lost?

An expected outcome of the presidential junket to the United States, with "top business people" in tow, was the realisation that many private sector investors in the United States already have operations in Kenya and that they do not need to invest further in the Kenyan market. It was whispered unkindly in some quarters that Kenya wasn't a big enough market to require greater investment and if the barriers that existed in Africa between and among African nations persist, there would be no benefit in investing piecemeal in Africa.

The second expected outcome was that many US investors were more interested in getting concessions from the army of Kenyan bureaucrats that had accompanied the President. This is the story of investment in Kenya: foreign investors seeking to find the greatest cost savings from government concessions for the least amount of investment. What remains unmentioned during these negotiations for concessions are the backhanders, kickbacks and facilitation fees that change hands. Alcatel-Lucent happily paid out twenty million US dollars after "negotiations" at one time and even after it paid a fine after being convicted under the US' Foreign Corrupt Practices Act, it must have made a fair return on its investment.

What Kenya's game-plan was going into the United States-Africa Leadership Summit remains murky. There are bits and pieces of the strategy, but there is no clear picture. The Presidential Strategic Communications Unit seems to have hyped the meetings that were held and the commitments that were made, but we are yet to be told what the plan was and what the expected outcome was. President Kenyatta seems to suggest that fighting terrorism was at the core of his plans, but we do not know what the United States committed to do, what it would cost, how long the commitment would last and what Kenya was to do to facilitate it.

Jubilee mouthpieces seem to suggest that Uhuru Kenyatta had successfully rehabilitated his diplomatic image in Washington, D.C. But this does not seem to have come with any tangible benefits. They also seem to suggest that Kenya's foreign policy is Uhuru Kenyatta's fate at world capitals. If he benefits personally, then Kenya benefits.

The Ministry of Foreign Affairs did not publish any white paper on the Summit. It did not publish a list of its professional advisors regarding the targets for the Summit. It did not publish anything on the strategic relationship between Kenya and the United States at the time of the Summit, and whether or not this relationship was one-sided or mutually beneficial. It did not even bother to examine the strategic costs or benefits of the rivalry between the United States and China in Kenya and how this would affect the international trade prospects of Kenya in the short, medium and long term. Eighteen months into its administration of the country, the Jubilee government is still living in the twentieth century where secrets defined power and power defined personal wealth and status.

Uhuru Kenytta's government has appointed one of the largest numbers of advisors. All of them seem to operate at a political level only, acting to forestall political challenges to Jubilee's continued hold on power. This is an incredible waste of public resources. We already have an economic blue print: Vision 2030. But this blue print is useless without constant re-evaluation of the strategic landscape from multiple perspectives. In the spirit of transparency, key subjects such as Kenya's diplomatic, defence and international trade postures must be published, interrogated publicly and adjusted for the benefit of the country. It is the only way that presidential junkets can be honestly assessed as either successes or abject failures.