Kenya’s President Ruto suggests Chinese partnership as elixir for ECOWAS

By Ikeddy ISIGUZO

KENYAN President William Ruto has made a public intervention on the crisis in ECOWAS, the economic and development union of West Africa which started falling apart in July 2023, when some members, chiefly Burkina Faso, Mali, and Niger thought that some decisions of ECOWAS interfered with their sovereignity.
Relations between the trio and ECOWAS plummeted when the regional body demanded the re-instatement of over-thrown Niger’s President, Mohamed Bazoum. ECOWAS’ threat of military intervention appeared to have infuriated them.
Burkina Faso, Mali, and Niger served notice of their exit, which was executed last January. Another gripe with ECOWAS, according to them, was that it did not safeguard member States while aligning too closely with foreign powers. In their case, they meant France.
The creation of a confederation of Alliance of Sahel States and stronger ties with Russia, Turkey, and Iran to address internal security threats sealed the trio’s determination to stay apart from ECOWAS.
Ruto on his recent visit to China spoke extensively of how Kenya’s relationship with China was a partnership. “Kenya and China are not merely trade partners; we are co-architects of a new world order – one that is fair, inclusive, and sustainable,” Ruto told his audience of academic, and diplomats at Peking University.

The message stretches beyond Kenya to other African nations that operate in challenging debt conditions, climate crisis and the thrusts of digital transformation. Ruto spoke for Africa. He wants nations to look at the different perspective that Kenya and China have in their relationship.
Concerns about ECOWAS, which just marked its 50th anniversary, centre on the fragile status of West Africa’s most influential political and economic bloc and its consequences for the sub-region and Africa.
Ruto asserted his vision of new partnerships that would pull Africa out of debts. He offered the same visions to the reforms ECOWAS wants for its economic development and political empowerment, stating that the traditional partnerships that had mirred Africa in debts for decades were incapable of addressing Africa’s development questions.
Ruto is critical of the Bretton Woods institutions. “The most consequential reform is governance change that will transform (these institutions) into independent, apolitical global bodies,” he said. Unless changes are made in the administration of the institutions, Ruto said, they would not act in ways that can benefit Africa.
What Ruto sees in China is a “new win-win partnership model” that highlights Africa’s shift from “an aid-dependent region to becoming an author of global development standards”. Who else sees this?
ECOWAS is important in digital innovation because of its demographic power which offers West Africa the most promising aspects of Ruto’s approach. The “demographic power” is glaring with more than 60 per cent of West Africans being younger than 25 years old. The huge population in that range has great prospects for benefiting from the inclusive development that the digital economy offers.
Ruto dreams of a digital future in Kenya with African identity while achieving global impacts in artificial intelligence, biotechnology and creative economy. “We envision a digital future that is Kenyan in location, African in identity, and global in impact.” He asks West African governments, with innovators to leverage partners such as China for Africa’s digital evolution.
Whether it is climate change, agriculture, power generation, he recommends China to West African countries to effect technology-driven changes.
Ruto visited US last year. His visit to China is the practice of his suggestion that Africa’s diplomacy should embrace China, US, EU, and emerging economic power houses like Turkey and India to get the best out of “today’s fractured geopolitical landscape”. Africa’s strength lies in its ability to swim the intricate waters of global interests that will accommodate its teeming youthful population.
For stronger ECOWAS regional integration and resilience, Ruto points to a more robust approach. It is not simply East or West. The choices have their different complications.
The choice, he said, should be aligned with what works for Africa.
“Let us measure our success not just in GDP growth or trade volumes, but in how many lives we uplift, how many futures we secure, and how much dignity we restore. Now more than ever, West Africa must heed this call – not just to watch history unfold, but to shape it,” Ruto said.
Fantastic speech with great possibilities of creating new pathways for development of the continent if its leaders create the enabling settings for people across Africa to integrate through trades, travels, culture and an acceptance that African countries need to complement each other more than the competitions that waste the continent’s opportunities.
A disintegrating ECOWAS, with its estimated population of 424.34 million, a figure that includes the populations of the departed trio, is too substantial a part of Africa to be ignored. In that mix is Nigeria credited with more than 50 per cent of ECOWAS’s population.
The most pressing challenge in ECOWAS today is security. No country is spared. The trio cited it as another disenchantment with ECOWAS. Nothing can work in West Africa, or elsewhere, without security.
Will the Chinese help? Who else will assist? We are not searching for those who will help us without taking advantage.
Ruto has a strong message. The message has to undergo interrogation, and distillation to a point that the African routes to development are clearer. He has started the conversation.
Ruto has to do more by taking the important next step of talking to his colleagues, who lead Africa, until they realise that leadership is important; leaderships that recognise that Africa’s development is important and should be hastened to be part of dynamic global changes.
Such leaderships are not necessarily found only in politics. There is need to expand the search, and synthesise the directions.

Finally…
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DID someone forget to announce the return of Senate President, His Excellency, Distinguished Senator Obong Godswill Akpabio from the Pope’s burial? Or is he still leading the government delegation to this important assignment?

ISIGUZO is a major commentator on minor issues