Kenya and the U.S. Need Each Other More Than Ever

Today, President Joe Biden will host Kenyan President William Ruto. Ruto is the first African head of state to be honored with an official state visit in 15 years and follows state visits from the leaders of France, South Korea, Australia, India, and Japan—all increasingly important geopolitical partners.

President Ruto’s visit does not simply represent America’s renewed commitment to the African continent, a promise President Biden made almost two years ago at the U.S.-Africa Leaders Summit. Tightening U.S.-Kenya relations is also about building and safeguarding a more resilient global economy led by the United States. Investing in emerging economies like Kenya is an insurance policy against geopolitical shocks, namely from China and Russia.

In recent weeks, the focus of the insurance policy has been America’s domestic industrial strategy, specifically the Biden administration’s latest round of tariffs on selected imports from China. But the strategy is global in nature, and must be understood that way. As Biden’s top national security advisor Jake Sullivan put it in his landmark speech at the Brookings Institution last year, “it isn’t feasible or desirable to build everything domestically. Our objective is not autarky—it’s resilience and security in our supply chains.”

Building a resilient economy that can withstand geopolitical shocks cannot happen in a vacuum—reliable partners need to be part of that equation. America’s industrial policy will increasingly rely on “friendshoring” global supply chains, which means financing efforts overseas in “friendly” countries to help make strategic supply chains in the U.S. more resilient and less reliant on countries like China.

Examples of these global efforts include Biden’s Summit on Global Supply Chain Resilience, the Indo-Pacific Economic Framework for Prosperity, the U.S.-EU Trade and Technology Council, the Minerals Security Partnership, and the critical minerals trade agreement with Japan. But purveyors of Biden’s global economic agenda like Sullivan and U.S. Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen know the strategy cannot be limited to advanced industrial economies.

That’s where countries like Kenya come in. Emerging economies including India, Brazil, Indonesia, and Kenya are poised to contribute to the global value chain in strategic sectors like batteries for electric vehicles, chips for critical technologies, and mineral and metal mining and processing. With their human capital, natural resources, and manufacturing potential, deepening U.S.-commercial ties with emerging economies have the potential to help American companies, and the global economy, become more resilient against geopolitical uncertainty.

Tech CEO-turned U.S. Ambassador to Kenya Meg Whitman, who has led Fortune 500 companies including eBay and Hewlett Packard Enterprise, is not shy about touting Kenya’s vast insurance potential for the United States. Last month at the annual American Chamber of Commerce Business Summit in Nairobi, Ambassador Whitman made a convincing appeal to American investors about why Kenya should be their next target destination. Her selling points were in lockstep with the Biden administration’s larger economic agenda: supply chain resilience and climate-friendly economic growth.

Most critically, Kenya offers American companies opportunities to diversify their supply chains away from Asia while shrinking their carbon footprint—over 90 percent of Kenya’s power is sourced from renewable energy. Kenya, with the help of the US and other partners, also seeks to become a hub for green-powered data centers, mineral and metal processing, and green manufacturing, including producing batteries and electric vehicles. Kenya has already emerged as a leading tech market in Africa, being the continent’s largest destination for start-up financing and home to the first semiconductor manufacturer on the continent.

Kenya has just as much to gain, if not more, from its relationship with the United States. Increasing U.S. investment in Kenya will be the focus of Ruto’s visit, including the renewal of the African Growth and Opportunity Act which is set to expire in 2025 and furthering the Strategic Trade and Investment Partnership, a trade deal focused on addressing non-tariff barriers and boosting two-way trade. But while President Ruto’s affinity for the United States will be on full display this week, Kenya won’t be closing the door on business opportunities with America’s geopolitical rivals anytime soon.

From Kenya’s vantage point, the United States is an important economic and security partner. Based on sheer trade volume alone, it would seem Kenya views China, the EU, India, and the UAE that way too. Just in October, President Ruto was on his way to China, Kenya’s top overall trading partner, for an official visit to discuss Chinese investment in Kenya, the most famous projects of which include the Standard Gauge Railway, the Nairobi Expressway, and the Lapsset Corridor, all aimed at boosting connectivity and commerce across the region.

“It’s a delicate balance,” President Ruto explained last week to a group of Harvard Business School students in Nairobi, responding to a question about how Kenya balances its relationships with the United States and China. “We want to be friends to all and an enemy to none.”

On the ground, it appears the United States has and will continue pursuing its commercial aims while countries like China are also pursuing theirs. This suggests U.S.-China competition in Kenya, and potentially in other emerging economies, is not always zero-sum. China’s infrastructure initiatives in Kenya do not preclude the United States from increasing commercial ties to help bring Kenya into the global value chain of American companies.

The United States can continue to focus its resources on sectors in Kenya where it has a competitive advantage, such as investments in the textile industry, green manufacturing, and agricultural and financial technology. It can do this while selectively competing with geopolitical rivals in more critical areas, like ICT and healthcare, at the same time benefiting Kenya.

Still, if the United States intends to build, lead, and safeguard a more resilient global economy, with countries like Kenya as key partners, sustainable and equitable economic growth needs to be front and center of America’s commercial efforts, such as protections for Kenyan workers and the environment. Should the trade deal or American investments in Kenya lead to extractive or lopsided growth, the insurance policy the United States seeks might not be so protective.