Kenya’s 2022 Elections & The East African Community (EAC)

In this episode of The Kenyanist, Sylvanus Wekesa hosts Nicodemus Minde who is a lecturer of International Relations at the United States International University (USIU) in Nairobi, Kenya. The discussion is focused on the rising concern in Kenya’s August 2022 elections in regards to the economic security and political considerations in the East African region; with stiff competition between the two leading candidates, namely the government backed opposition leader Raila Odinga and the current deputy president, William Ruto. Dr Minde gives a brief overview of the current East African Community (EAC) scene, with the recent admission of the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) as a member country; now the EAC being made up of DRC itself, together with South Sudan, Rwanda, Burundi and the original founder countries, Kenya, Uganda and Tanzania. The question answered here is the consequence of the DRC joining the community in terms of the benefits it has and the overall effects its admission has to the rest of the region. The discussion steers towards the current democratic states of each country within the EAC and how the election results would affect the same, appreciating the fact that Kenya serves as a model country to the rest in terms of its democratic, political and even social advancements. With the other member countries being directly tied to Kenya’s all-round status, the question of how their relations would change in the case of either leading presidential candidate winning the seat emerges, and Dr Minde gives an overview of what to foresee in either case, noting that there would be either positive or negative ramifications in shaping the regional integration of the future of the EAC, depending on the election outcome. The region having seen emerging trends of alliances, the discussion delves into the possibility of leaders fulfilling the original EAC agenda of being a people-driven organisation, rather than being elite-dominated. This further goes into the general understanding of the role the EAC is expected to perform among the new generation of leaders and how political parties and aspirants would align their manifestos to achieve the same. However, this is challenged by the key political agendas being driven by both candidates, Ruto and Odinga, being more inward in their approaches, of which leads to the discussion of the radical shift in the status quo in terms of both regional and international politics in the case of either candidate winning, which finalises the episode.