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Vol 67 No 9

Published 1st May 2026


Kenya

Ruto stakes his presidency on a $39bn investment blitz

Courting capital from Beijing to the Gulf and Paris to become Africa’s Singapore, the President is being stymied by a fuel import scandal and fraying regional alliances

William Samoei Ruto opened the Africa Finance Corporation summit on 23 April in Nairobi last week flanked by Nigeria’s Aliko Dangote and Uganda's Yoweri Museveni – a tableau to show Kenya’s president as a regional powerbroker and an investment magnet. The centrepiece was a pledge by Dangote, fresh from plaudits for his 650,000 barrel-per-day refinery in Lagos, to invest in a similar project in Tanzania's fast-growing port of Tanga with a pipeline running to Mombasa. That gave Ruto a headline to boost his diplomatic efforts ahead of the Africa Forward Summit he will co-host with France's Emmanuel Macron in Nairobi on 11-12 May. Kenya becomes the first non-Francophone nation to host an event held exclusively in France or Francophone Africa since 1973: a diplomatic win that reflects both Ruto's deft courting of Paris and Macron's need to restore France's battered ties with Africa after its military was expelled from the junta states in Mali, Burkina Faso and Niger.

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