PREVIEW
Court action against two US-backed health schemes in Kenya is exposing the political limits of Washington’s new Africa strategy
The high court in Nairobi has temporarily blocked a plan to build an Ebola quarantine facility to be financed by the US, days after it was announced by President William Ruto’s government. The proposed facility ‘is being undertaken in a manner that is not transparent and is devoid of constitutional accountability,’ stated court papers filed by the Katiba Institute, a human rights group that brought the case to court.
The Ruto government will hope that the case will move quickly; oral arguments have been set for 2 June, and that the facility, to which the US will contribute US$13.5 million, can soon be built. But it is another bump in the road as the Trump administration rewrites its development agenda in Africa.
Earlier this year, the Nairobi high court also suspended the $1.7 billion bilateral health agreement between the US and Kenya under the ‘America First’ agenda, pending a legal challenge to its requirement that Kenyan patient data be shared with US health firms for up to 25 years (Dispatches 15/12/25, Trump’s USAID 2.0 takes shape).
Concerns about the use of and access to patent data, as well as the Trump administration’s determination to link the health deals to US firms obtaining access to critical minerals has also led to the US’s pacts with Zambia and Zimbabwe to be scrapped (Dispatches 2/3/26, Washington’s healthcare deals rejected as exploitative).
Last December, President Daniel Chapo’s government in Maputo signed a five-year, $1.8bn accord as part of President Donald Trump’s ‘America First Global Health’ agenda, that will support HIV and malaria programs while requiring it to sharply increase domestic health spending.
But the funding on offer from Washington is significantly lower than the $500m the US was providing each year before the shuttering of the USAID agency last year. And there are concerns that the agreement has been tied to the US getting preferential treatment in accessing the country’s titanium, graphite and rare earths reserves. Another pressure point on the Maputo government may emerge via a $25bn LNG plant investment by ExxonMobil in the northern Cabo Delgado region.
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