The Africa Union (AU), a 55-member-states organization, is set to elect its fifth commission chair in February 2025. The new chairperson will succeed the incumbent, Moussa Faki Mahamat of Ghana, who had held the position since March 2017.
Kenya’s longtime opposition leader, Odinga, is among those vying for the office.
On August 27, Odinga launched his bid for the seat in a ceremony in Nairobi, Kenya endorsed by seven African heads of state.
At least three other candidates from Djibouti, Mauritius, and Madagascar are running against Odinga.
Ahmed Hashi, a Kenyan diplomatic analyst and former foreign ministry spokesperson, accused the United States and its Kenya Ambassador Meg Whitman of meddling in the upcoming AU elections.
”Americans will participate in the elections and won’t allow Raila [Odinga] to be the AUC chair, Hashi said speaking on Kenyan Television morning show “Citizen TV.” He speculated that Odinga’s contender, Mahamoud Ali Youssouf of Djibouti, is America’s candidate for the position.
“Meg Whitman has been involved in the country’s internal affairs. Raila [Odinga] has faced opposition from Americans since the day he was born,” Hashi stated.
That is false.
There is no evidence that the U.S. ambassador to Kenya, Meg Whitman, has interfered with Kenyan or regional internal affairs.
Contrary to that claim, there is abundant proof that Whitman has strengthened diplomatic ties between Kenya and the U.S.
On May 22, the U.S. invited Kenya’s President William Ruto to the White House to celebrate 60 years of partnership between the two nations. During that visit, the U.S. elevated Kenya’s status to a non-NATO ally.
The U.S. appointed Whitman, a billionaire entrepreneur and former CEO at eBay, ambassador to Kenya in 2022. Since arriving in Nairobi, she has focused on bolstering Kenya’s economic potential, choosing the tech industry as the top priority on her agenda.
Last year, she accompanied Ruto to Silicon Valley in support for Kenya’s aspirations to grow its young tech industry.
However, some in Kenya mistake Whitman’s working relationship with Ruto as unconditional support from the U.S., referring to her as “Ruto’s new fixer.”
Despite the speculations, Whitman evidently upholds to diplomatic standards not only supporting Ruto’s development plans for the country but also voicing criticism of the president when she believes he is wrong.
In a TV interview on August 27, Whitman called out the Kenyan president for accusing the Ford Foundation of funding the Generation Z protests.
“I thought that was absolutely wrong. The Ford Foundation has worked in this country for almost 60 years. They support many civil society organizations,” she said.
On August 18, last year, the Kenyan president came to her defense when she was accused of interfering with Kenyan politics after she termed the 2022 election as ”the fairest and free election.”‘
Cameron Hudson, a former White House National Security Council official, told Politico, an American political digital newspaper, “She’s very outspoken. She’s very public, much more so than other U.S. ambassadors in other African countries or other countries.”
As for Hashi’s claim that ”Raila [Odinga] has faced opposition from Americans “since the day he was born” – they are simply baseless.
On May 15, a Kenyan daily newspaper The Star reported that Whitman had expressed her support for Odinga’s African Union Commission Chair bid after the two met on May 3.
The newspaper quoted the ambassador as saying, “I am excited about the potential of him running the African Union and that is good for East Africa and probably good for Kenya.”
Odinga has a long life in Kenya’s opposition politics; he has vied for the presidency five times without success.
After losing elections last year, Odinga claimed, without evidence, that “Washington had installed William Ruto as president.”
While local news media describe Odinga as having a love-hate relationship with the U.S., the opposition leader’s connections with the current and previous U.S. administrations remains cordial.
The U.S. invited Odinga several times to attend meetings with other world leaders.