Ruto forces Ebola plan on Kenyans for Trump's 'America first'

Health workers stand in a new Ebola treatment center during a visit of WHO Director General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus in Bunia, northeastern Democratic Republic of the Congo, on May 31, 2026. [AFP]

The State response to the introduction of an Ebola quarantine facility in Kenya, and the management of communication around it, has left the country asking: “Who is the Kenyan Government serving?”

In his frequent travels abroad and in his engagements with foreign heads of state and government, whose agenda does President Ruto advance? Is he capable of declaring, “Kenya first”?

The United States has rejected its Ebola-exposed citizens and will not allow them onto its shores. The Kenyan Government, meanwhile, appears overly eager to host them at one of its military bases.

Citizens see and sense wrongdoing everywhere. They are asking questions that the Government appears unwilling to answer. Social media has been awash with a question best summed up as: “Who is President William Ruto serving?”

Citizens are attempting to make sense of the tensions and contradictions in their lived reality. This is shaped by the belief—whether true or false—that their Government may be engaged in some unstated mischief. In a sense, therefore, there is a struggle over creating meaning in Kenya. It involves the President, his Government, and the people.

In the process, citizens are questioning where President Ruto places the people of Kenya in a contest involving national sovereignty, foreign interests, and even his own leadership priorities.The competition morphs into a power struggle between the Kenyan state and the people. Each is, in effect, telling its own story about the same events, each seeking to dominate the narrative.

It happens all the time, when the State mismanages communication with the public. The Ruto administration has been particularly prone to poor public communication.

The rollout of the Ebola quarantine centre at the Kenya Air Force Base in Laikipia has therefore left Kenyans questioning what the state is doing, and whether Kenya’s sovereign interests and voice still matter.

Concern deepened midweek after Health Cabinet Secretary Aden Duale firmly told Parliament that the Kenyan Government, in collaboration with the Government of the United States, would proceed with the construction of the controversial Ebola centre regardless of anything.

“No court orders, protests or demonstrations will slow us,” he said  “Nothing is going to stop us,” Duale repeated on prime-time television.

In such moments, citizens construct their own meanings of events. Denis Galava’s 2021 PhD thesis addresses these tensions. Written for the Centre for African Studies at the University of Edinburgh, Galava’s “Tweeting ‘Truths’: Rumour and Grammars of Power in Kenya” is a study of how people search for meaning in state-created ambiguity.

The public is attempting to make political sense of state actions. Whether because the Government has been slow to communicate or has withheld information, citizens fill the gaps with their own interpretations. This is what Galava describes as “the tenacity of rumours in public life”.

The narratives

This is not necessarily hostility between State and citizens, but rather a search for space for engagement. Across the country, Kenyans are deconstructing the State’s handling of the American Ebola arrangement and constructing their own narratives. Public conversations on social media and elsewhere range from the humorous to to the outrageous.

“The State is building a Kenyan gulag with the help of the United States,” a bookseller told this writer. “Now they will not need to shoot people in the legs. Just dump them into Ebola, and that is it.”

“No,” said another, “it is about smuggling minerals from the DRC. Didn’t Duale say Laikipia has the best runway in East and Central Africa? Ebola is just a cover.”

Such is what happens when the State bungles public communication, and worse still when it will not relent in what the public sees as a bad cause. In the face of a health scare, public communication is about proactively managing uncertainty and fear. It is not about the belated presentation of facts. Yet the performance by the Government has been poor, even in firefighting. It has left the public to wonder whose agenda the Kenyan Government is serving.

The message arrived through controversy in the media, when it should have come through active government communication. It came amid a raft of allegations of secrecy, court cases, and street protests and fires. American officials left the blocks ahead of their Kenyan counterparts. When Kenyans caught up, it was to deny rather than to inform and persuade.

Missed opportunities

President Ruto missed the train on at least two occasions. First was the prayer meeting on Thursday, May 28. Even though the theme of the prayers was “forgiveness and reconciliation,” the President sidestepped the raging controversy – itself a ripe subject for reconciliation – and instead spoke at length about how well his Government was performing.

Then came Madaraka Day on Monday, and once again Ruto said nothing about the one subject occupying the public. It was not until late in the evening, at a joint media interview, that he haltingly spoke of a telephone conversation with President Trump.

It would appear that the American President asked for the creation of the facility, and President Ruto agreed. That simple. No time to reflect, consult, or think anything through. “President Trump asked me, and I okayed,” Ruto told his country. Government officials were, by that very act alone, instantly placed on the defensive. They were assuring Kenyans that there was no Ebola in their country.  

“But if there is no Ebola in our country, why are we accepting to host an Ebola facility for a foreign country whose citizens have Ebola?” That was the question. It has since morphed from “What is the Government doing?” to “What are they hiding, and for whom?”

It is a question the State has not answered convincingly, hence the information vacuum that Kenyans are filling with speculation, rumour and innuendo. Above all, there is the question of Kenyan sovereignty and dignity. The wider relevance of this question lies in President Trump’s historical attitude towards Africans.

Trump’s view of Africa

Viewed against the broader backdrop of American foreign policy towards Africa under Trump, the Ruto–Trump Ebola arrangement looks quite messy. Trump has used derogatory language against Africa. He describes African countries in the imagery of sewage and its disposal. When he rejects his own citizens because they have been exposed to Ebola, does he see them in the same imagery of rolling in sewage?

When he says they should be taken to Kenya, have his own people degenerated into expendable sewage? Does President Ruto let Kenya and Africa down by appearing to accept that Kenya is the cesspit into which this material can be discarded?

The Ebola quarantine cannot be looked at in isolation, in good conscience. It needs to be viewed within wider Trumpian policy. Apart from Trump’s disrespectful rhetoric towards Africans and restrictions on immigration, he has hurt Africa in several other ways. These all invite questions about President Ruto’s eagerness to embrace America’s Ebola victims. Primary among these have been cancellations of various USAID programmes in Kenya and elsewhere in Africa.

Foreign aid cut

Cancellation of USAID support for HIV/AIDS programmes last year hit the health sector hard. Alongside this was the cancellation of TB and allied public health programmes. The full impact has yet to be assessed, but interim findings tell a tragic story. Willow Health Media has reported a massive drop in HIV testing and counselling. Antiretroviral treatment support has also dropped, as has community health outreach.

Other areas of healthcare that have taken a hit include TB diagnosis and treatment, maternal and child health services, and HIV prevention programmes.

Once again, the questions are simple: if Kenya and Africa are no longer a priority for American health solidarity, why should Africa accept being the place where health risks that belong to America are managed? Why can’t such risks follow USAID back to America? If immigration opportunities have been restricted, why is Ruto’s Kenya accepting American migrants with a deadly bug that could wipe out entire populations?

But if the withdrawal of USAID and US immigration policies makes the American quarantine facility difficult to justify, the United States’ withdrawal from the World Health Organisation makes nonsense of any effort by the Trump administration to seek healthcare support from a World Health Organisation member state. This is, especially so where the US has cancelled pre-existing bilateral healthcare programmes, such as those in which USAID was involved.

Global power

Professor Achille Mbembe of Wits University has argued convincingly that the exercise of global power often determines whose lives are exposed to danger and whose lives are protected. American Secretary of State Marco Rubio has been categorical that not a single exposed person will enter America—not even a citizen. Such persons must be attended to elsewhere. This is a clear Mbembean example: American power protects American lives; conversely, it exposes all other lives.

Besides, Prof Mbembe asks, who makes the decision, and who carries the burden if things go wrong? President Ruto says he “okayed” to the American request. Did he have a real choice? What latitude, if any, did he actually have? So far, the Kenyan Government has failed to demonstrate any gains, if indeed there are any. There has been mention of Sh1.7 billion, but it is not clear how this money fits in. Who will it serve, and how will it serve them? 

The central question returns: who is President Ruto serving? If he is serving Kenyans, what safeguards exist against the pact that has been entered into with the Americans? But if this pact is as beneficial as Cabinet Secretary Duale said on live TV, why all the secrecy? Why can’t the details be published? In Parliament and on television, Duale has been a verbal machine gunner. He evades every question while also firing fervently. 

Harmful impact

Duale does not allow his hosts to frame or complete questions. His nervy “Let me finish” style erodes credibility. Where he should be explaining, he is evading. And so the question returns again and again: whose interests is the Kenyan Government serving in this Ebola saga? Thus far, they do not appear to be the interests of the people of Kenya.

Kenyans who lost jobs after USAID’s withdrawal will find it difficult to believe that the Ebola facility in their country brings anything good. So too will those whose HIV status has been complicated by the withdrawal of USAID support for ARV programmes.

The harmful impact is felt almost everywhere else—in education, governance, democracy and civic education; in anti-corruption and public accountability; and in gender, disability and social inclusion, among many other sectors. Yes, the removal of American funding did not create all the challenges faced in these areas. Yet, if Kenya must now stand on its own in these sectors, it should not also carry the burdens of those who have abandoned it.

The Government would do well to listen to the voice of the people. CS Duale and the President should rethink the merits of bulldozing Ebola into Kenya on behalf of an unreliable superpower. Popular discourse has demonstrated that Kenyans do not want this on their soil. Constitutionally, all sovereign power belongs to the people, who exercise it directly or through their elected representatives. The people have rejected Ebola. Their leaders should listen.

-Dr Muluka is a Strategic & Political Communications Consultant