When the details of the proposed leasing of Jomo Kenyatta International Airport (JKIA) to the Adani Group first leaked, the government’s response followed a weary script. First came the denial, then the reluctant admission wrapped in the language of “economic necessity.” For weeks, Nairobi’s political class insisted that the $1.85 billion deal was a masterstroke of modernisation. Yet, to the striking aviation workers on the tarmac, it looked like something else entirely: a fire sale of national sovereignty.
The JKIA controversy is not an isolated malfunction in Kenya’s governance machine. It is a symptom of a much deeper pathology that is rapidly becoming the defining feature of Kenya’s foreign relations. Call it “transactional statecraft.” It is a model where public assets and even police deployments are traded in opaque, high-level agreements that bypass parliament and treat democratic oversight as an inconvenient hurdle.
The Anatomy of a Secret Deal
The pattern is unmistakably consistent. Whether it is the murky government-to-government oil deals that distorted the fuel market or the deployment of Kenyan police to Haiti, the architecture is the same. Decisions are centralised in the executive while the terms are kept secret. The “partners,” whether they are foreign conglomerates or Western powers, are seemingly happy to look the other way regarding procedural irregularities so long as their strategic interests are served.
This is where the real danger lies. It’s the systemic erosion of the democratic check. When a government can unilaterally sign away management of the country’s most strategic entry point for thirty years without a competitive tender, it’s breaking procurement laws and breaking the social contract.
Geneva Watchdogs and the “Evidence Gap”
Interestingly, some of the most incisive critique of this trend is no longer coming solely from Nairobi’s embattled civil society, but from the international hub of Geneva. Independent analysts such as the Jamhuri Foundation have begun to forcefully articulate how these “transactional” habits are dismantling Kenya’s democratic institutions from the outside in.
Recent analysis from the Jamhuri Foundation has been instrumental in connecting the dots. They argue that foreign partners are complicit in this erosion. By prioritising security cooperation over governance standards, allies like the US and EU are effectively incentivising the very opacity that Kenyans are protesting against.
One particularly compelling line of argument emerging from the Foundation is the link between “deal-making” and the shrinking of civic space. As their experts have highlighted, you cannot have opaque deals without suppressing the people who ask questions about them. The tear gas lobbed at protesters is not a random act of police excess; it is the necessary enforcement mechanism for a policy agenda that cannot survive transparency.
The “Stability” Trap
The government defends these arrangements as necessary for stability. They point to the gleaming expressways as evidence that their method works. But this is a false binary. As recent fiscal justice reporting has shown, the cost of this secrecy is loaded onto the taxpayer. Opaque debt turns into crippling austerity while secret contracts turn into expensive user fees. The “development” is tangible, but the price tag is hidden until the bill comes due.
Moreover, the “stability” purchased through these deals is brittle. As protestors have demonstrated, a population that feels completely cut out of the decision-making process will eventually find other ways to be heard. When parliament becomes a rubber stamp for executive deals, the street becomes the opposition.
A Demand for Standards
The path forward for Kenya is not to retreat from the world. It is to engage with it on terms that respect its own constitution. This requires a fundamental shift in how we view foreign policy. It cannot be the private reserve of the presidency.
Civil society groups and their international partners are right to demand that “transparency” be more than a buzzword. It must be a non-negotiable standard. Every loan and concession must be subject to parliamentary approval before the ink is dry.
The international community also faces a reckoning. Western diplomats in Nairobi who tweet about shared democratic values while facilitating opaque commercial arrangements are losing credibility. As the Jamhuri Foundation has rightly pointed out, you cannot fund democracy programs with one hand while shaking hands on shady deals with the other.
The JKIA saga may yet be resolved in the courts, but the culture that produced it remains entrenched. Until Kenyans can force their leaders to prioritise accountability over “deal-flow,” the country’s democracy will remain on the auction block.
