Kenya: Fact-Checking Kenya's President, Foreign Minister On Africa Policy Talking Points
Source: allAfrica
Kenya: Fact-Checking Kenya's President, Foreign Minister On Africa Policy Talking Points
Fact-checking Kenya's president, foreign minister on Africa policy talking points
Ruto's speech in Ghana on 3 April, and at other times since, reiterated Mudavadi's points. The two have made claims about forced displacement, conflict deaths, Africa's population and diaspora remittances, among other issues.
In this report, we fact-check some of the statistics Mudavadi used to make the case for Kenya's leadership on the continent. We had to wait weeks for some of the data, which finally arrived in mid-May.
In his public lecture at the United States International University-Africa in the Kenyan capital Nairobi, Mudavadi said that Ruto's invitation from Biden for a state visit was "the first for an African leader since 2008." Is he accurate?
The office of the historian of the US State Department preserves, researches, and disseminates historical information about American foreign policy.
The last state visit by an African leader was by Ghana's John Kufuor in 2008. He was hosted by president George W Bush.
Several other African leaders have since been to the US, but these have been working or official visits focused on specific policy discussions and negotiations. This included Ruto's predecessor, Uhuru Kenyatta, in 2018.
State visits are highly formal, with elaborate ceremonies. They are designed to honour and strengthen official diplomatic relations.
Kenya's other two presidents have been accorded state visits by the US. President Jimmy Carter received Daniel arap Moi, Kenya's second president, for a state visit in 1980.
The Central Bank of Kenya defines remittances as "money sent by a person in a foreign land to his or her home country". The bank keeps a monthly record of remittances in US dollars.
From December 2022 to November 2023, the period mentioned by Mudavadi, the total was $4.175 billion, close enough to the claim.
If you are interested, the difference of $15 million is about KSh2.28 billion -enough to fund Mudavadi's office for a year. He also doubles up as the prime cabinet secretary.
The "same period", as used by Mudavadi, means December 2021 to November 2022.
According to central bank data, remittances totalled $4.021 billion in the 12 months to November 2022.
(Again, if you like this sort of thing, the $7 million difference with Mudavadi's figure is about KSh1.064 billion, equal to the annual budget of the state department of performance and delivery management.)
Mudavadi argued that the continent's conflicts needed to be treated as seriously as other "priority" conflicts, which he listed as Gaza and Ukraine.
Over 43 million people forcefully displaced in Africa
The UNHCR defines forcefully displaced people as those forced to leave their homes due to events such as armed conflict, violence, human rights abuses, natural or man-made disasters or development projects. They include refugees, asylum seekers and internally displaced persons.
Africa Check contacted the refugee agency, who sent us a link to a data portal covering three regions in sub-Saharan Africa - East and Horn of Africa and the Great Lakes region, Southern Africa and West and Central Africa.
Ruto and Mudavadi appeared to be referring to the internally displaced people, who numbered 37.6 million as of December 2023. But all forcefully displaced people, including IDPs, refugees, and asylum seekers, totalled 46.1 million. (See our working here.)
Therefore, given the data that Mudavadi should have had in March 2024, and Ruto in April, the claim is understated. It is "over 37 million" but still quite short of 46 million.
On 14 May 2024, the IDMC published new data. It showed that 34.8 million people were internally displaced in sub-Saharan Africa at the end of 2023. This does not include refugees and asylum seekers.
Since the UNHCR puts the number of refugees and asylum seekers at 8.5 million, the total number of forcefully displaced people is 43.3 million.
The acute insecurity scale has five categories of severity, called "phases", focusing on food consumption, availability, access and nutritional status.
Phase 1 has minimal or no severity, where food consumption is adequate and sustainable. Phases 2, 3, 4 and 5 are labelled "stressed", "crisis", "emergency" and "catastrophe/famine".
Phases 3 to 5 often require urgent action to protect jobs, ensure people have enough to eat, save lives and prevent widespread deaths and loss of livelihoods.
How many people in Africa face acute food insecurity?
The IPC data on acute food insecurity covered 21 out of 55 countries in Africa. The total number of people facing phase 3 and above was 92 million. For three countries - Ethiopia, South Africa and Zimbabwe - the most recent data was from 2021, while Angola had data from 2022.
For more comprehensive data, Williams drew our attention to surveys by the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) and the World Food Programme (WFP), both global agencies concerned with food security.
FAO, WFP and 14 other agencies jointly publish the global report on food crises. The most recent shows the number of people in Africa facing acute food insecurity, phase 3 and above in the IPC classification, fell by 145.7 million in 2022, to an estimated 119 million in 2023.
Ethiopia, Cape Verde, Congo and Zimbabwe, whose data was included in the 2022 report, were not analysed in 2023. However, other UN agencies noted that at least 15.4 million people in Ethiopia were food insecure in the second half of 2023. Adding this number brings the figure to 134.25 million.
Mudavadi's figures are significantly underestimated, given the available data and the reported gaps.
The 2023 global report on food crises identified conflicts as the major driver of food insecurity in Sudan, South Sudan, Ethiopia, Nigeria, Burkina Faso, Somalia, DRC, Mali, Chad, Central African Republic and Mozambique.
The total affected population is 99.5 million or 74% of all acutely food insecure people in conflict-affected countries.
While conflict-affected countries account for a large proportion of the acutely food-insecure, the number is smaller than Mudavadi's figure.
"The crises on the continent have led to the damage and closure of thousands of schools, translating into an estimated 98 million children in Africa being out of school, 98 million children," said Mudavadi.
According to the UN Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (Unesco), out-of-school children are those "in the official primary school age range who are not enrolled in either primary or secondary school".
The Unesco Institute for Statistics has extended this definition to include all children within the official age range for a given level of education who are not enrolled in pre-primary, primary, secondary or higher education.
The most recent Unesco update is from September 2022. It showed that there were 98 million out-of-school children in 48 countries in sub-Saharan Africa in 2021.
Landlocked countries in Africa are an inevitable basis for intra-African cooperation, Mudavadi said, giving their number as 16.
These are countries without coastlines, oceans, or seas; they are completely surrounded by land. They often rely on their neighbours for access to ports and international trade routes.
According to MapsofWorld.com, there are 16 landlocked countries in Africa: Botswana, Burkina Faso, Burundi, Central African Republic, Chad, Ethiopia, Eswatini, Lesotho, Malawi, Mali, Niger, Rwanda, South Sudan, Uganda, Zambia and Zimbabwe.
Mudavadi's figure of 378 million is in the ballpark, but when he rounded it up to 400 million, he inflated the figure by as much as 34 million.