Opposition to U.S. plan for Ebola quarantine facility in Kenya
By Dr. James E. Sulton Jr.
JA International Correspondent
Today we are witnessing one of the most highly charged U.S.-Kenya disputes in years. Seldom since the eras of colonialism and neocolonialism began has there been anything as raw as what is occurring now. The controversy is intense, sustained, and has already turned deadly. This is not just a routine policy disagreement; it has spilled into the streets, the courts, parliament, and become an anti-U.S. internal revolt.
Consider the following fact pattern:
• Protests in Nanyuki (near the Laikipia Air Base site) have run for at least two consecutive weeks in June, with police firing live rounds, tear gas, and water cannons against demonstrators who built burning barricades.
• The unrest killed people: two protesters were shot dead by police, and at least one more was killed in subsequent clashes.
• Demonstrators in Nairobi carried a symbolic “Ebola coffin” through the streets, with rallying cries of “Kenya is not a colony of the United States!”
Think about the reasons this controversy is so explosive:
• The U.S. plan would house Americans currently exposed to the Ebola virus in the DRC (Democratic Republic of the Congo) and Uganda outbreaks of the disease – in a country (Kenya) that has never recorded a single case of Ebola, with the nearest outbreak having occurred 1,500+ miles away.
• U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio’s blunt declaration that the U.S. “cannot and will not allow any cases of Ebola to enter the United States” crystallized the double standard the United States is employing. Washington is offloading risks to Africa that it will not accept at home. The Kenyan doctors’ union put it bluntly when they said: “If it is too hazardous for America, it is too hazardous for Kenya”.
This is a trilateral fight:
1. In the courts: Kenya’s High Court (Justice Patricia Nyaundi/Nundi) has suspended the project twice (May 28 and June 2), barring any foreign-run Ebola facility and ordering the Kenyan government to disclose the U.S. agreement. The Katiba Institute is now preparing contempt-of-court proceedings, alleging the government has ignored that order and failed to disclose its terms.
2. American defiance: Despite court orders, satellite imagery shows construction of the 50-bed unit progressing apace, and U.S. military aircraft have continued delivering personnel and equipment. Kenyan Health Minister Aden Duale declared “this epidemic does not require any consultation” and the government “will not stop it.”
3. American-side revolt: Strikingly, the backlash is not only Kenyan. The Centers for Disease Control – including acting director Dr. Jay Bhattacharya – reportedly advised against the plan, with some staff being “furious” over it. Former senior U.S. health officials wrote to Congress calling it ethically and legally indefensible, and the CDC employees’ union wants Americans exposed to the disease repatriated instead.
There is a fascinating political subtext to this controversy. Kenyan President William Ruto wants to defend construction of the facility by saying that stopping it would be an “extremely inhumane” thing to do after decades of U.S. health related aid to Kenya. He cites a recent $1.6 billion health agreement and $13.5 million in Ebola-preparedness funding. But opponents – including Ruto’s impeached former deputy Rigathi Gachagua – condemn it as sovereignty betrayed, disease apartheid, and Kenya being made into a low-cost pandemic laboratory. The dispute is also happening during the fourth straight year of anti-Ruto protests, amplifying people’s anger.
The bottom line is that this controversy has escalated from a quiet bilateral health sciences arrangement into a deadly, multilateral confrontation touching upon national sovereignty, public safety, judicial defiance, and even American scientific community dissent – making it one of the fiercest flashpoints among U.S.-African relationships right now.
This ongoing episode over the Ebola virus facility serves as a cautionary tale about the external pressures African countries currently must face these days. This sticky quagmire grew out of a phone call between Kenyan President William Ruto and U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio. These two actors agreed to host a quarantine facility in Kenya for Americans affected by the Ebola outbreak in the Democratic Republic of the Congo.
Such an arrangement is by no means unique in our age of transactional diplomacy. It explains why migrants are being deported from the United States to South Sudan. And it reflects how Zambia bowed to Chinese demands and canceled the human rights and tech summit billed as RightsCon, a capitulation that reverberated across the digital rights community.
“Africa for Africans” remains but a dream.
