Biden Hosts Kenyan President at White House

Kenya is a major African player — as evidenced by U.S. President Joe Biden’s decision to meet with Kenyan President Uhuru Kenyatta on Thursday, Biden’s first in-person talks with an African leader since becoming president.

“The U.S.-Kenya strategic partnership is essential,” Biden said, as the two leaders sat down in the Oval Office. “We both, I think, believe it is essential to addressing key regional and global challenges.”

The focus of their closed-door talks is likely to be Kenya’s next-door neighbor Ethiopia, where war has raged in the northern Tigray region for nearly a year. The conflict has killed untold numbers of people — the death toll itself is a subject of contention. But the United Nations estimates that the war has plunged 5.2 million people into humanitarian crisis and sent more than 63,000 fleeing into neighboring Sudan.

Kenyan President Uhuru Kenyatta speaks during his meeting with President Joe Biden in the Oval Office of the White House in Washington, Oct. 14, 2021.
Kenyan President Uhuru Kenyatta speaks during his meeting with President Joe Biden in the Oval Office of the White House in Washington, Oct. 14, 2021.
“Today, we’re going to discuss what more Kenya and the United States can do together on the Horn of Africa to advance peace and security,” Biden said. Neither leader mentioned Ethiopia by name.

But White House Press Secretary Jen Psaki said the two leaders had discussed the landlocked nation and described the conflict in stark terms.

In September, Biden signed an executive order threatening to impose sanctions on “those responsible for, or complicit in, prolonging the conflict in Ethiopia, obstructing humanitarian access, or preventing a ceasefire.” The sanctions, which have not yet been imposed, would affect the Tigray People’s Liberation Front, the federal governments of Ethiopia and Eritrea, the Amhara regional government, and other parties in the conflict.

“Obviously, what’s happening in Ethiopia, it’s an atrocity,” Psaki said, responding to a question about when the U.S. would initiate sanctions. “It’s horrific. It’s something that, frankly, I’m happy you’re asking about because there hasn’t been probably enough attention here in the United States to what’s happening.”
The lack of international oversight over the conflict, both in Tigray and in Addis Ababa, is a concern. In September, Ethiopia expelled seven senior United Nations officials, indicating that the Horn of Africa power is not easily influenced by outside forces. As Ethiopian leaders and ordinary citizens are inclined to note, Ethiopia is the only African nation that has never been colonized.