President William Ruto has reduced his international travels over the past month due to significant domestic upheaval amid anti-government and anti-tax demonstrations.
Previously, Ruto had not remained in the country for three consecutive weeks, but he has now spent most of his time at State House in Nairobi for the past month. Since June 18, when unrest began in Kenya, President Ruto has made only a few local trips to assess government projects and has attended prayer services in selected churches on Sundays.
Ruto’s team has exercised caution in publicizing his local tours, with no details being shared about his movements or the churches he attends on Sundays. The frequency of Ruto’s trips had been one of the grievances raised by protesting youths, who criticized the perceived waste of public resources.
Ruto last traveled abroad on June 13 to Southern Italy for the G7 Summit, where he was one of five African leaders invited. He highlighted Africa’s potential for green industrialization, digital revolution, and innovation, citing the continent’s significant renewable energy reserves. During this trip, he also visited Switzerland on June 15 for a high-level meeting focused on forging peace in Ukraine.
Prior to this, he traveled to South Korea on June 4 for the South Korea-Africa summit in Seoul. This trip was notable as it contradicted his earlier stance against attending such summits. Nine months after taking office, President Ruto declared a new approach to global diplomacy, stating he would engage differently with certain developed nations.
“We have decided, that it is not going to be business as usual. We have these meetings, US-Africa, Europe-Africa, Africa-Turkey and now there is another one, Russia-Africa. We have made the decision, it is not intelligent for 54 of us, to go and sit before one gentleman from another place… and sometimes we are mistreated, we are loaded into buses like school kids, and it is not right,” Ruto said during the Mo Ibrahim Governance Weekend at KICC in April 2023.
He had previously made a maiden state visit to the United States on May 20, a trip said to have potentially surpassed the Ksh.200 million mark.
Ruto’s return to Kenya was met with heaping public rage, forcing him to delve into a scattered defence of his travel expenses asserting that he is a frugal leader and cannot afford to expend the public purse.
Ruto confidently stated that he only spent Ksh.10 million to charter the luxurious jet, a price he says was even a bargain from his initial offer of Ksh.20 million to his Arabian “friends”.
“I am a very responsible steward believe you me. There is no way I can spend Ksh.200 million in fact it cost the republic of Kenya less than Ksh.10 million because I am not a madman,” noted Ruto.
President Ruto is not the only one who has had to scale back international travel. His recently dismissed Cabinet Secretaries have also halted their trips abroad. Responding to calls for austerity measures from concerned Kenyans, President Ruto has committed to reducing public expenditure and cutting budgets for certain state offices.
