[ad_1]
On Monday, Tanzania introduced it was suspending Kenya Airways (KQ) flights to its industrial capital Dar es Salaam from January 22, in response to Nairobi’s denial of Tanzania’s request for its provider to make cargo flights to Kenya.
KQ operates 33 scheduled flights per week between Nairobi and Dar es Salaam, so that will be a bit hit for a provider that’s already struggling. Because the letter asserting Tanzania’s determination unfold quickly on social media and WhatsApp, Kenya responded quick. Prime Cupboard Secretary and International and Diaspora Affairs Minister Mr Musalia Mudavadi took to X (previously Twitter) to announce that: “I’ve this night spoken to HE@Jmakamba (January Makamba) (MP), Minister for International Affairs and East African Cooperation of the United Republic of Tanzania, with regard to the choice of the Tanzania Civil Aviation Authority to rescind the approvals for @KenyaAirways to function passenger flights between Nairobi and Dar es Salaam with impact from January 22, 2024. Now we have collectively agreed that our respective Civil Aviation Authorities will work collectively to have the matter resolved amicably inside the subsequent three days.”
It was the quickest response by Nairobi to a diplomatic or geo-economic situation lately. It contrasted sharply with the response just lately when a Cupboard Secretary assailed Rwanda President Paul Kagame’s management, and in November when Uganda, complaining of predatory practices by middlemen, introduced it might cease shopping for gas merchandise from Kenyan corporations, and look to ship extra of it by means of Dar es Salaam. Uganda imports petroleum merchandise price US$2 billion yearly from Kenya, and the Kenya Pipeline Firm (KPC) handles the majority of it, incomes as much as US$100 million a 12 months. Uganda was in search of to import its gas merchandise straight, however use KPC techniques. Kenya all however advised Uganda to go and soar into Lake Victoria, and senior Kenyan officers mocked it.
Annoyed, Uganda has now dragged Kenya to the East African Court docket of Justice (EACJ) over the difficulty. Kenya may not hit the panic button on Uganda, Rwanda, and different East African Neighborhood (EAC) nations, but it surely’s a distinct ball sport on the subject of Tanzania. One of many causes is that there’s a lot of adversarial historical past between the 2 nations, ranging from the late Sixties ideological rivalries. Tanzania slated Kenya as a rapacious, corrupt, man-eat-man society. Kenya hit again, knocking socialist Tanzania as a man-eat-nothing depressing economic system.
There have all the time been political factors to be received in Tanzania for being robust on Kenya. It has usually led to some over-the-top actions. In 2017, the mercurial President John Magufuli’s authorities had 6,400 stay chicks imported from Kenya burnt in an enormous bonfire.
President Samia Suluhu Hassan, who succeeded Magufuli following his dying in March 2021, a 12 months later acknowledged that the order to burn the Kenyan chicks imported was fallacious. Nonetheless, at the moment Suluhu was nonetheless a rookie president, nonetheless charming her means round in velvet gloves. Now extra sure-footed, President Suluhu has forged away the gloves and worn the normal brass knuckles with which her predecessors used to take care of Kenya.
Additionally, underlying current Nairobi-Dodoma spats is an unstated however severe race for regional hegemony. Proper now Kenya is much out the main East African economic system, and regional monetary hub. Nevertheless it received’t be for for much longer. In April 2023, the Worldwide Financial Fund (IMF) projected that the Tanzanian economic system can be bigger than Kenya’s inside the subsequent decade (ie 2033). The Tanzanian press crowed in regards to the report, and worldwide media additionally performed the story up. That little bit of the report was largely ignored within the Kenyan media.
Kenya and Tanzania additionally place themselves in another way geopolitically. Kenya performs regional energy on two fronts; within the EAC, and within the Horn of Africa, institutionally within the Intergovernmental Authority on Improvement (IGAD). Nonetheless, within the Horn of Africa, it has been stymied by Ethiopia, a bigger economic system and extra muscular navy energy and, till its blow-up final 12 months, Sudan. Tanzania, however, performs on three fronts; within the EAC, within the Southern African Improvement Neighborhood (SADC) – with 16 members a much bigger bloc than the EAC – and in Central Africa. Dodoma sees itself as a extra refined geopolitical actor than Nairobi.
Having deployed as a part of SADC in Mozambique’s troubled Cabo Delgado province to fight Islamist rebels who had taken over the oil and mineral-rich area, it could possibly declare a few of the credit score for pacifying the realm and beating the rebels, though the Rwanda navy intervention was the decisive consider that battle.
The Tanzania navy was the tip of the spear within the United Nations’ Pressure Intervention Brigade (FIB) within the jap Democratic Republic of Congo in 2013, the best worldwide deployment ever within the troubled area. With South Africa half-failing, Zimbabwe within the mud, and former giants like Angola in decline, these circumstances have mixed to raise Tanzania to incoming SADC large boy. With its infrastructure increase in high flight and projecting into Central Africa, and an economic system projected to put up respectable progress in 2024, Tanzania seems like a regional prince. And is appearing like one.
Mr Onyango-Obbo is the creator is a journalist, author, and curator of the “Wall of Nice Africans”. Twitter@cobbo3
[ad_2]
