The last official state visit from an African leader to the United States was President John Kufour of Ghana in 2008.

This state visit comes at an important moment for the U.S.-Kenya bilateral relationship, but it carries even more significance for U.S.-Africa relations more broadly. After President Biden broke his pledge to visit Africa during his first term in office, this visit will be viewed by many observers as a fig leaf and presented by the White House as a demonstration of the president’s continued commitment to the continent. Had President Biden traveled to Africa, it would have been the first U.S. presidential visit to the continent since President Barack Obama visited Ethiopia and Kenya in 2015. Instead, Washington now appears to be playing catch-up in its engagement with Africa, despite having a long history of diplomatic and development partnerships with African countries going back to the Clinton administration. The emergence and enthusiasm of a host of entrants, like China and Russia, who like Washington now have decades of ties to Africa, as well as newer entrants like Turkey, India, and Saudi Arabia, have highlighted that Washington should urgently step up the quantity and quality of its engagements across Africa. This shift is underscored by a recent Gallup poll which found that approval of China’s leadership has overtaken that of U.S. leadership on the continent.

As Kenya is one of Washington’s closest allies on the continent, Biden will also aim to tout the strength of U.S.-Kenya bilateral ties, highlight the growing leadership role Kenya is playing on the continent, and signal the importance of Africa to the Biden administration’s national security outlook during Ruto’s visit.

The Biden Administration’s Objectives for President Ruto’s State Visit
The Biden administration has made concerted efforts to repair U.S.-Africa relations, which frayed during the Trump administration. The administration released its U.S. Strategy Toward Sub-Saharan Africa in August 2022, calling for a transformation of U.S.-Africa relationships into equal partnerships that advance the strategic interests of both Americans and Africans. The Biden administration also hosted the U.S.-Africa Leaders Summit of December 2022, the first one held since 2016, and was successful in bringing together delegations from 49 African countries to Washington for three days of engagement. Both the strategy and the summit, though largely symbolic, were important signals sent to African leaders that the United States was ready to become a stronger and more reliable partner across a range of political, trade, and security issues.

Following the launch of the strategy and the U.S.-Africa Leaders Summit, there have been high expectations for the Biden administration’s engagement in Africa. The State Department has been fairly diligent in executing the promises made during the summit, which was underscored by a flurry of senior-level trips to Africa throughout 2023 regarding many issues of high importance to African leaders, like reforming the UN Security Council to add a permanent African seat and restructuring global financial institutions to work better for poor countries.

In 2023, President Biden only made one phone call to an African head of state—and that was to President Ruto to discuss an issue (Haiti) on Biden’s agenda, not Ruto’s. This visit will be an opportunity for him to tout his administration’s achievements in Africa following the U.S.-Africa Leaders Summit. Given that it is an election year, Biden is likely to use this as an opportunity to continue to distinguish his engagement with Africa from former president Trump’s approach, which many Africans feel was at best complacent and at worst contemptuous toward issues of concern to them.

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