Abiy is the rock star, breaking all 1,000-years-old assumptions about what is possible in Ethiopia, driving through dizzying reforms.
Diplomats say Uhuru is a “likeable guy at a personal level”, and that might have helped, but in fitting the above bill, a place was made for him at the global table.
Last week’s World Bank Ease of Doing Business report gave Kigali and Nairobi a lot to smile about.
Among the East African Community (EAC) countries, Rwanda was at the top of the tree and ranked 29th globally, from last year’s 41st position. Kenya recorded the biggest jump, from last year’s 80th to 61st this year. Though the government spin made too big a fist of it, still one couldn’t scoff at the ranking.
Uganda fell five places to 127 from 122; Tanzania slumped to 144 from 137; Burundi could barely manage 168th, and in an index measuring 190 countries, South Sudan was bottom feeder at 185.
Rwanda and Kenya have improved two years in a row, and with the vast gap to the rest of the EAC states, they might as well be in another world.
However, if you look beyond business and economics to politics, something else has happened to the leaders of the two countries. Globally, Rwanda’s Paul Kagame, Kenya’s Uhuru Kenyatta, and lately joined by Ethiopia’s newish Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed, increasingly enjoy very good fortunes.
The most difficult to fully comprehend is Uhuru. In the first year of his presidency, with the International Criminal Court (ICC) charges hanging over his head, he looked set to become a hidebound Omar al-Bashir up in Khartoum. Even after the ICC dropped charges against Uhuru, it was not inevitable that he would emerge on the world stage. Before long, however, world leaders, including then-US President Barack Obama, who had dealt with Nairobi with a 10-metre-long pole, were knocking on his door. Uhuru was and still is being the Africa representative to global gatherings, even though he was not the EAC chairman, African Union chairman, or anything. He was in the first group of the African leaders to meet the volatile and probably racist US President Donald Trump.
Though Kenya is a player in the AU peacekeeping force in Somalia, Amisom, it is not the definitive actor and doesn’t have the largest contingent. So it’s not Kenya that has the most Somalia aces, nor is it the kingpin in the South Sudan madness.
Which diplomatic witchdoctor did Uhuru see? In reality, several forces gifted him. First, in Uganda, President Yoweri Museveni, once the regional leader, veered in a more authoritarian direction from 2016, and then stunk up his standing further by removing the presidential age limit to allow him stand again in 2021, when he will have been in power for 35 years, much longer than any previous autocrat in the EAC region ever.