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How do national identities matter in global health? Our paper addresses this question through a study of Kenya's vaccine diplomacy during the Covid-19 pandemic. It combines critical perspectives, challenging the neglect of African agency in international relations (IR), with constructivist approaches highlighting the importance of discourse in the exercise of agency. The insight that identity is an important resource in the realization of foreign policy goals is confirmed by our review of interventions by senior Kenyan leaders, as well as ministries and official bodies, concerned with vaccine procurement during the pandemic. Moreover, this material shows that identity is not pre-given, but rather performed in discourse, being adapted and renewed in speeches, briefings, policy documents, and so on. Identities are plural, not singular, drawing on historic and cultural resources proper to individual states. This allows us to link the range of identities performed during the Covid-19 pandemic to earlier moments in Kenya's diplomatic history, noting the continued pertinence of its image, variously, as 'an island of stability', 'a good global health citizen', 'a member of the pan-African community of states', and 'an active contributor to IR'. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Despite increasingly programmatic politics and competitive elections, political clientelism remains an enduring feature of African politics. More so, while politicians rarely deliver on political promises, citizens continue to demand and participate in patron–client relations. While moral economy and instrumentalist accounts offer insight into the puzzling persistence of political clientelism, we offer an additional framework based on demands for social recognition. Beyond expectations of materialist exchange or the performance of cultural norms, citizens expect their political leaders to recognize them as dignified human beings and members of an identity group. Drawing on evidence from three diverse African contexts—urban Ghana, rural Senegal, and coastal Kenya—we argue that citizens engage in political clientelism as a vehicle for demanding three dimensions of social recognition: (i) To be seen and heard by leaders, (ii) to be respected as agents in the political process, and (iii) to be politically included and protected from harm. By providing new insights into the enduring logics of clientelism, citizen strategies amidst unequal power relationships, and the role of emotions in democratic politics, we aim to reconcile existing approaches and bring them into a more unified framework. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Deputy President William Ruto's victorious presidential campaign in Kenya's 2022 elections saw him champion the plight of the 'hustlers', young informal economy workers on low, piecemeal incomes. Reconfiguring political identities around notions of economic hardship and struggle, Ruto's campaign appeared emblematic of what scholars have recently identified as a turn towards 'populism' in Africa, transmuting ethno-nationalist identities into class-based ones. However, whilst Ruto's campaign capitalized on rising prices to devastating political effect, he also channelled discontent with the Jubilee government and its unmet promises of shared prosperity. Drawing on ethnographic data collected in central Kenya's Kiambu region since 2017, this article understands Ruto's victory not through the lens of 'hustler populism' but rather as an anti-Jubilee 'backlash'. Ruto's campaign took advantage of Uhuru Kenyatta's personal unpopularity as voters increasingly questioned the nature of 'dynastic' authority and 'state capture', seeking to punish Uhuru personally for his failures to create prosperity in the region whilst enriching himself at their expense. Elaborating on these tensions, the article points towards broken 'moral economies' between voters and politicians as a vital field of research. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article focuses on small- and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) in Kenya's leather sector. It explores how public governance impacts SMEs' technological capabilities and access to global value chains (GVCs). By public governance, we mean all government regulations and interventions set in place to shape the organization of value chains. Drawing on interview data, the article compares Kenya's leather handbag and footwear manufacturers. On the one hand, handbag SMEs have succeeded in upgrading and entering GVCs through a combination of foreign knowledge and partnership with local universities. Despite meeting with public governance barriers, this process has enabled the transfer of technological capabilities from foreign-owned firms to a number of emerging SMEs owned by Kenyan nationals. On the other hand, leather footwear production was developed during the 1970s by large firms under state support. As protectionist measures were lifted in the 1990s, firms shut down and producers moved into the informal economy, replicating outdated capabilities in a context of price-driven competition, thereby limiting upgrading and participation in GVCs. The article concludes by comparing these findings with the experience of Kenya's apparel manufacturers and highlighting the critical need for GVC research to account for the role of public governance in shaping firms' technological capabilities and access to global markets. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Scholarship examining African agency towards Chinese development projects typically focuses on negotiations between African national elites and Chinese actors at the inception and policy formulation phase, a period which excludes local elites and public participation more generally. This gap between the policy formulation and policy implementation phases in the project cycle can, however, be exploited by local elites at the periphery of power to serve as a channel of influence over the distribution of foreign-derived patronage. Using opportunities posed by elections, these local elites assert their claims to the spoils of patronage with national elites through strategies like protest, bargaining and co-optation. This article investigates how the implementation phase of the Chinese-funded Standard Gauge Railway presented opportunities for collusion and contestation over foreign economic largesse amongst Kenya's national and local elites, underscoring the multi-actor aspects of African agency and, concurrently, those structural and temporal factors that enable and shape such agency. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]