Kenyan President William Ruto has found a convenient scapegoat for his latest broken promise: Somalia.
After pledging that the Kenya-Somalia border would reopen in April, Ruto now claims the plan collapsed because of instability inside Somalia, tensions between Mogadishu and federal member states, the “expired federal mandate”, and uncertainty over the country’s political transition.
That argument may sound neat in Nairobi, but it crumbles under scrutiny.
Ruto did not merely keep the border closed. He made a public promise, missed his own deadline, and shifted the responsibility to a neighbour. That is not statesmanship; it is excuse-making dressed up as regional concern.
Somalia has serious political problems. No honest observer would deny that. The electoral dispute, the rift between Mogadishu and certain federal member states, and the enduring tensions around Jubaland are real. They require urgent dialogue and constitutional clarity.
But Ruto has no moral authority to lecture Somalia about instability when Kenya itself is engulfed in corruption scandals, public outrage, rising debt, heavy taxation, and a profound crisis of trust.
A president struggling to answer mass protests at home should be careful before speaking with such confidence about uncertainty next door.
The Jubaland contradiction
The most cynical element of Ruto’s argument is the pretence that Kenya is merely a passive observer of Somalia’s instability. For more than a decade, Nairobi has actively manipulated the politics of Jubaland, treating the region less as part of a sovereign Somalia and more as a Kenyan security buffer.
That policy entrenched Ahmed Madobe, the Jubaland leader whose long rule has placed Kismayo on a permanent collision course with Mogadishu.
Kenya cannot spend years backing a regional strongman and then complain that Somalia is fragmented. Nairobi cannot use Madobe as a buffer against Al-Shabaab, encourage regional defiance when it serves Kenyan security interests, and then act shocked when that same fragmentation weakens Somalia’s national institutions.
If Kenya is truly worried about border stability, it must ask a hard question: Has its Jubaland policy actually made the region safer?
Madobe’s defiance of Mogadishu has complicated national security coordination and turned Jubaland into a permanent bargaining chip. Whatever short-term security benefit Kenya believed it gained, the long-term damage to the Somali state has been severe.
A failed border policy
Ruto argues that insecurity makes reopening the border impossible. But Kenya’s current border policy has already failed.
The frontier has been officially closed since 2011 following a spate of Al-Shabaab attacks. Yet insecurity has not vanished. Smuggling thrives. Armed groups continue to exploit the borderlands. Ordinary traders, students, pastoralists, and families pay the price, while those with guns, money, and political cover move freely.
A closed border that only restricts law-abiding citizens is not a security strategy; it is collective punishment. It pushes trade underground, drains state revenue, and leaves border communities more vulnerable.
Ruto knows this, which is why he promised to reopen the frontier in the first place.
A regulated reopening—featuring joint patrols, customs controls, intelligence sharing, and monitored trade corridors—would serve both countries better than a symbolic closure that has failed for nearly 15 years.
No clean hands
Furthermore, Ruto speaks as if Kenya is the stable adult in the room. It is not.
His administration faces sustained anger over the cost of living, punitive taxation, mounting national debt, and police conduct. Kenya ranked 130th in Transparency International’s 2025 Corruption Perceptions Index, scoring a dismal 30 out of 100.
This anger has not materialised out of nowhere. Kenyans have watched public finance scandals, unresolved audit questions, and the unexplained wealth of officials dominate the national debate while their own lives become harder. Citizens feel squeezed by unemployment and inflation, yet watch government figures preach economic sacrifice from behind the tinted windows of luxury convoys.
Public frustration is so deep that more than 40,000 people nominated Ruto for the Organised Crime and Corruption Reporting Project’s 2024 corruption award. While he did not win, the sheer volume of nominations sent a clear, undeniable political message: many Kenyans view corruption, arrogance, and economic pain as the defining features of his rule.
This is the record from which Ruto is lecturing Mogadishu. He should speak with humility, not arrogance.
None of this absolves Somalia’s leaders. Mogadishu must resolve its electoral disputes, rebuild trust with federal member states, and avoid creating a constitutional vacuum. Somali leaders must recognise that internal division provides neighbours with a ready excuse to interfere and treat Somali sovereignty as negotiable.
But Kenya does not get to wash its hands. If Ruto genuinely wants a stable Somalia, he should support its sovereignty rather than sponsoring its fragmentation. He should deal with Mogadishu as the capital of a sovereign state, not treat Jubaland as an informal extension of Kenya.
The real issue
The Kenya-Somalia border must reopen under a serious, functional security framework. Both nations desperately need regulated movement, legal trade, robust customs systems, and coordinated action against armed groups. Border communities require schools, markets, and clinics—not permanent suspicion and political grandstanding.
But any genuine reopening requires honesty, and honesty begins here: Ruto’s border excuse is not merely about Somalia’s instability. It is about Kenya’s failed promise. It is about a 15-year border policy that has delivered neither security nor prosperity. And it is about Kenya’s long-running role in empowering the very Jubaland crisis it now cites as a reason for delay.
Ruto should clean up Kenya before lecturing Somalia. He must answer for the crippling corruption concerns and economic mismanagement at home before using Mogadishu as a convenient political distraction. He needs to explain why Nairobi continues to treat Ahmed Madobe as a useful buffer while simultaneously complaining that Somalia lacks national unity.
Until he does, his argument will remain exactly what it is: a weak excuse from a president desperate to shift the blame for his own administration’s failures.
