Walk through Nairobi and the twenty-first century global economy comes into view.

Chinese-built expressways carry commuters to office towers occupied by American technology firms. French retailer Carrefour has become one of the country’s largest supermarket chains. Japanese vehicles dominate the roads while Indian pharmaceutical companies supply hospitals and pharmacies. Increasingly, Gulf investors are financing the logistics corridors that connect Kenya to regional markets. None of these relationships is unusual on its own. Most people experience them as disconnected features of everyday life.

The Nairobi Expressway approaching Westlands. The GTC Complex, one of Nairobi’s tallest commercial developments, is visible in the background.

Yet, this is rarely the lens through which Kenya’s foreign policy is viewed. Public debate has instead become dominated by President Ruto’s extensive international travel. To supporters, those journeys reflect energetic economic diplomacy. To critics, they have become shorthand for a presidency more comfortable abroad than confronting rising taxes, public debt and domestic discontent at home. Both perspectives, however, overlook a more important shift . The debate has focused on where Kenya’s president travels rather than where Kenya’s economy is connected.

That distinction matters because the international economy that shaped African diplomacy over the past three decades is rapidly changing.

The End of the Old Development Model

For much of the post-Cold War period, African governments operated within a relatively stable political economy of development finance . External capital flowed through a relatively small number of actors: Western bilateral donors, multilateral development banks and, from the early 2000s, increasingly Chinese policy banks. Diplomatic success largely meant securing access within that ecosystem.

That ecosystem is now fragmenting. The retrenchment of traditional development assistance provides perhaps the clearest illustration. According to the OECD , net official development assistance fell by 23.3 per cent in 2025 (the largest annual contraction on record) following an 8.5 per cent decline in 2024. Further reductions are projected for 2026, making this only the second time on record that ODA has declined for three consecutive years, after the period between 1992 and 1995. It’s the first time since that period that the United States, United Kingdom, Germany and France have all cut aid simultaneously.

Unsurprisingly, the sharpest reductions are expected to fall on low-income countries, with bilateral aid to sub-Saharan Africa projected to decline by as much as 28 per cent. The implication is not merely fiscal, the shrinking of aid budgets. It is structural. One of the central pillars of the post-Cold War political economy of development is becoming progressively less reliable.

A More Competitive Marketplace for Capital

Aid is only one pillar of a broader transformation.

China’s role has also evolved. The era of rapidly expanding policy-bank lending for large-scale infrastructure has given way to a more selective approach, with greater emphasis on debt sustainability, commercial viability and strategically targeted investment. Yet, this is not simply a story of one source of finance retreating. It is a story of many others emerging.

Gulf sovereign wealth funds have become increasingly important investors in ports, logistics, renewable energy and digital infrastructure. According to the Africa Center for Strategic Studies , the United Arab Emirates alone has announced around US$47 billion in projects across East Africa, with Saudi Arabia committing a further US$15.6 billion. Climate finance and private capital are also playing an increasingly prominent role in financing Africa’s development.

The result is a profound shift in the political economy of development: governments no longer navigate a relatively small ecosystem of donors and development banks. Instead, they operate within an increasingly competitive marketplace of capital that includes bilateral partners, sovereign wealth funds, institutional investors, multinational corporations and regional markets. In that ecosystem, diplomatic success may no longer be measured simply by how much capital a country attracts, but by how successfully it diversifies the sources from which that capital is drawn.

A Different Model of Integration

Judged by headline foreign investment alone, Kenya does not …