A man has been shot at a protest in Kenya against a US-funded Ebola centre. The UK aid programme that supports it is now under security review. I suppose we should all feign surprise.
Here we have yet another iteration of the tired old farce: Western do-gooders blundering into a place they do not understand, with budgets they cannot control, only to have their efforts met with bullets and fury. The scene is pure Kipling revisal, a grim parody of the White Man’s Burden. But the Victorians at least had the decency to rule directly.
Today we have NGOs, private contractors, and confused aid programmes that pretend to be above politics while being soaked in it. The protesters, I am told, object to the centre’s presence. Why?
Because they see it as a colonial imposition, a biosecurity laboratory for the West’s obsessions, its anxieties about pandemics that Africa is supposed to solve for the rest of us. They are not entirely wrong. The Ebola centre is a symbol of a global health order that demands sacrifice from the poorest while the richest stockpile vaccines.
And of course, like all imperial projects, it breeds resistance. The shooting is predictable. What is more troubling is the UK’s response: a security review.
As if more guards, more fences, more risk assessments will fix what is fundamentally a crisis of legitimacy. The question is not whether the centre is safe. It is whether it should be there at all.
The Roman Empire fell because it could no longer justify its own existence to its subjects. The British Empire learned that lesson, albeit too late. But the aid industry has not.
It continues to act as though goodwill and Treasury cheques can override local sovereignty. They cannot. Until we treat Kenya as an equal partner rather than a backdrop for our philanthropy, we will see more men shot, more programmes suspended, more cycles of violence and hand-wringing.
The Victorians would have called this ‘the white man’s grave.’ We call it ‘implementational challenges.’ It is the same arrogance, dressed in different jargon.
So yes, review security. But while you are at it, review the entire premise of the enterprise. Ask yourself: does this Ebola centre exist for Kenyans or for us?
If the answer is the latter, pack up and leave. The natives are not going to thank you for the trouble.
