by Till now, all the allegations against Gautam Adani have not been proved in the USA court, meaning he has not even been held guilty. Already, many US-friendly governments of today are openly saying that they are cancelling Adani’s projects in their countries. Recently, a video went viral where the President of Kenya is standing in his parliament and saying that we are cancelling Adani’s airport project, our energy deals with Adani, everything because our friendly country, the US, is obviously saying this. We have received inputs from there that deals should not be done with him.
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Now, this scene is very interesting. You have to understand here that Kenya has completely cancelled its deals with Adani Group worth 2.5 billion dollars, after the indifference of the US Yes Court. Again, I will repeat here that the US Court has not yet held Adani guilty, but the Kenyan government is saying that on the basis of the inputs we have received from our friendly countries, we are cancelling these two projects all together.
Is the government of Kenya very close to the USA today?
The answer is yes. Now, first of all, you can see this map of Asia here in Africa. Right next to Somalia is the country of Kenya. The capital is Nairobi. The population of Kenya is not very large. This country has a population of around 5 crore.
If you look at Kenya, historically it did not enjoy a very good relationship with the USA, but recently a new leader has come here, President Ruto, and look at President Ruto’s foreign policy, he is focusing a lot on improving his relations with the USA. Recently we saw that this year President Ruto went to Washington DC and this was his first state visit.
There are many leaders from Africa who keep visiting the USA but for the first time in 15 years we have seen that an African leader made a state visit to the United States of America and Joe Biden obviously propagated the recipe and said that he will make Kenya a non-NATO ally.
USA designates itself as a non-NATO ally, so Joe Biden is today improving relations with Kenya very rapidly. What will happen due to this is that Kenya will be able to purchase more defence products from the USA and USA is increasing its overall engagement with Kenya from all sides and a very deep report has been published about it in the US Chamber of Commerce where it is written that we mean business, relations have deepened between the US and Kenya and if you are wondering if there are any other countries in Africa that have such deep relations with the USA like Kenya.
If there is any country that is most pro-US in the whole of Africa today, it is Kenya, to the extent that many times articles are published in Africa where it is openly said that Kenya’s commitment is towards the Pan African ideals and questions are often raised on whether other African countries are following those ideals or not because this country has very good relations with the USA and it has signed many agreements with the US, which also includes that Kenya deploys its police force.
Here you have to understand what Kenya’s President Ruto said in his Parliament that we have come to know from a foreign country that this deal should be cancelled, so you can understand that the foreign country here is the US itself, and it is not a confidence that as soon as Adani and Verius and the people of the Adani Group were indicted in the New York court, directly after that their President standing in Kenya’s Parliament announces that the 2.5 billion dollar deal is over and all the other parliamentarians clap.
Now your question here would be that the cancellation of Adani’s airport deal in Kenya and the cancellation of power deals, will this be a big blow to the Adani Group?
Look, this is definitely a setback because this would have been Adani’s first international airport. Adani has many ports outside India but not a single airport, so this is definitely a setback and Adani Group was very excited about this deal. Now who will this deal go to? Will China get this deal or will some American company come here? This remains to be seen. Many people here are already saying that now this deal will be taken to China. We will have to see what happens here.
Now a bigger question here is that the other international projects of Adani Group, for example, they have a project in Myanmar, apart from that they have some projects in Indonesia and Australia and the most important port is Haifa Port, will it not slip out of their hands because you should know that the IC Corridor, about which I have told you many times, India Middle East Europe Economic Corridor, its very important part is going to be Israel’s Haifa Port and Haifa Port was purchased by Adani Group from the Government of Israel and this deal was completed in 2023 when India’s Adani purchased Israel’s Haifa Port by paying 1.15 billion dollars.
Now the question here is that after the US intervention, Israel is still firm on its deal. Israel did not announce that it will cancel the deal. However, it cannot cancel the deal now because literally the port has been sold. Now saying that no, we are cancelling the deal will raise a big question on Israel’s business environment.
But definitely Adani had plans to expand further in South America and Africa, issues will come up somewhere or the other and in the coming times we will have to see how many more pro-US countries cancel these Adani projects in this manner. Many things will become clear in the coming one or two weeks.
Again, here one thing to remember is that there is also a possibility that after a few years from today, if Adani proves in the US court that he has not broken any law here, nothing happened and if he is declared innocent in the US court after a year or two in that case, then I will create a possibility here that Adani may re-enter Kenya with this deal, so there will be a transition period, a new President will come in USA, many things will change, so let’s see what event happens?
