Kenya Medical Practitioners Pharmacists Dentists Union Secretary General and CEO Dr Davji Bhimji Atellah (centre) addresses the media in nairobi on May 30, 2026. He criticized the government's handling of plans for a proposed Ebola quarantine facility in Laikipia County.
There are stories women often tell each other about boyfriends within friend groups, the kind of man constantly sent to fetch jackets from the car, buy cigarettes late at night or run errands no one else wants to do because he is desperate to please and desperate to belong.
That is exactly how Kenya feels today watching President William Ruto move around powerful Western governments and international institutions. They ask him to jump and he immediately asks how high, eager to prove himself useful even when the cost of that obedience may ultimately fall on ordinary Kenyans.
The latest outrage is the proposal for Kenya to host an Ebola quarantine and research facility tied to foreign funding and international partnerships.
The details are still wrapped in diplomatic language about preparedness, cooperation and global health security, but Kenyans are not foolish. People understand what this arrangement represents beneath all the polished press statements and technical terminology. Once again, an African country is being positioned as a convenient place where wealthier nations can relocate risks they would never comfortably host within their own borders.
Modern neocolonialism
If Ebola is considered too dangerous to exist within the United States despite its advanced healthcare system, billion-dollar emergency infrastructure and highly equipped medical institutions, why should Kenya accept that burden so easily? Why should a country already struggling to provide basic healthcare suddenly become a regional center for handling one of the deadliest diseases in the world?
This is what modern neocolonialism looks like. It comes disguised as aid agreements, international partnerships, donor funding and strategic cooperation. The language is softer today, but the power imbalance remains the same. African countries continue being treated as disposable spaces where wealthier nations can outsource danger while presenting themselves as generous partners helping the continent.
Kenya cannot even fully protect its own citizens under ordinary circumstances. Public hospitals frequently lack medicine, equipment and enough healthcare workers. Patients die waiting for treatment while doctors and nurses spend months demanding salaries, better conditions and functional systems. Rural clinics operate without enough ambulances, oxygen supplies or emergency services, leaving millions of Kenyans depending on a healthcare system that already feels exhausted and overwhelmed.
Only recently, the country watched another devastating tragedy unfold after 16 children burnt alive in a boarding school fire caused by negligence and institutional failure. Parents sent their children to school believing they would be educated and protected, only to receive calls informing them that their children had died in flames. It was one of those moments that should have shaken a country into deep reflection about the value of human life and the failures hidden within our institutions.
Responsible governance
Yet even in that moment of grief, the state responded with the same coldness that Kenyans have become painfully familiar with. Instead of compassion, accountability and urgency, grieving parents found themselves facing police officers carrying guns and batons while government officials lectured them about procedure.
The same state that moves quickly when suppressing protesters suddenly becomes absent whenever citizens require protection, safety or empathy. Leaders retreated into high-end venues to pray for the country while families buried children whose deaths could have been prevented through proper safety measures and responsible governance.
That is why this Ebola proposal has triggered such deep anger and fear across the country. Kenyans are not reacting from ignorance or irrational panic. They are reacting from lived experience. People no longer trust a government that repeatedly fails to manage ordinary crises to suddenly handle an extremely dangerous disease with competence and transparency. Every national tragedy over the past few years has exposed institutional weakness, negligence and a leadership culture more concerned with image management than public welfare.
Even the reaction from organizations expected to firmly defend public interest revealed the contradictions that now define many Kenyan institutions. The Kenya Medical Practitioners, Pharmacists and Dentists Union released a statement declaring that “Kenya is NOT America’s biohazard dumping ground,” words that immediately resonated with citizens.
Then came the contradiction. The same statement quickly shifted toward demanding that if the facility proceeds, Kenyan doctors should receive employment opportunities, protections and hazard pay. A principled stand cannot exist comfortably on both sides at once.
This writer is a journalist and a human rights defender. [email protected]
