IT’S A TRAP

0. Priorities

There is a woman who owns land down the road. It’s a modest parcel, inherited from her father. It is enough to sustain her children, enough to grow some grains when the rains come. But for the past few years, the rains have failed, and her granaries go empty. Her children’s ribs show through their skin, and when they are not sleeping, they stare at her with those hollow, hungry eyes in helpless desperation.

One morning, as she contemplates what to do, she sees something troubling. A stranger lingers at the edge of her field, measuring, marking boundaries with wooden stakes. Petrified, she protests, and confronts him with the little energy she has. “You will not take our land!” Weary, she moves to remove the stakes, to drive the intruder away….

Her neighbours watch from afar. They call out to her with loud voices, full of concern and condescension. “Wanjiku,” they say, “Your children are starving. Why are you worrying about this barren land? Go and find food. Feed your children. You can deal with business later. Priorities, my friend. Priorities.” Their logic is impeccable. Her children are indeed starving. After all, what would a rational person do?

Convinced, Wanjiku decides to prioritise survival. Land disputes can wait. She turns her back on the wooden stakes and leaves for the city. There, far away from her father’s land, she finds labour, and earns a pittance to buy flour and cooking oil. She feeds her children. Their strength returns. Her body recovers. She exerts herself a little more to secure her family from hunger. Three months pass. Six months. One year.

Finally, when completely food secure, Wanjiku returns to the village to reclaim her land. From a distance, she sees a petrol station standing where her potatoes once grew. Where she tended to her cabbages: fences, concrete, tarmac. Where her hovel once stood, a large warehouse has been erected. She protests anew, loudly, but she soon learns that title deeds have long been issued, and her father’s land is now someone else’s.

Her neighbours watch from afar. They offer their sympathies, shaking their heads with concern and condescension. “Such a shame. If only you had acted sooner,” they say.

1. The Deal

This is not a story about Wanjiku, or her land. This is a story about how Kenyans are being robbed in broad daylight.

From 2020 to 2025, USAID committed approximately $2.5 billion to Kenya. This was roughly $470 million per year, with 80 percent allocated to health programmes. Then in January 2025, President Trump froze nearly all US foreign assistance and dismantled the USAID. Overnight, Trump blew a KES 52 billion hole in Kenya’s health budget. Antiretroviral therapy clinics closed. HIV prevention programmes suspended. 42,000 health workers facing layoffs. These were not mere numbers on a spreadsheet. These were real people, families like yours, their lifeboats ripped out from under them, left to drown whilst the world watched. This crisis, manufactured by The White House, is now being exploited to extract something far more valuable from Kenya than the aid it lost.

On December 4th 2025, Kenya became the first African nation to sign a bilateral health cooperation framework with the Trump administration. The agreement, valued at $1.6-2.5 billion, was presented as the solution to the crisis that Trump had created. Unlike USAID’s decentralised model which scattered funds across dozens of disparate NGOs, this would be a government-to-government deal. The United States commits funding for the digital health infrastructure, trains the personnel, builds the systems. Kenya commits to increasing domestic health expenditures incrementally. By 2030, Kenya takes over full financial responsibility. A clean exit for the US, which hands operational control to Kenya.

On paper, the goal is noble: to “develop local and resilient health systems to decrease reliance on U.S. Government support.” But the deal is good, too good. And so we must ask, what’s in it for the US?

1.1 2026-2030

As they say, the devil lies in the details. The five-year framework establishes specific targets for data collection. Paragraph 2.5.8.1 commits Kenya to deploying TaifaCare HMIS, the health information management system, in 2,000 health facilities by 2026, 4,000 facilities by 2027, and 8,000 facilities by 2028. Paragraph 2.5.8.7 then sets the digitisation targets: “The Government of Kenya intends to ensure greater than fifty percent (50%) of clinical encounters are loaded in the Electronic Health Record within 1 (one) year of rollout in a facility and ninety percent (90%) of encounters loaded in the Electronic Health Record within two years of rollout in a facility.” Every diagnosis. Every prescription. Every treatment outcome. Uploaded. Every public facility. Every faith-based hospital. All uploading data to a centralised system.

But clinical data is not the only thing up for grabs. Paragraph 2.5.8.8 describes the laboratory information management system to be deployed by end of 2028. This system will “integrate with the health facility HMIS, process samples, integrate with test analysers, store samples, and release results back to the client or facility.” It will serve “the needs of clinical care, surveillance, outbreak detection and response.”

During these five years, Kenya must build what The Framework calls “data banks”, and create “data lakes” not only for “advanced analytics” but also “AI-functionalities, for surveillance and clinical care” (Paragraph 2.5.8.3). The systems will be “integrated” with US platforms for real-time data sharing. Five years of comprehensive data collection. Five years of uploading Kenya’s medical records, every genetic sequence, every clinical record, into systems designed by America, built using American platforms, and integrated with American servers.

1.2 The Transition: 2030

In 2030, the US funding dries up, and as promised in The Framework, Kenya takes full funding responsibility and operational control. Now, I am not claiming the transition is mere theatre. No, it is real. Kenya will genuinely take over operations. There will be an exorbitant celebration somewhere in Nairobi, perhaps a prayer breakfast or some seminar patronised by politicians. There, the president of Kenya will announce that the nation has achieved health system independence, and whoever will be in government at the time will have extra talking points for the coming general election in 2032.

However, the pathogen sequences collected from 2026 to 2030 will be sitting in American laboratories. The clinical records from thousands of health facilities will have trained American AI models. The genetic material from five years of disease surveillance will be embedded in American research papers, American patent applications, American pharmaceutical pipelines. All our data, gone.

In 2030, Kenya can walk away. The Framework allows it. But does walking away delete the sequences from the databases in Boston? Does it revoke the patents filed on drugs derived from Kenyan pathogens? Does it extract Kenya’s genetic data from the AI models it trained during the partnership? No.

1.3 2030 and Beyond

Paragraph 2.5.9.5 states that during The Framework’s term, Kenya “intends to pay all reasonable and ongoing software licensing, cloud computing, hardware maintenance, hardware replacement, and other similar costs for the systems outlined in this Paragraph that are not specifically paid for by the U.S. Government.” But read what The Framework does not say. The Framework is silent on post-2030 arrangements. It does not guarantee continued American support. It does not obligate Kenya to keep paying. It simply ends.

And by then, The Framework is completely successful, and now eight thousand facilities are operating on TaifaCare HMIS. Ninety percent of all clinical encounters are digitised and flowing through platforms designed by Americans. All their laboratory systems are integrated with American software. All disease surveillance is dependent on American cloud computing. Kenya’s entire digital health infrastructure will be running on American-built systems.

When The Framework ends in 2030, Kenya will face a choice: continue paying American companies for software licenses, cloud computing, and hardware maintenance, or watch systems collapse. Not because The Framework obligates Kenya to pay. But because Kenya will have spent five years building dependence into every layer of its digital health system.

The Framework does not need to mandate post-2030 payments. The infrastructure itself creates the compulsion. You cannot shut down 8,000 health facilities because the software licenses expired. You cannot tell patients that their medical records are inaccessible because Kenya refused to renew overpriced cloud computing contracts. You cannot halt disease surveillance because the American platforms went dark.

This is the genius of structural entrapment, and it is built into the architecture of The Framework. And by 2030, when Kenya has attained “operational control” on paper, this dependency architecture will already be permanent.

The question is not whether Kenya should accept help, but whether help must come bundled with comprehensive data extraction.

1.4 The Trap

Let us follow the timeline. American funding builds digital infrastructure. Kenya adds its own money. During five years of operation, comprehensive data extraction takes place: 50% of clinical encounters by 2027, 90% by 2028, laboratory samples stored and integrated by end of 2028, pathogen sequences shared directly with the US for “surveillance”.

In 2030, Kenya takes back operational control over systems that America has been accessing for five years straight. The most valuable asset, the data, has already been collected. Kenyan taxpayers will now be paying for American systems that were built to extract value from Kenyan data. Just like Wanjiku’s land, by the time Kenyans return to reclaim their data, the AI models will already be standing, and the research papers and patents will belong to someone else.

This is not capacity-building. This is not partnership. This is theft.

Ruto’s government would argue that alternative funding mechanisms aren’t available at scale, that this five-year framework accelerates capacity-building that would otherwise take decades. They would argue that some data extraction is an acceptable price for genuine expertise transfer and immediate crisis relief.

Now, the immediate crisis is real, and it can be claimed that some problems cannot wait for long-term capacity building. However, the question is not whether Kenya should accept help, but whether help must come bundled with comprehensive data extraction. The Framework does not merely share data for specific collaborative research projects, it embeds data extraction into the entire digital infrastructure. Every clinical encounter. Every pathogen sequence. Every laboratory result. Forever flowing through American platforms.

More critically, the expertise transfer argument assumes Kenya gains capabilities worth the data surrender. But expertise transfer and data extraction can be decoupled. The Framework’s refusal to decouple expertise from extraction reveals its true purpose.

And as for acceleration: five years of American systems does not build Kenyan capacity. It builds Kenyan dependence on American systems. The Framework trains Kenyan health workers to operate American platforms, not to design their own. When 2030 arrives, Kenya will have operational competence but no technological sovereignty. We will have skilled users of systems they cannot modify, cannot maintain independently, or at the very least, replace.

2. A crafty con

On 4 December 2025, when Ruto’s government signed this agreement in Washington on behalf of 55 million Kenyans, Ruto had never asked for their consent. There were no public forums, no parliamentary debates. Just a handshake in Washington, then a press release announcing the “historic partnership.”

The Constitution of Kenya is clear. Public participation is not a suggestion, it is a command. Article 10 enshrines it as a national value. When your government commits $1.6 billion and opens access to the health records of 55 million citizens, these constitutional requirements do not disappear simply because the signing ceremony happens on foreign soil.

Within one week of the press releases on the “historic partnership”, the lawsuits came. By 11 December, the Consumers Federation of Kenya had filed a suit. By 19 December, Senator Okiya Omtatah had filed another petition. The government’s defence? the agreement is merely a “cooperative framework, not an international treaty”, and therefore, it requires neither parliamentary review nor public participation. To Ruto and his government, calling a $1.6 billion commitment a “cooperative framework” rather than a “treaty” exempts it from constitutional obligations.

This is sophistry masquerading as jurisprudence. It is designed to bypass safeguards against executive overreach that our Constitution had anticipated. When the government commits billions of shillings and the health data of an entire nation in a deal, calling it a “cooperation” rather than a “treaty” does not make constitutional obligations optional. Within fifteen days of signing the deal, two High Court judges found the procedural violations serious enough to suspend its implementation. Both courts saw what the government refused to acknowledge.

However the procedural violations, such as the bypassing of public participation and the evasion of parliamentary oversight, are not the worst of it. Whilst the government published the 37-page document detailing the terms of the cooperation framework, the actual terms for the data-sharing, that is the provisions that determine what exactly happens to Kenyan health records during the deal, are in a separate agreement that has not been disclosed.

Paragraph 2.5.8.20 of The Framework states clearly: “The U.S. Government and the Government of Kenya intend to negotiate a data sharing agreement in line with Paragraph 15 on ‘Separate Agreements’ for the purpose of implementation of this Framework.” Paragraph 15 confirms it: “In implementing the Paragraph 1 Areas of Cooperation, the Participants may enter into further subsidiary agreements to give effect to any provisions of this Framework.”

Kenya signed The Framework before negotiating the data-sharing terms. The government committed to the partnership whilst the actual provisions governing data access, storage, transfer, and use remain dark. They are now asking Kenyans to trust them to negotiate favourable terms after they have already locked us into the deal. A crafty con.

Compliance is not control. And control is not ownership.

3. The Problem of Jurisdictions

This “bilateral” framework repeatedly invokes Kenyan law. Data sharing will be “subject to the existing laws and regulations of the Government of Kenya.” All activities are “expected to be carried out consistently with applicable law.” Reassuring words. Empty words. Why? Because Kenyan law stops at the Kenyan border. The Data Protection Act can regulate what happens in Nairobi. It cannot regulate what happens in Washington. The Digital Health Act governs system design within Kenya. It cannot compel a Silicon Valley company to delete proprietary AI models. Simply put, Kenyan courts can issue judgments all they want, but they cannot enforce them against defendants who operate beyond Kenya’s jurisdiction.

Let me show you exactly how this can unfold.

It is year 2 (2027) of the deal. Kenya is facing a viral outbreak. Pathogen samples are collected in Kisumu, in Mombasa, in Nairobi. Specimens are sequenced at a laboratory in Kilifi funded under The Framework. The genetic sequence data is uploaded to Kenya’s national health cloud, integrated with US systems as The Framework requires. The Data Protection Commissioner reviews the transfer protocol. Everything complies with Kenyan law. The data is shared with US Centres for Disease Control under The Framework’s disease surveillance provisions. Everyone follows the rules.

Year 3 (2028): A research institution in Massachusetts, funded by the National Institutes of Health, analyses the sequence data Kenya shared. They identify a novel protein structure with potential therapeutic applications. They file a provisional patent with the US Patent and Trademark Office. Kenyan authorities are never notified. Why would they be? The research is conducted entirely on American soil. Under American law. Using data Kenya legally shared under The Framework it signed.

Year 7 (2032): The pharmaceutical company receives FDA approval for a drug based on the Kenyan pathogen. The drug is revolutionary: a silver bullet. It saves lives. They price it at $5,000 per treatment course. Not because they are evil, but because that is what their shareholders demand, what their research and development costs require, and what the market will bear.

Meanwhile, Kenya faces a new outbreak of this very disease. The disease that originated in Kenya. The pathogen that Kenyan doctors identified, that Kenyan laboratories sequenced, that Kenyan patients suffered through. To access the drug, Kenya must purchase it at market rates. Because the pathogen was Kenyan, but the patent is American.

Year 12-15 (2037-2040): Kenya files a complaint. The government alleges biopiracy. They demand benefit-sharing under the Nagoya Protocol on Access and Benefit Sharing. They argue that Kenyan genetic resources were exploited without fair compensation. The pharmaceutical company responds with The Framework Kenya signed in 2025. Look, here in Paragraph 8.1: Kenya consented to specimen testing. Kenya agreed to data sharing for disease surveillance. The research was conducted in full compliance with applicable US law. The patent was filed through proper legal channels. There was no piracy. There was an agreement. And by the time Kenya receives a ruling, lives have long been lost, and injustice has prevailed.

So, where in this sequence of events does the Kenyan law provide recourse?

This is not hypothetical catastrophising. This is exactly what happened with the Havasupai Tribe in Arizona. In 1990, they provided blood samples for diabetes research. Those samples were used for decades in unrelated studies without the tribe’s consent. By the time the tribe discovered the breach in 2003, the research was already published, the samples already distributed globally, the data permanently embedded in academic literature.

The tribe sued, and they won…on paper, that is. In 2010, they received a meagre $700,000 settlement. Their genetic data? It remained in circulation. Still being analysed. Still being cited in papers published this year. Why? Because once biological data is shared, it cannot be un-shared. You cannot delete pathogen samples from laboratory freezers in Boston. You cannot retract genetic sequences from all research databases. You cannot extract data from trained AI models, from scientific pipelines. Any promises of compliance with Kenyan law in The Framework are therefore theatre. Compliance is not control. And control is not ownership. Kenya can comply with every provision of this framework but still lose everything.

4. The Blueprint

Make no mistake, this does not have to be our fate. We do not need to sign such exploitative deals. There are better ways to secure independence. Programmes such as the Africa BioGenome Project demonstrate it.

Launched by African scientists, the AfricaBP aims to sequence the genomes of 105,000 African species over ten years by building sequencing capacity in African laboratories, training African researchers, and ensuring African institutions retain ownership of African genetic data.

This is not fantasy. The AfricaBP has already established sequencing collaborations across the continent, where African researchers control, analyse, and publish the data. When pharmaceutical companies want access, they must negotiate benefit-sharing agreements that respect African ownership. This project proves that expertise transfer does not require data surrender. Africa can partner internationally without trading sovereignty for funding.

The AfricaBP model inverts the Kenya-US framework’s logic. Capacity first, partnership second. This is what Kenya should have demanded. This is the blueprint that actually works.

4.1 Decouple Expertise from Extraction

Now that the High Court has already suspended The Framework’s implementation, Kenyans must make this decision permanent. Not because the funding isn’t needed: it is. But because accepting funding on such terms allows developed countries like the US to extract the very resources we need to build independence while locking us into perpetual dependence.

To mitigate the immediate crises, Kenya must pursue alternative funding that doesn’t mandate data extraction. The American framework presents us with a false binary: accept American terms or let your people die. But Kenya has alternative funding sources. We must consider bilateral partnerships with the European Union, United Kingdom, Japan, South Korea, and others in the global north who have health cooperation programmes that do not require comprehensive data sharing as a precondition. These may require more diplomatic effort, but we will not be trading long-term sovereignty for short-term survival.

Kenya should always demand expertise transfer and infrastructure funding without data extraction. Kenyan data must remain sovereign until Kenya has built the capacity to negotiate equitable partnerships. If any partner refuses, then we know their offer was never about partnership, it was always about extraction.

4.2 Build Regional African Infrastructure

Kenya should anchor its health data sovereignty in regional African institutions. The AfricaBP demonstrates that African institutions can build world-class sequencing and data analysis capacity. In addition, the Africa Centres for Disease Control and Prevention (Africa CDC) already provides a continent-wide framework for disease surveillance and outbreak response.

Kenya should therefore work with such African partners to establish regional pathogen sequencing networks where African laboratories sequence African pathogens, African bioinformaticians analyse the data, and African institutions retain ownership. We need continental health data governance frameworks that establish minimum standards for data sovereignty, and require genuine informed consent from African governments before health data crosses borders.

We also need to work towards developing pan-African pharmaceutical manufacturing capacity, so that drugs derived from African biological material can be produced on African soil, sold at African prices, and generate revenue that funds African health systems. This is a strategic necessity. A bilateral framework that sidesteps our continental circumstances only leaves Kenya isolated, negotiating at a disadvantage. On the other hand, a continental framework creates collective bargaining power and reduces dependence on any single external partner who may become the single point of failure.

None of this is possible without sustained investment in domestic research and development capacity. Kenya must commit to serious, long-term funding for Kenyan institutions which are building the infrastructure to sequence, analyse, and derive value from Kenyan biological data without external dependence. The government must commit additional funds for training programmes for Kenyan bioinformaticians, epidemiologists, and data scientists so that when health crises emerge, Kenya has the local expertise to respond without surrendering sovereignty. This approach requires patience. It requires political will that extends beyond electoral cycles. It may not generate returns for a decade. But this is the only path to independence. Everything else is dependence dressed as development.

4.3 Establish Reciprocity Standards and Data Sovereignty Protections

If Kenya ultimately chooses to share health data with international partners, the terms must be genuinely reciprocal. Benefit-sharing agreements must guarantee reciprocal data exchange as a bare minimum. Kenya must also receive royalties from any commercial products derived from Kenyan biological material as a contractual right. Technology transfer clauses should require pharmaceutical companies to license manufacturing rights to Kenya if they patent drugs based on Kenyan pathogens.

Although the Constitution of Kenya, the Data Protection Act, and the Digital Health Act provide the foundation for data sovereignty, they still need enforcement mechanisms with extraterritorial reach. Kenyans must demand the following: mandatory data protection impact assessments before any health data crosses Kenyan borders; criminal penalties for unauthorised data transfer that apply to both Kenyan officials and foreign entities operating in Kenya; sunset provisions for all data-sharing agreements, requiring periodic renewal and allowing Kenya to revoke access with immediate effect if terms are violated or circumstances change; and whistleblower protections for health workers who report unauthorised data transfers or violations of data sovereignty provisions.

Kenya must also secure enforcement mechanisms that go beyond “consultations through diplomatic channels”. This can take the form of binding arbitration under International Centre for Settlement of Investment Disputes (ICSID) rules, with jurisdiction explicitly granted over data sovereignty violations. The arbitration clause must specify that any commercial use of Kenyan biological data without proper benefit-sharing constitutes a breach subject to monetary damages equivalent to 15-25% of gross revenues from any product derived from Kenyan biological data. This is the same mechanism used in mining and petroleum contracts, and it works because financial penalties are enforceable through international treaty obligations.

5 The future

I will say it plainly: accepting The Framework, as currently structured, would constitute a surrender of national patrimony. This agreement is wrapped in the rhetoric of development, and justified by the urgency of crisis. But its core function is extraction. And like all extraction, it relies on the victim’s cooperation, on their belief that this is the only way.

Kenya should not have signed it. And even after retrospective procedural corrections, we should not accept it. Not under any terms should we trade our sovereign data. Would the United States Government give us access to their NIH data in exchange for barely enough money for them to buy 10 Gulfstream Jets per year for the next 5 years? Exactly.

Having refused this deal, Kenya must build the future the agreement promises to deliver, and do so on Kenyan terms, with Kenyan capacity, for Kenyans. We must take the same path as the AfricaBP, the path that leads to genuine self-reliance, even though it is slower, harder, more expensive. The courts have given Wanjiku a second chance, but only time will tell what she will do with it.

V.

By Martin Wagah,
4th year Phd Fellow in Genomics,
University of Cambridge.