Kenya, US seal health deal amid data privacy concerns

By Newsflash Reporter

Kenya on Thursday entered into a $2.5 billion health partnership with the US, marking the first such agreement under President Donald Trump’s administration and effectively replacing funding gaps created after the collapse of the US Agency for International Development (USAid).

The five-year deal, signed by US Secretary of State Marco Rubio and Kenya’s Prime Cabinet Secretary and Foreign Affairs CS Musalia Mudavadi, substitutes decades-old USAid-managed health programmes that were dismantled earlier this year. Kenya becomes the first African nation to ink the new US Health Memoranda of Understanding, securing $1.6 billion over five years in exchange for access to health data and biological samples for 25 years. Nairobi will contribute the rest of the funds.

The agreement prioritises the prevention and treatment of HIV/Aids, malaria and tuberculosis, with faith-based medical facilities receiving special consideration, although any clinic or hospital registered under Kenya’s health insurance scheme will be eligible, according to US officials.

Secretary Rubio said the arrangement “aims to strengthen US leadership and excellence in global health while eliminating dependency, ideology, inefficiency, and waste from our foreign assistance architecture.”

Debate over surveillance and sovereignty

USAid’s closure has disrupted support programmes across Africa that tackled disease, hunger, maternal health, extremism and democratic development. The shutdown displaced thousands of health workers. Experts warned that sub-Saharan Africa’s HIV response could suffer after Pepfar—the bipartisan initiative launched in 2003 by George W. Bush and credited with saving about 25 million lives—was affected by USAid’s collapse. With Kenya’s Health Ministry offering little clarity on data-sharing, analysts say the US-Kenya deal marks a significant expansion of American surveillance capacity.

“It will allow the US to see the identity and location of anyone using a Kenyan health facility in real-time – and obtain their biometrics,” said Kyle Spencer, executive director of the Uganda Internet Exchange Point.

Legal scholars note that the pact may conflict with Article 31 of Kenya’s Constitution, which guarantees the right to privacy. The Data Protection Act, 2019 outlines how personal data must be processed and sets obligations for data controllers and processors. Granting the US real-time access could breach these protections. Spencer argued on X that foreign access to national health systems exposes Kenya to cybersecurity threats, population-level data vulnerabilities, and potential manipulation, extraction or misuse. Others counter that an MoU is non-binding and cannot supersede the Constitution. They add that even Pepfar only accesses aggregated and anonymised data, not live health records.

“USAid functioned almost like an NGO, both funding and implementing through partners—government departments, NGOs, CBOs and others. This new model places responsibility for receiving and implementing funds directly with the government. It means USAid accounted to Washington, but now Kenya will account directly to the US government,” said Dr Kizito Sabala of the University of Nairobi’s School of Diplomacy.

He added that data-related risks should be addressed within Kenya’s data protection laws or annexed to the MoU. But Prof Peter Kagwanja of the Africa Policy Institute said the pact bears the marks of neocolonialism. “This is the US punishing Africa by not supporting us, yet still wanting to supply our medicines. It’s neocolonial and will only fuel corruption,” he argued. The $1.6 billion will fund key health priorities such as maternal and child health, polio eradication, disease surveillance and outbreak preparedness. President William Ruto said his administration is already expanding health services and boosting domestic financing through the Social Health Authority (SHA).