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President William Ruto on Wednesday, May 17, 2023, delivered a speech at the Pan-African Parliament Summit on Climate Policy and Equity in Midrand, South Africa.

Ruto received a standing ovation when he complained about the ‘mistreatment’ of African leaders on the global stage.

The African leaders rose to acknowledge his point and nodded in unison amidst claps and screams as he argued his case before the summit.

Ruto stressed that African heads of state and governments don’t just want photo ops (photo opportunities) with world leaders but rather want to be heard.

“We want to be effective, not just taking pictures, having dinner and then we go home. Good people, we have food in our countries,” Ruto said.

The Kenyan president further demanded that African leaders should be allocated more time at the global state to articulate their issues.

“We have been to US-Africa, we have been to some other engagements with some other countries. Now we have been invited for the Russia-Africa summit. We have made a decision very respectfully as heads of state in Africa that any engagement with other partners must be an engagement of equals. And for it to be meaningful, if we are going to meet the president of a country, we have organised ourselves that the troika is going to represent Africa. The current chair, the past chair, the chair that is coming and the likes of our regional economic commissions – about six, seven people. But what happens?

“Continuously when others want to engage with us they don’t want to deal with the troika. They want to invite 50 heads of state. So we go to a meeting, just explain to me what kind of outcome you expect where 50 heads of state are sitting, everybody is asked to speak for one and a half minutes. What kind of engagement are you going to get? You going to get nothing. The best that you get is photographs. You get these photographs. They normally line us up somewhere, crowds of 50 heads of state and that is what we come home with,” Ruto said.

African leaders bundled into buses

Speaking during the Mo Ibrahim Governance weekend held at the Kenyatta International Convention Centre (KICC) on April 29, 2023, Ruto lamented that African leaders were loaded onto buses like school children in a country he didn’t mention.

“It is not intelligent for 54 African Presidents to go and sit before one President from another country for a summit. Sometimes, we are mistreated. We are loaded onto buses like school kids. It is not right,” he stated.

Ruto and other African leaders were transported by a fleet of buses during the burial of Queen Elizabeth while US President Joe Biden and other world leaders were accorded ‘deserving’ entourages.