Kisii County Senator Richard Onyonka has weighed in on the Southern African Development Community’s (SADC) directive to back Madagascar’s candidate, Richard Randriamandrato, for the African Union Commission (AUC) chairperson position.

Speaking on a local media station on Saturday, February 15, 2025, Senator Onyonka described this move as a strategic play for leverage in ongoing negotiations.

He compared the situation to a high-stakes negotiation, where SADC nations are positioning themselves for key roles within the AU Commission.

“What Madagascar has done is purely strategic. It’s like a beautiful lady going for a wedding, and she knows that there’s a clan wanting to give her family 15 cows, so she’ll try to hold back, hoping that somebody will make an offer of more cows,” Onyonka said.

The senator suggested that the 15 SADC countries backing Randriamandrato could be using their support as leverage to negotiate influential positions within the AU Commission.

He implied that they might be waiting for Raila Odinga—who is also vying for the AUC chairmanship—to make strategic concessions.

“There could be a possibility that the 15 African countries who hail from SADC want to negotiate some of the positions in the commission. So they are waiting to see what Raila will offer them. Is he going to offer one of them the Secretary position of Political Affairs? Is Raila going to agree to one of the members being the Head of Infrastructure? These things are being negotiated quietly with a lot of influence and twisting,” he explained.

SADC’s directive

In a letter dated February 12, 2025, the Southern African Development Community (SADC) urged its 16 member states to support Madagascar’s candidate, former Foreign Affairs Minister Richard Randriamandrato.

The SADC Secretariat confirmed that Madagascar had formally requested regional support for Randriamandrato’s candidacy ahead of the AUC elections scheduled for February 15-16.

“A letter from the Secretariat seeking SADC Member States’ support for Madagascar’s candidature should suffice,” stated the directive. “This letter serves to encourage SADC member states to support Richard J. Randriamandrato, a candidate from our region, for the position of AUC chairperson during the upcoming elections, in line with the August 2024 Council decision.”

SADC’s decision to support Randriamandrato may pose a potential setback for Kenya’s candidate, Raila, who has secured endorsements from the East African Community (EAC) and several African Heads of State.

With Tanzania and the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) being members of both SADC and EAC, their voting stance will be crucial in the final outcome.

Raila is competing against Madagascar’s Richard Randriamandrato and Djibouti’s Mahmoud Youssouf in the elections taking place today, February 15, 2025, during the ongoing African Union Summit in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia.