The Ebola outbreak sweeping the region has become an excuse for the United States to seize control of Kenya’s strategically important Laikipia Air Base. This raises serious questions about Washington’s true intentions and its attitude toward Kenya.
10 days of protests and three deaths in Nanyuki
By June 10, 2026, Kenyans in Nanyuki Town had demonstrated for 10 days against the construction of an Ebola quarantine facility for the US military and citizens, which appears to have already been built. Police had killed three, including a secondary school child, showing total disregard for Kenyans’s lives. Amidst the ongoing Ebola outbreak in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) and Uganda since mid-May 2026, the US, which is located over 10,000 kilometers away, began building a quarantine facility for its citizens and soldiers in Kenya. The exact reason why Washington feels that its citizens and soldiers face a meaningful risk of contracting Ebola from such a distance remains as puzzling as its decision to build the said quarantine facility in Kenya and not in the DRC. Kenyans have responded to the proposed project by holding protests since June 1, 2026, decrying how a foreign country can locate its Ebola quarantine facility in Kenya and expose citizens to the deadly disease. Kenya’s High Court halted construction of the said facility, while the US administration and Kenyan president have remained adamant, despite the reality that the Ebola outbreak was falling under control as of June 11, 2026. Therefore, the said facility increasingly appears like it is primarily aimed at granting Washington access to Kenya’s strategic airbase. Also puzzling is what US citizens and soldiers could be doing in Eastern DRC, a region that has been experiencing a prolonged conflict previously seen as internecine. This article looks into how the evolving Ebola outbreak has become a pretext for Washington’s desire to control Kenya’s strategic military assets.
Washington’s latest colonial maneuver in East Africa has entailed using the perceived threat of an Ebola outbreak to access Kenya’s Laikipia Airbase, showing either opportunism or use of pathogens to pursue its strategic goals. The results of the US military gaining a strategic foreign airbase either through a war or scaring the host using a deadly pathogen are the same. One article from the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS) from 2005 noted how expanding biotechnology would enable varied players to pursue their goals, positive or harmful, using organisms. Later in 2014, the then US Department of Defense (currently Department of War) reported that the US Army Medical Institute of Infectious Disease had been working with Ebola and other lethal pathogens for years, reportedly developing diagnostics, vaccines, and drugs, among others. This report was significant because the US has never reported an Ebola outbreak within its borders. Additionally, an outbreak occurred in West Africa shortly afterwards, which brought in revenues to US pharmaceutical companies and enabled the US military to flex its military logistics prowess. Worth mentioning, when the US military, which is tasked with the responsibility of waging wars and subduing other countries, openly experiments with pathogens that are not endemic in the US, countries earmarked for full-spectrum domination by Washington get genuinely concerned. Meanwhile, health and medical bodies such as the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) or the World Health Organization (WHO) are continuously claiming that they lack resources to investigate how to control these diseases, surprisingly leaving Washington in control.
Rushed quarantine facility despite nearly contained outbreak
Satellite images showed that the controversial US Ebola quarantine facility was already built at Laikipia Airbase, in contravention of a court order. The DW News reported that the facility had been completed, even as extensive clearing and rows of temporary structures seen suggest it might have been built before it was announced in late May, 2026. The subterfuge that gives the US military access may be the key driver of this symbolic structure, as can be gleaned from the words of Kenya’s cabinet secretary of health, Aden Duale, who stated that the host military base was selected because it has the longest runway in the country. The nexus between the runway’s length and treating Ebola remains to be explained. Worth remembering is that Duale was Kenya’s Secretary for Defense in the past and signed the Defense Cooperation Agreement with the former US Secretary of Defense, Lloyd Austin. The agreement, which has never been published in full, was summarized by Kenya’s Ministry of Defense as providing for both countries to engage in joint military training, share defense technologies, improve interoperability, and promote regional security cooperation, among others. The Kenyan government’s handing over of a section of its air base may have been sneaked through provisions of this agreement, with Ebola serving as a cover. Notably, the British also maintain a military presence in the same town, displaying how its location attracts countries with imperial ambitions.
The severity of the Ebola outbreak appears to be weakening, noting that WHO reported about 1000 cases and 200 deaths as of May 26, but only a maximum of 127 deaths were confirmed to be linked to Ebola by June 11, 2026, meaning that the initial findings were wrong and that the infection is subsiding. The initial information was concerning, due to the infectious nature of this hemorrhagic fever, which was then reported to have a fatality rate of about 50%. Reports appearing 2 weeks after the initial reports show that the outbreak is not as extensive and that the pathogens’ mortality rate is significantly lower. The fact that the health situation is not as bad as initially reported can also be noted in the statement from DRC’s Ministry of Health from June 6, revealing that only 452 cases had been confirmed since the onset. Reuters added that the current outbreak is the 17th in DRC’s history, showing how similar events were successfully managed in the past without affecting regional countries. Therefore, perceived worries that countries in other continents can be affected are inflated.
Germs, racism, and control: The US attitude towards Kenyans is encapsulated in a statement made by the Secretary of State, Marco Rubio, on May 27, stating that the Trump administration will not allow Ebola into its borders, adding that citizens who contract this deadly illness will be quarantined in Kenya. Rubio’s statement sounded like what a ranking NAZI party official would have said to Hitler in a discussion about Eugenics in the first half of the 20th century. Rubio thinks that it is okay for Kenyans to be exposed to and die of Ebola and not Americans, meaning that he and others like him would not hesitate to use the pathogen to pursue their country’s national interests. Another inescapable question is why the US is not building such an isolation center in the DRC or Uganda, where it can assist those affected while perfecting treatment methods with practical experience. It is hard not to read military machinations in what is outwardly presented as a medical response to the Ebola outbreak that is unlikely to affect the US.
Simon Chege Ndiritu is a political observer and research analyst from Africa
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