Kenya has granted the Gates Foundation diplomatic immunity, allowing the Foundation to be exempt from legal action for acts performed in its official duties.
The Gates Foundation’s employees are also exempt from paying direct taxes on their salaries.
According to a legal document, the Foundation may “enter into contracts,” “institute and defend legal proceedings,” and “acquire, hold or dispose of movable and immovable property in accordance with the laws of the Republic of Kenya.”
Kenyan High Court Advocate Dr. Owiso Owiso filed a Freedom of Information request for the matter, seeking details on what privileges and immunities have been afforded to the Foundation.
“You will appreciate that granting privileges and immunities to private foundations and their officials and expatriate employees is a matter that not only has implications for Kenya’s sovereignty and for national interests, but is also likely to cause significant public concern,” the document says, going on to request “an explanation as to the circumstances under which the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation qualified for and was granted immunities and privileges …” and “copies of all agreements concluded between the Government of the Republic of Kenya and the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation.”
Buhle Makamanzi, the Deputy Director of Global Communications for The Gates Foundation in Africa, confirmed with The Kenya Times the Foundation is operating in “alignment with the Kenyan government’s Privileges and Immunities Act. We operate according to the typical agreements Kenya makes with other foundations and nonprofits.”
Diplomatic immunity for the Foundation comes as African groups wrote an open letter condemning the entity for its “failed” agricultural interventions in Africa.
“We, a collective of faith leaders from Africa, are calling on the funders of Industrial Agricultural practices, known as the Green Revolution, including the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation (the Gates Foundation), to acknowledge that their interventions in Africa’s food and farming systems have failed,” the August letter reads. “As a result, we are demanding reparations for the ecological and social damage caused.”
The African groups wrote that the Foundation’s and the Alliance for a Green Revolution in Africa’s (AGRA) “interventions are further pushing Africa’s food system towards a corporatized model of industrial agriculture, diminishing our people’s right to food sovereignty and threatening ecological and human health.”
AGRA was founded by the Foundation and other donors in 2006.
