Kenya's tussle with Uganda over the small, but fish-rich island of Migingo in Lake Victoria took a new turn recently when Foreign Affairs Cabinet Secretary Monica Juma said that Nairobi had signed a memorandum of understanding (MoU) with Kampala on its joint administration.
The next step, Dr Juma said, would see modalities laid to enable fishermen and other Lake Victoria users to access either side of the boundary.
“My message to Kenyans is that we have their interests at the top of our minds and this can be realised by reducing the risks they face in accessing the trans-boundary resources,” she was quoted in a statement last week.
But the revelation drew the ire of Kenyan Senators, who described the decision as amounting to ceding the country's territory.
"I would want to understand how the administration will be shared. Is it some kind of innuendo? One day it is in Uganda and the next day Kenya? How is that even possible?" posed West Pokot Senator Samwel Pogishio recently.
Kenya's neighbours have in recent years laid claim to the country's territory as drawn by the colonial powers at the Berlin Conference.
South Sudan, for instance, is claiming the Elemi Triangle while Somalia is at the International Court of Justice seeking to be awarded huge swathes of resource rich Indian ocean territory that has hitherto belonged to Kenya.
Critics of Kenya's 'soft' approach to resolving territorial disputes worry it might embolden neighbouring countries to lay further claims.
But Foreign Affairs Principal Secretary Macharia Kamau sought to dismiss the notion Kenya was negotiating away its territory following the Migingo deal.
While specific details of the MoU and how the joint administration will be executed remained sketchy, Mr Kamau said the move was in line with international best practice.
“This is normal border resolution discussion of civilised neighbours acting according to international practice. We are doing this and have been doting with all our neighbours,” he told the Business Daily. “No one is doing what is being suggested.”
Kenya has owned the island's territory since 1926. But the dispute arose in 2008 when Uganda, which recently regained its position as the biggest buyer of Kenyan goods after making orders worth Sh61.9 billion from Nairobi last year, laid claim to it and deployed security officers there.
The Migingo waters boast huge population of fish, especially the prized Nile Perch.
Since then, various efforts have gone into resolving the dispute but Kenyans around the Lake Victoria region have increasingly become exacerbated by what they see as a reluctance by the leadership in Nairobi to secure their rights and protect them from the Ugandan aggression.
Kenya, under both the Mwai Kibaki and Uhuru Kenyatta administrations, opted for a dispute resolution through diplomatic channels rather than aggressively defend its territory.
Notably, the outcome of a joint survey of the boundary that was commissioned by presidents Kibaki and Yoweri Museveni has never been made public.
Though Dr Juma and Mr Macharia have sought to assure Kenyans that the territorial integrity of the country will never be negotiated away, there are still lingering questions as to how the joint administration will be undertaken.
In response to the senators’ concerns, Dr Juma had argued the MoU was meant to help communities in Kenya, Uganda and Tanzania living around the lake share trans-boundary resources, noting such an arrangement has been missing.
According to Prof Macharia Munene, who teaches history and international relations at the United States International University-Africa in Nairobi, said fit was risky for any country in the position Kenya finds itself to suggest that some actions are off the table.
"It requires balancing resources — military, social economic, as well as political and diplomatic — with the perceived gravity of the challenge. The perception that a country may be scared of engaging others physically encourages aggression. This might account for the Uganda and Somali claims to Kenyan waters," Prof Munene said.
"A country that entertains impressions of weakness invites aggression and eventual loss of territorial integrity."
When in 1976 Ugandan dictator Idi Amin Dada laid claim to huge chunks of Kenyan territory, then President Jomo Kenyatta had no qualms showing aggression.
He dispatched the military to the Kenya/Uganda border.
At a rally at Nairobi's Uhuru Park, Mzee Kenyatta declared: “We welcome good neighbourliness and cooperation. We shall, however, never entertain or tolerate anybody laying claims over our country, be they friend or a foe.”
The founding President also closed the common border, leading to scarcity of oil and other essentials in Kampala and engaged Organisation of African Union (the precursor of the African Union), moves that eventually saw Amin back off.
Before then, the Kenyatta government had also thwarted an attempt by Somali-backed insurgents in the Northern Frontier District (later North Eastern Province) to have the region secede to Somalia.
The insurgency nearly led to war between Kenya and Somalia before a ceasefire was reached in 1967.
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