Brock Bersaglio (University of Birmingham and Birmingham Institute of Forest Research)

It is mid-afternoon in the small yet bustling market town of Nanyuki, capital of Laikipia County, Kenya, where I am located during a period of parental and research leave from my university. While enjoying some leisure time in Mount Kenya Forest, on the southeast outskirts of town, I hear faint chopping and rumbling sounds coming from the direction of the mountain. Initially, I mistake the noise as an approaching thunderstorm, it being the end of rainy season, but as the droning grows rapidly nearer, I recognise it as the familiar sound of propeller aircraft. To be precise, it was the sound of three US MV-22B Ospreys flying in Vic formation. Along with everyone else in the vicinity of the forest, I shade my eyes and gawk towards the heavens as the military-grey aircraft descend purposefully overhead in the direction of town.

There is no mystery surrounding these aircraft, their cargo, or intent. Only a few days prior, it was made public that the United States was in the process of establishing a 50-bed Ebola isolation centre at the Kenya Defence Forces Laikipia Air Base for Americans exposed to the virus (Muia and Wandera 2026). This announcement came in the wake of confirmed Ebola cases in neighbouring Uganda, linked to a devastating outbreak unfolding in the Ituri Province of the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), where one American doctor contracted the virus and later recovered. Though still shrouded in uncertainty, each day after the announcement brought with it a greater sense of inevitability surrounding the establishment of what protestors would later dub a “white people facility” (Channel 4 News 2026): a lone MV-22B spotted on the horizon here; grainy online images of hazmat suited figures on site there; conjecture and rumour everywhere. Thus, the sight of Ospreys carrying materials and supplies for the facility resonated like the strike of a gavell: So, this is happening.

“We’re a containment colony”, writes Lewis Ngunyi (2026) in the Daily Nation, subjugated under a global “biomedical caste system”, explains Stellah Bosire (2026) in the same. The message in these sentiments is that Kenya has been opened for business as a place where powerful nations and “the dirty rich”, to borrow from Allen Ginsberg, can externalise their pandemic and public health risks. Coined by protestors in Nanyuki as “Ebola dumping” (K24TV 2026), these views, which polls suggest resonate across the country (Adika 2026), underscore the coloniality of the Ebola centre in the eyes of many Kenyans. Defined as the endurance of colonial hierarchies, mindsets, and power structures beyond the official end of colonisation (Arias 2013), the coloniality of the containment colony is apparent in at least three forms.

One of the more blatant forms of coloniality associated with the “white people facility” in Laikipia is its resemblance to sanatoriums established by the British colonial administration in Kenya’s highlands during the early 1900s. There, explorers, missionaries, officers, and settlers suffering from suspected tropical diseases were sent to recover under European care in the colony’s European-like upland climate. As with the sanatoriums, the Ebola centre racialises space in two ways: first, in rendering Kenya as a suitable pathogen dumping ground for an imperialistic power; and, second, in formalising a segregated zone of exception within Kenya reserved for US citizens to access care from American doctors. It is notable that the centre is located in Laikipia, which was part of Kenya’s racially segregated “white highlands” during the colonial era, and remains a stronghold for settler society to this day (Enns and Bersaglio 2024).

There is also a penal colony logic to the containment colony. Up to the mid-20th century, colonial powers maintained distant, isolated settlements that were used to contain prisoners, exploit their labour, and lay or maintain claims to distant territory. These at times doubled as colonies for containing individuals suspected of carrying infectious disease. Robben Island, where Nelson Mandela was imprisoned, was a penal colony for centuries—used by white Dutch, British, and later Afrikaner administrations—that also functioned as an infirmary and leper colony for nearly 100 years. Though American do-gooders, rather than prisoners, are to be sent to Laikipia, there are parallel logics at play. On the one hand, Kenya represents a friendly but far-flung land that many Americans might perceive as already afflicted with deadly exotic diseases and, therefore, a reasonable port of call for Americans exposed to Ebola. On the other hand, the Ebola centre gives the Americans a foot in the door at a Kenyan air base in a region of significant geopolitical interest to US and global security, with the largest contingent of the British Army on the African continent already located directly adjacent to the air base.

Lastly, the nontransparent deal-making behind the proposed centre has paternalistic and imperialistic undertones. Kenya’s Cabinet Secretary for Health, Hon. Aden Duale, linked the Ebola centre to an agreement between Kenya and the US for cooperation on biological threat reduction first penned in 2015 under the former Kenyatta government, for which President Ruto then served as Deputy President, and later renewed in 2022 (Oketch 2026). However, one US official rejected any link to the agreement, stating: “I didn’t even know about the framework discussion until somebody else brought it up. This is purely a response to a health emergency” (Oketch 2026). Contradictory statements have also been made between US and Kenyan officials about whether the centre will be reserved for American patients or opened to Kenyans (Oketch 2026). These inconsistencies give rise to serious questions about the true purpose and intent of the Laikipia Ebola centre.

Despite these and other contending statements, the Ruto government has strung a shade of altruism in front of the detail, insisting unapologetically that it is a no-brainer and unequivocally good for Kenyans. It is alleged that the deal behind the Ebola centre will see the US pay $13.5 million (Sh1.7 billion) to support Kenya’s Ebola preparedness efforts, including the establishment of 22 other bio-isolation units across the country that will be accessible to Kenyans (Binance News 2026; Ogungo 2026). In the words of President Ruto:

I can tell you without fear of any contradiction, and I can look at everybody in the eye, … and tell you we are doing the right thing … It would be most unfortunate if on one request by the Americans to set up a facility at their cost, we would refuse, we would look very inhuman. (Reuters 2026)

One implication of this statement is that granting a foreign government autonomy over when and how potentially lethal pathogens are “dumped” on Kenya is, at worst, a benign trade-off to accept in the service of national biosecurity and public health.

While some US officials, like Secretary of State Marco Rubio, have implied the deal has altruistic motivations (US Department of State 2026), comparatively the Trump administration has been adamant that the Laikipia Ebola centre prioritises American interests. Rubio has stated, “we cannot and will not allow any cases of Ebola to enter the United States”; while Dr Jay Bhattacharya, Director of the US National Institutes of Health and Acting Director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, has said the Ebola centre offers “confidence to Americans who may be exposed [to Ebola] that there will be a dedicated place for them to [be] cared for that they can reach quickly” (McPhillips and Hansler 2026). Comparatively, the message from the Kenya Medical Practitioners, Pharmacists, and Dentists Union (KMPDU) is: “If it is too dangerous for America, it is too dangerous for Kenya” (Muia and Wandera 2026).

These considerations all point to the coloniality of the Laikipia Ebola centre, which is animating struggle over Kenya’s trajectory as a potential containment colony. Within days of the Ebola centre deal coming to light, the High Court of Kenya suspended its development on constitutional grounds, ordering the government to publicise details of the US agreement (Al Jazeera Staff and Reuters 2026). Meanwhile, Kenyans took to the streets in protest against the injustices of a “white people facility” in Laikipia and the prospect of enabling a foreign government to “dump” Ebola on their soil—with three individuals, including a teenager, shot and killed by police and another fatally injured during protests (BBC News 2026; Wanga 2026). Beyond the blatant coloniality and imperialistic nature of the deal, opposition to the Ebola centre stems from fears of an outbreak in Kenya and potential future lockdowns, given the devastating toll COVID-19 lockdowns had on the economy, and that an Ebola-related national emergency would give President Ruto grounds for delaying upcoming elections (The Kenya Times 2026). Scepticism is also high that certain members of Kenya’s political establishment are benefiting directly from the deal, reflecting a systemic mistrust of political leadership (Ouma 2026).

Whatever the outcome of the current struggle over Kenya’s future as a containment colony, the deal reflects a wider, growing trend of biomedical imperialism across the region with Trump’s ambition of “making foreign aid great again” (Rubio 2025). Recent US health agreements in places like Kenya, Zambia, and Zimbabwe have seen billions of dollars worth of support for healthcare systems—some of which were purposefully drained by USAID cuts (Magliveras 2026)—made contingent upon access to sensitive health data or biosecurity intelligence, including epidemiological surveillance and pathogen samples (Mhaka 2026). The implications of these agreements for sovereignty and citizens’ rights are significant; but the neo-sanatorium approach to Ebola dumping being pursued in Kenya further ups the ante, shifting the terrain of struggle in this new wave of biomedical imperialism from that of data sovereignty to territorial sovereignty as well.

References

Al Jazeera Staff and Reuters. 2026. “High Court Orders Kenya Government to Release Details of Ebola Facility.” Al Jazeera, June 2. https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2026/6/2/high-court-orders-kenya-government-to-release-details-of-ebola-facility.

Adika, N. 2026. “Public Opinion on Proposed US-Supported Ebola Centre Facility in Kenya.” GeoPoll, June 3 https://www.geopoll.com/blog/kenyan-views-on-the-ebola-facility/.

Arias, S. 2013. “Coloniality and Its Preoccupations.” Latin American Research Review 48, no. 3: 214-220. https://doi.org/10.1353/lar.2013.0042.

BBC News. 2026. “Two People Shot Dead Amid Kenya Protest Against US Ebola Quarantine Centre Plan.” The Star, June 2. https://www.the-star.co.ke/news/africa/2026-06-02-two-people-shot-dead-in-nanyuki-protests

Binance News. 2026. “Kenya Defends $13M US-Backed Ebola Facility Amid Court Challenges.” Binance Square, June 4. https://www.binance.com/en-ZA/square/post/06-04-2026-kenya-defends-13m-us-backed-ebola-facility-amid-court-challenges-330539933165121.

Bosire, S. 2026. “US Ebola Facility in Kenya a Biomedical Caste System.” Daily Nation, June 3. https://nation.africa/kenya/blogs-opinion/blogs/us-ebola-facility-in-kenya-a-biomedical-caste-system–5482494#story.

Channel 4 News. 2026. “Kenyans Protest ‘White People’ Ebola Centre.” YouTube, June 1. https://www.youtube.com/shorts/mxFIgWg6mQk.

Enns, C., and B. Bersaglio. 2024. Settler Ecologies: The Enduring Nature of Settler Colonialism in Kenya. University of Toronto Press.

K24TV. 2026, June 3. Activists in Nairobi protests against establishment of Ebola facility in Kenya. YouTube. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nRpIenPoPUQ 

Magliveras, K. D. 2026. “The Demise of USAID and the US Administration’s New Form of Providing Assistance Abroad: The Case of the Bilateral Health Agreements with African States.” International Law Blog, June 1. https://internationallaw.blog/2026/06/01/the-demise-of-usaid-and-the-us-administrations-new-form-of-providing-assistance-abroad-the-case-of-the-bilateral-health-agreements-with-african-states/.

McPhillips, D., and J. Hansler. 2026. “Americans Who Test Positive for Ebola at Kenya Facility Could be Treated in US, Federal Officials Say.” CNN, June 4. https://edition.cnn.com/2026/06/03/health/ebola-americans-treatment.

Mhaka, T. 2026. “US’s New Scramble for Africa is Biomedical Imperialism.” Al Jazeera, March 13. https://www.aljazeera.com/opinions/2026/3/13/uss-new-scramble-for-africa-is-biomedical-imperialism.

Muia, W., and A. Wandera. 2026. “Kenya Court Halts Opening of US Ebola Quarantine Facility in the Country” BBC News, May 29. https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cpdp74lgzplo.

Ngunyi, L. 2026. “On Ebola, We’re a Containment Colony.” Daily Nation, May 30. https://nation.africa/kenya/blogs-opinion/opinion/on-ebola-we-re-a-containment-colony-5478476.

Ogungo, J. 2026. “Details of Uhuru-Era Agreement Between Kenya and US Emerge.” Kenyans.co.ke, May 31. https://www.kenyans.co.ke/news/123883-details-uhuru-era-agreement-between-kenya-and-us-emerge.

Oketch, A. 2026. “Two Governments, Two Stories: Kenya, US Officials Flip-Flop on Controversial Ebola Deal.” Daily Nation, June 5. https://nation.africa/kenya/health/two-governments-two-stories-kenya-us-officials-flip-flop-on-controversial-ebola-deal-5485636.

Ouma, R. 2026. “Kalonzo: Ruto Regime Hiding Truth on Ebola, Punishing Kenyans with Finance Bill 2026.” Citizen Digital, June 3. https://citizen.digital/article/kalonzo-kenyans-deserve-answers-not-arrogance-on-ebola-deals-n383885.

Reuters. 2026. “Ruto Says US Plan to Build Ebola Facility in Kenya is the ‘Right Thing’.” June 4. https://www.reuters.com/business/healthcare-pharmaceuticals/ruto-defends-us-backed-ebola-facility-kenya-right-thing-2026-06-04/.

Rubio, M. 2025. “Making Foreign Aid Great Again.” US Mission to the UN Agencies in Rome, July 8. https://usunrome.usmission.gov/making-foreign-aid-great-again/.

The Kenya Times. 2026. “Peter Mbae Alleges that President William Ruto Plans to Spread Ebola in the Country in order to Trigger a Lockdown and Postpone the 2027 Elections.” Facebook, May 31. https://web.facebook.com/thekenyatimes/posts/peter-mbae-alleges-that-president-william-ruto-plans-to-spread-ebola-in-the-coun/1694878995410903/?_rdc=1&_rdr#.

US Department of State. 2026. “Ebola Response Update—May 29, 2026.” May 29. https://www.state.gov/releases/office-of-the-spokesperson/2026/05/ebola-response-update-may-29-2026. Wanga, B. 2026. “Student Killed in Nanyuki Anti-Ebola Facility Protest Died from Gunshot Wound: Postmortum.” Citizen Digital, June 17. https://citizen.digital/article/student-killed-in-nanyuki-anti-ebola-facility-protests-died-from-gunshot-wound-postmortem-n384831.

Featured image: author’s photograph