Vanguard Africa's Jeffrey Smith Knows The Donor Pill: Bash Paul Kagame

He Helped Unseat the Gambian Dictator — Who's Next? - OZY | A Modern Media Company

The words 'Paul Kagame' are a good product for sale. Jeffrey Smith and his Vanguard Africa Foundation are very much aware of that.

The last time the Vanguard Africa Foundation published the usual malicious vitriol about Rwanda and President Paul Kagame, was in March. 

Until last week, Jeffrey Smith has written about Benin, Cameroon, Somalia, Guinea Bissau, Zambia....but got little or no traction on social media or articles responding - to put the record straight. 

For an individual who survives on peddling the racist narrative of 'Africans don’t get it', having no engagements from his rants doesn’t pay bills. He needs to appear to be having impact!

To understand how this works; lets know who is Jeffrey Smith and the Vanguard Africa Foundation.  

Smith has been around for several years. He got some bit of attention with his social media pages before and during the 2015 constitutional amendment process in Rwanda. 

The expected chaos did happen. He turned attention to the Ugandan opposition during the February 2016 presidential polls. There, Smith made little in-road. 

As the dust in the great lakes settled, Smith identified another hot potato; The Gambia and its leader at the time, Yahya Jammeh. 

Operating solo wasn't working. The Robert F. Kennedy Human Rights advocacy group which employed him, was more concerned about U.S politics and dealing with Donald Trump. They cared less about what was happening elsewhere. 

Smith managed to convince two known political lobbyists, U.S. Democratic Party strategist Joe Trippi and Christopher Harvin from public relations firm Sanitas International. 

The three co-founded the Vanguard Africa Foundation in April 2016. Their single agenda was Gambia. The election there was scheduled for December 1, 2016. 

For all those months, Smith set up Facebook, Twitter and YouTube platforms dedicated to Yahya Jammeh. The incumbent lost to opposition leader Adama Barrow. 

With a network of social media accounts, despite Gambians dying in the street protests and years of campaigns against President Jammeh, Smith and his colleagues spread the idea that its their foundation that brought "change" to Gambia. 

Indeed, this title in the Newsweek 'How an American Consultancy Helped Oust Gambia's Dictator', published January 1, 2017, says it all. 

In the article, Vanguard Africa Foundation claims it "provided campaign advice and public relations" support to candidates daring to run against Jammeh. 

Smith and his associates claim they "reached out" to international journalists to promote stories, circulated the candidates' names on social media and regularly spoke to news outlets about the Gambian election.

This particular Newsweek article is demonstration of how journalists were given the pieces of their story, oiled with some dollars, and they ran the 'Smith the savoir' articles. 

The anger with which many Gambians perceived Smith and Vanguard Africa Foundation is all over Twitter. To this day, they don’t understand how a "Toubabou" (or Muzungu in east Africa), can claim to be the force behind ouster of their dictator leader. 

With Gambia off the books, Smith moved to Kenya. Using the same script; social media accounts and paid appearances in articles, Smith singled out President Uhuru Kenyatta and his deputy William Ruto.

Smith found an awake Kenyan elite who were not going to allow Toms, Dick, and Harrys from everywhere to pour petrol on fires to burn their country. 

Columnist Godwin Murunga, a Senior Research Fellow, at the Institute for Development Studies, University of Nairobi and Deputy Director of the African Leadership Centre, Nairobi, summed up Kenyan mood towards Smith. 

"The entry of Vanguard Africa into Kenyan politics....is sad indeed," wrote Murunga, in his column published April 21, 2017, in Daily Nation titled: "Foreign merchants of democracy need humility to understand our struggle". 

This was four months to Kenya's highly contested polls. 

Smith and his foundation had little leeway there. There was so much Kenyan content about Kenyan politics, that anything from outside couldn’t appear. 

Smith got another opportunity with the DR Congo polls of late 2018. This time, incumbent Joseph Kabila was the target. The opposition bloc, which Smith rallied for, didn’t get the presidency.

As usual Smith moved on; this time to Uganda claiming to be supporting Robert Kyagulanyi, popularly known as Bobi Wine. There, like in Kenya, Bobi's supporters put Smith in his rightful place.

It is not surprising that, after trying to sell situations in Benin, Cameroon, Somalia, Guinea Bissau, Zambia - to donors with no results, Smith knew where to look; Paul Kagame.

It is up to Rwandans to push back at foreign merchants of democracy like Smith, or else let him shape the story of your country. 

For him, its about the next paycheck, not democracy as he wants us to believe.
 

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