As a newbie, President William Ruto was quite the idealist. Believing that Africa was punching below its weight, he urged fellow leaders to present a united front on the global stage.

Dr Ruto had many grievances against the global North, which he argued had long mistreated the global South. The most notable of them all was the summoning of African nations by the larger economies to a summit, such as the Forum on China Africa Cooperation (Focac) that he is currently attending in Beijing.

Freshly elected, Ruto's first international engagement was attending the late Queen Elizabeth's funeral in the UK. He and other Heads of State were stripped of their presidential motorcades and loaded onto buses "like school kids,"  as he had lamented.