The US military's malaria research in Kenya and the geopolitics of global health

Abstract

AbstractThe US Army Medical Research Directorate – Africa, also known as the “Walter Reed Project,” is at the forefront of the US military's malaria research and surveillance practices. Since its establishment in Kenya in 1970, the Walter Reed Project's research capacity and infrastructure has significantly expanded, now placing it in a civilian‐led global health network. In this paper, I trace the development of the Walter Reed Project's malaria research and surveillance practices in Kenya from 1970 to today. I explore the geopolitical logics driving the Walter Reed Project's development, its growing infrastructure in Kenya, and its changing relationships with civilian institutes and global health networks. In doing so, I demonstrate the intersections between geopolitics and global health the Walter Reed Project reveals. The paper demonstrates how the Walter Reed Project brings geopolitical logics to bear on its collaborative global health research practices; how it reveals an often overlooked position of state power and geopolitics in mainstream global health networks; and how its health intervention sites in Kenya are points in a geopolitical topography of war‐making, connected to geographies of militarism, empire, and violence in disparate spaces. The paper reveals the attachments to war that underpin the military's global health engagement practices and that permeate mainstream global health networks and sites of health intervention.