Nairobi, Feb. 10 -- This week's official visit to Japan offered Kenyan President William Ruto a welcome break from the negative public sentiment that has surged back home in recent months over his administration's aggressive tax policies and perceived failure to bring down the cost of living.

At a meeting with the Kenyan diaspora in Tokyo, President Ruto looked fairly cheerful, even calming himself at some point to make a joke at his own expense over his new moniker "Zakayo"-a comparison to the biblical Zacchaeus the tax collector.

"What I will not do as president is say there will be free lunch, that the country is going to be developed by borrowing from other people and that it is going to cost us nothing to develop our country. That ...