Deputy President Rigathi Gachagua has left the country for an official visit to the Kingdom of Belgium and the Republic of Germany.
Category
🗞
NewsTranscript
00:00 We are glad that our Deputy President His Excellency Genshawa is visiting Brussels to
00:09 attend the Global Gateway Forum.
00:12 This is a very important forum where the Europeans have mobilized about 300 billion euros towards
00:23 investments in developing countries.
00:28 As you know, Kenya has benefited from these initiatives of the Global Gateway.
00:36 The road from Malindi to Mahiakani is actually being built under the Global Gateway financing.
00:44 There are many more projects that they intend to finance globally.
00:51 It is a competitive initiative towards the China road, which is also trying to do some
00:59 development in Africa, for example.
01:05 And we are happy that we are having this happen now when Kenya has a new development initiative
01:18 under the bottom-up initiatives in Kenya.
01:23 You are going to see a lot more happen, leveraging on infrastructure development under the Global
01:30 Gateway.
01:32 And we are hoping when His Excellency the Deputy President is here, we can be able to
01:40 discuss more other issues that we would see undertaken by the Global Gateway.
01:50 EU, we have worked with them previously.
01:54 We want to intensify our relationships.
01:58 We have seen, I think you know, that we signed the economic partnership agreement.
02:05 We are waiting that it goes through Parliament and then we can have access to this huge market
02:13 where we have had relationships for many years.
02:17 If you see what cultural products they come to Europe, we are beginning to work with the
02:25 private sector for investments in Kenya.
02:32 It is a good beginning and it is good that His Excellency the Deputy is going to be here
02:38 to strengthen the relationships and be able to bring in investment funds into our country.
02:47 The work that the Deputy President is doing in the space of agriculture, especially coffee
02:55 and tea, is very critical in the sense that this is the first time we are looking at the
03:01 entire value chain and to see how we can restore.
03:06 I think most of you know that we have lost a significant amount of coffee production
03:14 in Kenya.
03:16 I think we dropped from almost 110,000 hectares to now hovering around 40,000 hectares.
03:28 And I think that loss came as a result of mistrust.
03:32 There is what we call trust deficiency and it is good we begin now to look at the mistakes
03:41 we made that made farmers to lose hope in the crop and be able to restore it.
03:49 So what is going to come and see is what other countries are doing and thriving.
03:56 Look at Brazil, for example.
03:58 Brazil, they have their own warehouses here and they work with roasters all over the world
04:08 to be able to maximize the earnings to the farmers.
04:15 If we are able to improve what the farmer takes home, we would create the incentive
04:22 to expand our space of coffee growing.
04:27 And the same as tea, that once we begin to understand the market itself, we never looked
04:34 at the market.
04:36 What is trying to see is what happens in the downstream of the value chains and what it
04:43 is that we can do to improve so that the farmer gets value out of their crop.
04:51 That is the other assignment which His Excellency would be visiting some of the larger importers,
04:59 those who do roasting, and discuss with them the way forward.
05:04 Thank you.
05:05 Thank you.
05:05 Thank you.
05:06 Thank you.
05:06 Thank you.
05:07 Thank you.
05:07 Thank you.
05:08 [BLANK_AUDIO]