President Uhuru Kenyatta expressed opposition towards the erection of walls such as the one US president Donald Trump has vowed to put up on the border with Mexico.
In an interview with CNN, the President termed “troubling” a move by the US and other Western powers to focus more on themselves than countries they trade with.
“We see today a growing tendency towards isolationism, moving away from globalisation, which has enabled many countries in the West to reach the levels of development that they have and now constraining it when it comes to the African continent,” President Kenyatta stated.
The President noted that putting up walls around borders was not the way to deal with immigrants and other problems that neighbouring countries face.
[caption caption="President Uhuru during CNN interview with CNN’s Christiane Amanpour."]
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“The way is not just to put up a big wall and shut people out,” the Head of State maintained.
“We live in Kenya, as you know, on a very troublesome border with Somalia. But yet, at the same time, we acknowledge that we can’t just wake up one morning and close the border because these are real people,” he added.
Kenya had begun building a wall on its border with Somalia but stopped earlier this year.
Mandera Governor Ali Roba stated in March that President Kenyatta was due to meet with his Somali counterpart Mohamed Farmajo to agree on a number of issues before the commencement of the border wall.
During his presidential campaign, Donald Trump passionately promoted construction of a border wall between the U.S. and Mexico and insisted that Mexico would pay for it.
[caption caption="President Kenyatta with US President Donald Trump"]
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Most experts maintained that they doubt that a physical wall would do much to reduce the illegal drugs that pour into America each year from Mexico.
