President Uhuru Kenyatta has yet again continued with his streak of establishing international ties with the latest country joining the list being the little-known Barbados Island in the Caribbean region.
Uhuru on Wednesday, October 6, led Kenya into signing three key bilateral agreements for cooperation in aviation, environmental conservation, trade, and investment.
The Head of State and Barbados Prime Minister, Mia Amor Mottley, witnessed the signing of the lucrative deals.
The ties involved air services agreement, an MoU on the development of the national botanical garden of Barbados, and another one on the establishment of a Joint Committee on Trade and Investment.
The President in his speech noted that Kenya has been steadily approaching Barbados with the aim of enhancing cooperation between Africa and the Caribbean Community and Common Market (CARICOM).
“Together, we started and spearheaded the need to have the very first ever African-CARICOM Summit that was supposed to be held on the sidelines of CHOGM last year. Unfortunately due to Covid, we were not able to do so."
“But again banking on the resilience of our two countries, we still managed this year to hold that first Africa-CARICOM Summit where we had participation of all our regional economic communities (RECs) of our continent together with leaders of CARICOM,” he stated.
Uhuru disclosed that Kenya is exploring, even more, betters ways of establishing direct air and sea links to enhance free movement of people, goods, and services.
“This is one area where we are hoping to find great success that will make it easy for the businessmen and women, those seeking to re-engage with the African continent, to be able to do so without having to wait for visas from third parties,” President Kenyatta said.
Barbados Prime Minister on her part appreciated the efforts by Kenyans expressing confidence that the ties between the two nations will prosper.
“Not even pandemic can separate us. I think that all of us recognize now that we are in a marathon and not a sprint. And that we have had, in the past, to become resilient and this generation of Kenyans and Barbadians must be resilient to the times whether those times are affected by the pandemic or whether they are affected by the climate,” the Prime Minister said.
The three deals were signed by Foreign Affairs Cabinet Secretary, Raychelle Omamo.
