Yehia El-Wathiq Billah, Senior Undersecretary of the Ministry of Commerce and Industry and Head of Commercial Representation, said that Kenya is Egypt’s first trading partner in East Africa, with a trade exchange volume of about $650 million, and Egypt’s fourth trading partner within the Common Market for Eastern and Southern Africa (COMESA).
Al-Wathiq Billah clarified that Kenya ranks fifth in Africa among the list of countries that receive Egyptian exports, with a value of $392.5 million in 2022, after Libya, Sudan, Morocco, and Algeria, revealing that Egyptian exports to Kenya account for 6.5% of total exports. Egyptian to the African continent.
The Minister Plenipotentiary for Trade revealed that Egyptian exports top the list of countries exporting to Kenya in 2022 for 28 commodities with a share in the Kenyan market of 60% to 80%, especially exports of the building materials sector, engineering industries, chemicals and plastics. Paper and its products, and food industries.
Al-Wathiq Billah pointed out that the Kenyan economy is one of the most performing and developing economies of the African continent, and institutions and companies with small projects for entrepreneurs and startups contribute to advancing economic growth, as Kenya is the strongest economy in East Africa in several sectors, most notably information technology, mining, manufacturing and energy. tourism, financial services, agriculture and fishing. Kenya is the third largest economy in sub-Saharan Africa after Nigeria and South Africa, with a GDP of nearly $100 billion.
He pointed to the presence of the United Nations Office in Nairobi (UNON), which is the headquarters of the United Nations in the African continent and one of the largest headquarters of the four secretariats of the organization in the world, as the United Nations Office in Nairobi serves the global headquarters of the United Nations Environment Program and the United Nations Human Settlements Program in addition to a number of (23) International offices and many regional centers.
The capital, Nairobi, witnessed the presidential visit of President Abdel Fattah El-Sisi to attend the work of the fifth session of the mid-year coordination summit of the African Union on July 15 and 16, 2023, and the bilateral meeting with Mr. Dr. William Ruto, President of the Republic of Kenya, to discuss African issues with the aim of advancing integration efforts, supporting peace and security, and promoting the agenda development at the level of the African continent, especially the situation in the Horn of Africa and the Nile Basin regions, and the crisis in Sudan; Where they dealt with coordination efforts between initiatives aimed at resolving the crisis, including the summit of Sudan’s neighboring countries that was held in Egypt on July 13, 2023, which is integrated with other regional efforts aimed at ending the conflict and transitioning to peaceful dialogue in a way that achieves the interests of the brotherly Sudanese people.