Gachagua has left the country -for an official visit to Belgium and Germany

The Star Kenya

Deputy President Rigathi Gachagua has left the country for an official visit to the Kingdom of Belgium and the Republic of Germany.

Transcript

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.

05:06 Thank you.

05:07 Thank you.

05:08 [BLANK_AUDIO]

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