Written by David Shepardson
WASHINGTON (Reuters) – The United States and Kenya announced on Friday that they will hold a new round of trade talks next month, as the two countries eye new trade agreements and look to strengthen economic ties.
Kenyan President William Ruto arrived in Washington for a state visit where the White House pledged new partnerships in technology, security and debt relief for the East African democracy.
“Investors like what they see in Kenya,” Ruto said as he courted business leaders at an event, pledging to make doing business easier.
US Commerce Secretary Gina Raimondo urged business leaders to maintain momentum after the week's events. “We can't go home and get excited for the weekend and move forward,” Raimondo said. “We're all in Africa, we're all in Kenya. Let's go make more deals together.”
The USTR said the countries will hold the sixth round of in-person negotiations under the Strategic Trade and Investment Partnership in Mombasa from June 3 to 7 after a round in Washington this month.
Ruto said he addressed concerns of Alphabet Inc's (NASDAQ:) subsidiary Google to facilitate operation and included a number of tax and other policies to encourage foreign direct investment.
Google is stepping up investment in Kenya, including a partnership to build the first-ever fiber-optic route to connect Africa directly to Australia, which runs across the continent to South Africa before crossing the Indian River, Alphabet President and Chief Investment Officer Ruth Porat said on Friday. Ocean to Australia.
Ruto added that Kenya is working to attract major technology companies and startups through “Silicon Savannah” and added that Kenya is focusing on the production of e-mobility vehicles.
“The Kenyan government in the next policy framework will remove all taxes on companies that will manufacture the first 100,000 two-wheelers and four-wheelers locally in Kenya,” Ruto said.
This week, the U.S. International Development Finance Corporation announced a $10 million direct loan to BasiGo, an electric vehicle company that leases and sells electric buses to Kenyan public transit bus operators, and a $10 million loan to Kenya's Roam Electric to support electric motorcycle production in Nairobi.
Among the deals signed on Friday was a partnership between Kenya and Microsoft (NASDAQ:) to build a $1 billion, 1 GW data center in Naivasha, Kenya that will run on Microsoft Azure cloud services and provide access to cloud-based applications.
The White House said the move would allow the Kenyan government to transfer its data and services to trusted vendors.
Microsoft President Brad Smith said that under the partnership, the company will help provide Internet services to 20 million people next year in Kenya.