Roundup: Kenya hosts South-South dialogue to hasten fight against poverty

Senior Kenyan government and UN officials on Tuesday called for measures to strengthen trade and investment cooperation between the rich and poor countries under the South-South Triangular Cooperation for Sustainable Development.

Kenyan Cabinet Secretary for Planning Mwangi Kiunjuri said the South-South Cooperation, which begun after the Bandung Conference, the first major Asian-African development cooperation platform, should become a major forum to promote the achievement of the UN poverty eradication goals.

Kiunjuri said the South-South cooperation event provided a platform and an opportunity to effectively engage and exchange knowledge and experience on managing and promoting the South-South Triangular Cooperation as a tool to accelerate the achievement of the Sustainable Development Goals.

Kiunjuri said the Vision 2030 is the country's transformative agenda towards improved living standards for its people, wealth creation and becoming a globally competitive nation.

"As we implement our vision, we take cognizance of the fact that South-South cooperation is an integral part, particularly in fostering strategic partnerships to enable our countries move together in the path of inclusive sustainable development that leaves no one behind," he said.

Kamau Macharia, Kenya's Permanent Representative to the UN, who attended the meeting, said cooperation in the area of technology transfer, trade and development was crucial for countries in the global South, to achieve economic development and to trade more with each other.

Kenya like many other countries in the South is currently implementing long-term development blue print, the "Kenya Vision 2030".

Delegates from Asia, South America, North America, Japan, South Korea and from West Africa, are attending the South-South and Triangular Cooperation for Sustainable Development forum to discuss how to work together in achieving the UN Sustainable Development Goals.

Macharia said countries in the East African should manage their trade relations with their neighbours in order to improve economic growth and reduce poverty.

He said trade between Kenya, Tanzania, Uganda, the Democratic Republic of Congo (DR Congo), Rwanda and Burundi could still grow as well as trade with countries in the North such as Ethiopia under the South-South Cooperation.

"We have to manage the relations with our neighbors in a way that does not politicize the internal disagreements between the respective countries in the region. Tanzania is a neighbor and it has been benefiting from the trade between the African countries," Macharia said.

Macharia said countries in East Africa could continue to open borders to trade with each other in order to further improve the regional economy.

Trade between the five East African Community (EAC) states declined to 5.63 billion U.S. dollars in 2014 from 5.8 billion in 2013, according to the Kenya National Bureau of Statistics (KNBS).

Kenya's latest economic data show the country's total exports declined to 5.78 billion dollars in 2016 from 5.8 billion dollars in 2015 but African countries remained the biggest destination for exports.

KNBS latest data released recently showed trade within the EAC declined 3.1 percent with the Kenyan portion of exports valued at 2.34 billion dollars while Europe still accounted for 24.5 percent of the exports.

Pakistan remains Kenya's main export destination in the Asian region, accounting for a bigger portion of Kenya's 7.4 percent of the 1.4 billion dollars worth of exports to the Asia. Endit