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Kenyan President William Ruto was in Washington for a State
visit as the White House pledged new partnerships on technology,
security and debt relief to the East African democracy.
"Investors like what they see in Kenya," Ruto said, courting
business leaders at an event, vowing to make it easier to do
business.
U.S. Commerce Secretary Gina Raimondo urged business leaders to
maintain momentum after the week's events. We cannot go home,
feel excited for the weekend and move on," Raimondo said. "We're
all in on Africa, all in on Kenya. Let's go make more deals
together."
The U.S. Trade Representative's Office said the countries will
hold the sixth in-person negotiating round under the Strategic
Trade and Investment Partnership (STIP) in Mombasa from June 3
to 7 after a round in Washington this month.
Ruto said he had addressed concerns by Alphabet's Google to make
it easier to operate and listed a number of tax and other
policies to encourage direct foreign investment.
Alphabet's president and chief investment officer Ruth Porat
said on Friday Google was boosting investment in Kenya,
including in a partnership to build the first-ever fiber optic
route to directly connect Africa with Australia, that passes
through the continent to South Africa before crossing the Indian
Ocean to Australia.
Ruto added Kenya had been working to attract big tech firms and
startups through its "Silicon Savannah" and added Kenya is
focused on production of e-mobility vehicles.
"The Kenyan government in the next policy framework we will be
eliminating all taxes for companies that will locally
manufacture the first 100,000 two-wheelers and four-wheelers in
Kenya," Ruto said.
The U.S. International Development Finance Corporation this week
announced a $10 million direct loan to BasiGo, an electric
vehicle company leasing and selling electric buses to Kenyan
public transport bus operators and a $10 million loan to Kenyan
company Roam Electric to support producing electric motorcycles
in Nairobi.
Among the deals signed on Friday include a Kenya and Microsoft
partnership to build a $1 billion 1-gigawatt datacenter in
Naivasha, Kenya that will run on Microsoft Azure cloud services
and offer access to cloud-based applications.
The move will allow the Kenyan government to move its data and
services to trusted vendors, the White House said.
Microsoft President Brad Smith said under a partnership the
company will help bring internet services to 20 million people
next year in Kenya.
(Reporting by David Shepardson; Editing by Josie Kao)
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