Barcelona opens Nairobi office to boost commerce

Spain’s Catalonia region has intensified its search for Kenyan business partners by opening a local office facilitating direct trade linkages.

Catalonia Trade and Investment director-in-charge of East Africa markets Robert Bach said staff at the Nairobi office has been visiting industrial Area with a view of establishing available opportunities for Catalonia-based businesses.

“We are a government agency tasked with promoting investments into the East African region and we identified Kenya as a strategic location to establish a presence for our planned East Africa expansion,” he said.

Mr Bach said Catalonia had selected three Kenyan companies whose executives will be sponsored to attend a three-day Agritech fair in Barcelona, the regional capital.

Catalan, he said is eyeing two-way investments in all the goods and services sectors via direct and joint venture investments.

He said discussions were in high gear to introduce Spain’s popular Sangria wine product to Kenya via a joint venture between a Catalonian company with a Kenyan firm that will source for ingredients from the Catalonia for local processing.

“A Catalan-based company is also in talks with a local farmer society with a view to introducing use of drones and information technology to drive the ‘precision agriculture’ agenda,” he said.