President Uhuru Kenyatta will today meet US President Donald Trump hours after the latter was acquitted by the US Senate following a historic impeachment trial.
US Press Secretary Stephanie Grisham said they are scheduled to meet at the White House in Washington, 528 days after their first meeting.
“Since President Kenyatta’s August 2018 visit, when the two leaders established the United States-Kenya Bilateral Strategic Dialogue, we have expanded our partnership across many areas,” Grisham said in a statement.
She noted that Trump was looking forward to building on that momentum and that they will discuss new opportunities to advance cooperation and trade.
“Kenya continues to be a vital partner to the United States in Africa and beyond,” she said.
According to US news reports, Uhuru and Trump are preparing to announce negotiations on a free-trade agreement.
This will be America’s first such deal with a sub-Saharan nation.
Uhuru is in the US together with ODM boss Raila Odinga for a series of meetings. On Wednesday, they had a presentation on their handshake at an international luncheon at the 2020 National Prayer Breakfast.
President Uhuru Kenyatta also met leaders of the Atlantic Council at a forum dubbed “The Future of The US-Kenya Strategic Partnership”.
The Atlantic Council is an American Atlanticist international affairs think-tank founded in 1961 as a non-partisan institution aimed at galvanizing the US leadership and engaging with the world for purposes of finding solutions to global challenges.
He asked American institutions to support indigenous African solutions fashioned to address governance challenges facing the continent.
According to his press team, Uhuru also cautioned the institutions against advancing democracy as a one-size-fits-all prescription saying the approach undermines the foundations upon which the concept is based.
He advised that African countries need to be given opportunities to come up with approaches that support democracy in line with their realities.
“It requires bringing more nuance to how we make judgements about politics, and the resulting interventions countries like the United States should undertake,” he said.
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