PR TIMES AFRICA PRTimesAfrica (March 2016) | Page 33

president and President Jonathan has been very cordial and fruitful, secondly the interest structure of our bilateral relationship has really blossomed because of certain infra- structure that includes a joint commission of cooperation agreement, and that we should succeed in bringing this pattern in our bilat- eral relations in everything from intelligence and security issues, to agriculture, sports to trade and so on. This is a major luxury to really grow the relationship in a direction that has been highly profitable, for example, we had a Nigeria/Kenya, Kenya/Nigeria business coun- cil – on the Nigerian side it is headed by Aliko Dangote and on the Kenyan side it is headed by James Mwangi who is the CEO of Equity bank. What happens is that the Nigerian side can look at what is happening in terms the challenges of doing business without a lot of bureaucra- cy, Dangote can reach out to the highest levels of government and James Mwangi can do the same, so with this arrangement we can break down the levels of bureaucracy. We also have an initiative called the Kenya/Nigeria Agribusi- ness Forum, which looks at how to leverage the advantages ofeach of our countries for the benefits of each other. Kenya has a lot of know- how in agriculture – how to manage dairy, how to manage power, how to secure markets and how to sell – Nigeria has an incredible access to land, which is very fertile. For us to develop, women must be given the opportunity to develop alongside the men, and if we do that there is going to be a big change in our economic fortunes. In light of the growing engagement between Kenya and Nigeria in recent times, how do you see the relationship between both countries evolving over the coming years? I believe very strongly that in the next decade, we will see heightened entry of Nigerians into Kenya, first of all because the attitude (the per- ception) of who the Kenyan, about who the Ni- gerian is, has changed. In the past the percep- tion was of the occasional drug smuggler who will be caught in Jomo Kenyatta airport, but the perception has changed. Secondly to enable this movement, ease of travel is key, so what we did is relax the visa restrictions. A Nigeri- an today can pick his passport, get on a flight, land in Nairobi and get his visa on arrival and a Kenyan can do the same also. We used to just do Nairobi to Lagos but now we do Nairobi to Abuja and vice versa so we have seen an uptake in travel between both countries, and it can only get better. Both countries have been plagued by terrorism and we have seen increased intel- ligence sharing, increased military to military cooperation so that will define the relationship over the next five to ten years. Over the longer term however trade will define the relationship. Looking at this mutually beneficial relationship, how can we replicate this relationship on an Af- rica-wide scale? We have to enable ourselves to travel with- in each other’s countries, with ease, the only country in Africa that allows any African to come in without a visa is Rwanda. We need to also build infrastructure [road, rail and air] to connect our countries to make our engagement multi-dimensional and multi-faceted. If you ask me wether this is doable, I would say yes, but it requires leadership and the leadership must not be sidetracked. We have to understand that what afflicts one African country will inevitably afflicts others and we must work in a common will to deal with our challenges. We need to open up our countries through ease of travel, facil- itate movement [flights and so on] we need to change our mindsets about each other, opening 33 | PRTIMES AFRICA MARCH 2016