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
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