Presidents Uhuru Kenyatta and his counterpart of Mozambique Filipe Nyusi have assured their commitment to facilitate the private sector to thrive in Kenya and Mozambique.
Addressing a joint Kenya-Mozambique business forum in Maputo on Friday, President Kenyatta and President Nyusi voiced their support to grow the private sector in the two friendly countries.
Uhuru acknowledged that the private sector was the true driver of economic growth, saying his administration has taken the necessary steps to streamline rules and procedures to ease business operations.
“And we, in Kenya, are doing everything we can to ensure we create an enabling environment. We are keenly focused on improving our ease of doing business index. We have simplified the procedures and the rules to make it easier for businesses to operate because we believe if businesses succeed, Kenya succeeds,” he said.
President Nyusi encouraged members of the Kenya business community to set shop in Mozambique as a step towards deepening relations between the two countries.
Rooting for increased intra-Africa trade, President Kenyatta called for increased partnership between Kenyan and Mozambican business communities.
He expressed the need for African countries to look at themselves as a continent of potential and a market of over 1.2 billion people instead of seeing themselves in isolation as small countries.
“And if we did this, this would facilitate large investments, it would facilitate job creation because today we are exporting our jobs. We are exporting our jobs to China and to other markets because we, ourselves, have not been able to open up our markets in order to attract the kind of capital that we need to be able to create those jobs here on the continent,” Kenyatta said.
The Head of State said the signing of the African Continental Free Trade Area (AfCFTA) treaty by 44 African nations in Kigali, Rwanda, last week was a landmark step towards making it easier for business people to freely move with their goods and services across the continent.
“I believe this presents a great opportunity for our private sectors to grow as we aim to push and to deepen both investment and trade across the African continent,” Uhuru said.
He said closer partnerships between members of the private sector in Africa were key to helping countries to achieve their social and economic dreams.
President Kenyatta singled out the extractive industries, the blue economy, tourism and agriculture as some of the key areas that the Kenyan and Mozambican private sectors could set up joint ventures.