UK, Kenya to increase trade, spur UK’s FDIs in 2023

The United Kingdom is expected to make direct investments worth $10 billion in Kenya in 2023, but in order for the East African country to fully benefit from the Economic Partnership Agreement (EPA) signed between both states in 2022, it will also have to maintain and enhance market access conditions.

Kenya’s Cabinet Secretary for Investment, Trade, and Industry Moses Kuria is this week leading a high-powered government delegation to London for the Economic Partnership Agreement and Investment meeting that Kenya seeks to intensify pitches to investors. Kenya will use the EPA to spur investment, whereby the government is aiming to net at least $10 billion in FDIs in 2023 in a plan mooted by the Kenya Investment Authority.

Following Brexit, the partnership paves the way for continued trade between Kenya and the UK and gives Kenyan exports, particularly those related to horticulture, duty-free access to the UK market.

The two key objectives of the EPA were to provide full duty-free and quota-free market access conditions for goods originating in EAC Partner States into the market of the UK on a secure, long-term and predictable basis and to preserve and improve market access conditions to ensure that Kenya fully benefits from the EPA. In economic terms, the EPA provides a good framework for strengthening the strategic cooperation between Kenya and UK in the areas of trade, investment, research, innovation and development, value addition and capacity building which will promote improved relations at both the government and private sector level. Kenya was the UK’s 83rd largest trading partner in the four quarters to the end of Q3 2022 accounting for 0.1% of total UK trade.