Dr. Ahmad Belhoul Al Falasi, Minister of State for Entrepreneurship and SMEs, and Dr. Thani bin Ahmed Al Zeyoudi, Minister of State for Foreign Trade, met with Betty Maina, Cabinet Secretary of Kenya's Ministry of Industrialisation, Trade and Enterprise Development, at the Ministry's headquarters in Dubai.

The meeting discussed the prospects for economic and investment cooperation between their countries, as well as ways to improve relations, resulting in a number of plans to strengthen UAE-Kenya economic ties, which will serve to facilitate new partnerships between the business communities in both countries.

The parties discussed stepping up efforts to sign an economic, trade, and technical cooperation agreement between their governments, as well as forming a joint economic committee to facilitate the formulation of action plans and frameworks for cooperation and expertise exchange in the coming years, with a particular emphasis on agriculture, food production, processing industries, infrastructure, technology, and digitization.

The UAE-Kenya economic relationship has grown significantly in recent years, with non-oil trade estimated at about AED 7 billion in 2020, showing the two nations' expanding collaboration.

According to Dr. Al Falasi, "We are working with Kenya to establish a more effective way to creating new possibilities in the entrepreneurship and SMEs sectors, in order to promote growth and enable expansion into international markets. We encourage all firms headquartered in the UAE and Kenya to take advantage of these possibilities and incentives in order to enhance our bilateral economic relations."

The UAE's Minister of State for Foreign Trade, for his part, stated that the UAE's investments in Kenya number AED 11 billion and include important areas such as IT, logistics, retail, leisure, healthcare, and mining, while Kenyan investments in the UAE amount AED 291 million.

Maina emphasised Kenya's strong commercial connections with the UAE, as well as the growth prospects they provide, emphasizing the Kenyan government's eagerness to cooperate with the UAE to seek new paths for expanding their collaboration.

We are looking forward to ensuring and strengthening our ties with the UAE through programmes and plans in trade, tourism, entrepreneurship, innovation, food security, and industrial sectors, she explained, noting their plans to develop a framework to establish a Kenyan-Emirati business council and improve collaborations between their chambers of commerce.