Kenya’s Prime Cabinet Secretary, H.E. Dr. Musalia Mudavadi, called for deeper collaboration with the Multilateral Cooperation Center for Development Finance (MCDF) to advance the country’s connectivity infrastructure priorities during his visit to the MCDF Secretariat in Beijing on 22 April. MCDF CEO Zhongjing Wang welcomed this call and together they discussed new partnership opportunities and next steps.
Prime Cabinet Secretary Mudavadi highlighted a pipeline of projects for enhancing connectivity in Kenya, including roads, airports, and ports, transboundary water resource management, energy, and digital infrastructure. The aim is to accelerate the country’s inter-African and broader trade and sustainable development, leveraging the growth potential of areas such as the corridor from the Port of Mombasa to Uganda, Rwanda, and eastern Democratic Republic of the Congo. This is of even greater importance in the face of global market uncertainty, he explained.
Prime Cabinet Secretary Mudavadi lauded MCDF’s role in supporting project preparation given the major challenge of designing commercially viable connectivity projects and supporting their financial close. He expressed his desire for Kenya to work more closely with MCDF to ensure the country’s connectivity infrastructure expansion and modernization is fiscally, technically, and environmentally and socially sound while swiftly satisfying domestic demand for it. He requested MCDF support for project preparation and capacity building in Kenya to help meet these goals.
The Prime Cabinet Secretary’s accompanying team underscored their readiness to facilitate Kenya’s collaboration with MCDF in these areas. The team included Hon. Willy Bett, Ambassador to China; Mr. Lawrence Kibet, Director General, Public Investments and Portfolio Management, National Treasury; Ms. Rinah Ondego, Senior Policy Advisor, Office of the Prime Cabinet Secretary; and Mr. Joshua Shitikho, Personal Assistant to the Prime Cabinet Secretary.
CEO Wang thanked the Prime Cabinet Secretary and his team for their trust in MCDF and the opportunity to deepen its engagement with Kenya. He noted that MCDF, as a unique multilateral initiative focusing on high-quality connectivity infrastructure through partnerships, is well-positioned to promote the country’s sustainable development agenda by providing timely upstream connectivity project preparation grants. These leverage International Financial Institution partnerships and standards and encourage cooperation with domestic financiers.
CEO Wang and his staff highlighted MCDF’s grant support for regional capacity building projects which are currently being implemented by the African Development Bank and involve Kenya, covering ports portals connectivity, East African Community trade portals connectivity, and environmental and social sustainability. They also pointed to MCDF’s wider information and knowledge sharing activities relevant to Africa on topics such as public-private partnerships, debt management, and innovations in renewable energy technology and connectivity.
Initiatives like these continue to welcome Kenya’s active participation and provide a foundation for further MCDF collaboration to efficiently boost high-quality connectivity infrastructure investment in the country, CEO Wang concluded.
Contact
David Hendrickson
Senior Communications Officer
Mobile: +86 185 0114 6758
david.hendrickson@themcdf.org
