Posted on December, 10, 2018 at 10:23 am
PSCU
President Uhuru Kenyatta on Friday held talks with South Africa’s Deputy President David Mabuza, who paid him a courtesy call at State House, Nairobi.
During the meeting, Uhuru and Mabuza discussed mutual areas of interest to the two nations including co-operation in agriculture, education, geothermal power generation and youth empowerment.
Uhuru briefed his guest on Kenya Commercial Bank’s 2jiajiri programme and other government initiatives geared towards equipping youths with technical and entrepreneurial skills.
“We are investing in Technical and Vocational Education and Training (Tvets) to equip the youth with technical skills that will enable them to engage in income-generating activities instead of relying on the increasingly diminishing white collar jobs,” said Uhuru.
On electricity generation, the President talked of the progress Kenya has made towards attaining 100 per cent transition to green energy. He emphasised that Kenya is focused on moving away from thermal power generation, which is expensive and harmful to the environment.
He cited the 83.3 Megawatt unit 6 of the Olkaria 1 Geothermal Power Plant, whose construction he recently launched, as one of the latest ongoing projects that will boost Kenya’s generation of electricity from renewable energy resources. He also cited the 310MW Lake Turkana Wind Power plant and the 54MW Garissa Solar Plant.
Mabuza, who was accompanied by South Africa’s High Commissioner to Kenya Koleka Anita Mqulwana, said Kenya was a torch-bearer and therefore must lead development initiatives in the East African region.
In June this year, Mabuza was in the country for Madaraka Day celebrations that were held in Meru. He was also in the country in October, when he briefed Uhuru on the progress made in the peace process in South Sudan after meeting President Salva Kiir and his deputy Riek Machar.
Head of Public Service Joseph Kinyua and Foreign Affairs Principal secretary Amb Macharia Kamau attended Friday’s meeting. Uhuru later held talks with former British Prime Minister Tony Blair at State House, Nairobi.
The Tony Blair Institute for Global Change has been working with the Presidential Delivery Unit (PDU) to build capacity to ensure an effective framework to monitor delivery of flagship government projects including those aligned to the Big Four agenda and Vision 2030.
Source: MediaMax Network