By Kwanta Douglas –
Top European Union diplomat Josep Borrell Fontelles arrived in Kenya Thursday evening for discussions on the future of ties between Kenya and the bloc, officials said.
Mr Fontelles, the EU High Representative for Foreign Affairs and Security Policy, and Vice President of the European Commission, was received at the Jomo Kenyatta International Airport, Nairobi, by Ababu Namwamba, Kenya’s Foreign Affairs Chief Administrative Secretary.
Mr Fontelles is in Nairobi for the first time in his new role for the European bloc.
A dispatch ahead of the trip said his two-day visit to Kenya will focus on a number of bilateral meetings with President Uhuru Kenyatta and other senior government officials including Foreign Affairs Cabinet Secretary Raychelle Omamo.
He will launch the EU-Kenya Strategic Dialogue, a framework on the future of ties agreed earlier in June last year when President Kenyatta visited Brussels and met Charles Michel, the President of the European Council.
“The Strategic Dialogue will strengthen the EU’s and Kenya’s regional and multilateral cooperation and focuses on the areas of peace, security and stability; democracy, governance and human rights, including gender equality; trade and investment; social development; climate change and the green transition; and the digital agenda,” a dispatch from the European Commission said on Thursday.
Mr Fontelles had visited Kenya earlier in 2019 as Minister for Foreign Affairs of Spain. But his new trip as foreign policy chief of the EU has been depicted as one meant to take ties with Nairobi to “a new level.”