Nairobi will host the Heads of State and Government from the 21- member states of the Common Market for Eastern and Southern Africa (COMESA) from October 7 to 9, 2025.
Principal Secretary (PS) State Department for Trade, Regina Ombam, has affirmed that Kenya is ready to host the 24th COMESA Summit themed “Leveraging Digitalisation to Deepen Value Chains for Sustainable and Inclusive Growth” coming at a very critical point when the world is witnessing a clear shift in the trade patterns.
The PS highlighted that the Summit will offer an opportunity for the Heads of State and Government to take stock of what has been happening in the trade ecosystem and start looking at what can be done within the continent by interrogating things that we have within our limits and our control to be able to also thrive in terms of trade.
Ombam said that the summit comes at a time when the African continent needs to re-engineer trade among its members, by looking at how diversified it is and how it can actually be propelled for the economic growth of the continent.
Speaking in Nairobi, Monday during a mobilization meeting ahead of the summit, the PS said that COMESA is geared towards establishing common markets for the purposes of economic integration and to ensure that trade within the region is seamless and everybody benefits from trade in a fair manner.
Ombam noted that within the summit there will be other engagements like the COMESA Business Forum and the Council of Ministers for Foreign Affairs meeting.
“This is a timely meeting for Heads of State that actually brings them together to re-think how trade within the African continent can be made better to help improve the livelihoods of the people of the continent,” said the PS.
Ombam highlighted that the essence of the Summit is to make sure that intra-Africa trade works, explaining that for the longest time trade within the continent has not been robust with African countries trading more with other nations in Europe, Asia and America.
“The deliberations at the summit will be geared towards re-thinking around growing Africa, building the continent and the best way to do it is actually ensuring that trade is seamless, is fair and market access is made possible for Africans to be able to penetrate the African market,” she said.
The PS said that as a county, Kenya is modernising its infrastructure and operations in efforts to achieve its industrialisation agenda explaining that the goal is to grow the level of value addition and processing of the country’s traditional exports of coffee, tea among others which are most often exported in row form.
“We are setting up Special Economic Zones (SEZ) so that we do value addition to our products so that when we export them they become more competitive. What we are seeing now is even with the African Continental Free Trade Area (AfCFTA) they actually want to take one of our SEZ as a pilot to show what integration can do if we get into it for purposes of ensuring trade prospers,” she said.
“If it is infrastructure, the roads, the railways really have to work for us and that coordination will actually help us see our trade grow and even open up our markets more,” said the PS.
