Tanzania: You Have Kenyatta, We Have Suluhu, Let’s Do Business – Says President Samia

Tanzania’s President Samia Suluhu ended her Kenyan visit on a high note with a sprightly address to both houses of Parliament that extolled relations between the two countries and listed resolutions and agreements reached in her two-day tour of Nairobi.

Trade, health, infrastructure, gas, culture and tourism are among the key economic sectors discussed in the bilateral talks between President Samia and her Kenyan host, President Uhuru Kenyatta.

President Suluhu interspersed her public addresses with light moments intended to publicly display Tanzania’s camaraderie towards Kenya, helping to ease tension that had built during the last months of the late President John Pombe Magufuli’s rule, when the Covid-19 pandemic disrupted cross-border trade.

“You’re lucky to have on this side of the border Uhuru (freedom) to do business and on the other Suluhu (solution) to all trade barriers, it’s now all up to you,” President Suluhu quipped as she addressed business leaders at a Nairobi hotel, to loud applause from the audience.

While addressing Parliamentarians, President Suluhu joked about the Swahili spoken in Kenya, terming it as “highly entertaining.” She brought to life the globally famous annual wildebeest migration by making fun of “the animals that come to Kenya to mate and cross the border to Tanzania to give birth.”

In a Joint Communiqué issued later in the evening by both Presidents, the two leaders said they started their bilateral meeting by paying tribute to the late John Pombe Joseph Magufuli, the Fifth President of Tanzania who passed on in March.