President Uhuru Kenyatta travels to Canada for G7 summit

President Uhuru Kenyatta before he left the country for G7 Summit in Canada

NAIROBI, KENYA: President Uhuru Kenyatta left the country on Tuesday evening for a G7 Summit in La Malbaie, Quebec, Canada.

President Kenyatta’s visit to Canada to attend this year’s G7 Summit follows Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau's invitation when the two leaders met in April at Lancaster House, London, on the margins of the Commonwealth Heads of Government (CHOGM) meeting in the United Kingdom capital.

This is the second G7 summit that President Kenyatta will be addressing.

Last year, President Kenyatta was among the African leaders invited to the G7 summit, which took place at Taormina on the Italian Island of Sicily.

This year’s G7 Summit in Quebec, which will take place on Friday and Saturday, will focus on economic growth, climate change and security.

President Kenyatta will address the summit on issues of the blue economy and the environmental management.

Kenya is among the first African countries to effect the ban on plastics.

 The G7 nations include, Canada, United States of America, United Kingdom, German, France, Italy and Japan.

Speaking ahead of the summit, Foreign Affairs and International Trade, Cabinet Secretary, Monica Juma said the G7 Summit is crucial to Kenya, as it will focus on the issues that are critical to President Kenyatta’s ‘Big Four’ agenda.

She said the Summit, which is one of the exclusive meetings of the global leaders, would among things discuss gender inequality, equity, climate change, security and the blue economy.

The CS pointed out that the Summit will discuss on how to bridge the inequality gap by looking for innovative ways of ensuring women participate more on productive activities.

“For a long time, work policies have never really been favourable to women. Whether it is young mothers, whether it is women that need to train, it has been the question of balancing between work and family life,” said CS Juma.

She said the Summit will seek to come up with innovative technology to involve more women as they are more than half the population of the world.

“Gender equity has been a matter of campaign for a long time and we all know this is a fundamental issue of human right, the involvement of women to participate in society’s activities. It is also a matter that makes economic sense because women are more than half of the world’s population,” she said.

Adding: It is important that we include half of the population in productive activities. So the whole issue of gender equality is the primary agenda of the Canadian Government as the chair of the summit.”

 

CS Juma pointed out that peace and security are also key to President Kenyatta, and the Summit would delve on them because no meaningful development would take place without a secure environment.

“The matter of peace and security has been key, particularly in view of the new threats. Threats about terrorism, radicalization and transnational crimes – whether it is drugs, or human trafficking,” said the Foreign Affairs CS.

Apart from attending the G7 Summit, President Kenyatta will also hold talks with the Canadian Prime Minister.

Ambassador Juma said Kenya and Canada will be co-hosting the Blue Economy Conference to be held in Mombasa in November this year and the two leaders will consult widely on the same.

She also said President Kenyatta will be talking on the environmental management as Kenya is a global leader, having been among the first African countries in the world to do a plastic ban.