Private sector must pull its weight on global trade talks

Kenya National Chamber of Commerce and Industry chairman Kiprono Kittony addressing members of the press on the ongoing sugar debate in their Nairobi office on 19/8/2015. PHOTO:FIDELIS KABUNYI

Kenya hosted the World Trade Organisation’s (WTO) tenth Ministerial Conference, the first time by an African country. And throughout the week, alternative voices punctured muted murmurs of the bureaucrats at the Nairobi talks.

That is notwithstanding the fact that private businesses would evidently benefit the most particularly, if developing countries and the activists have their way. With regard to representation, it is futile for apex bodies to claim they are ‘the voices’ of the private sector yet they were conspicuously inaudible during the entire WTO meeting.