Kenya to enhance relationships with China - Kenya Broadcasting Corporation

The China Government has promised to implement the follow up measures to enhance the strong bilateral relationship in trade and economic cooperation between China and Kenya.

This is aimed at enhancing foreign aid programmes, continuous foreign aid trainings in a move towards promoting transition and upgrading project contracting in Kenya and Africa at large.

The mutual beneficial cooperation between Kenya and China has led to the achievement of developments in both countries   through mutual political trust, economic and trade cooperation, and the cementation of the traditional friendship since 1963.

Speaking Tuesday at a press conference at the Chinese embassy in Nairobi, Shifan Wu, the China Embassy in Kenya spokesman said that the Chinese Government will make efforts with Kenya to further enhance cooperation in the fields of politics, economy and trade, culture and education.

China further offered to provide $20 billion of credit line to the Africans countries to assist them in developing infrastructure, agriculture, manufacturing and small and medium sized enterprises in the next three years Kenya included.

Elsewhere, the U.N. World Food Programme has begun providing food assistance in the southern Somali city of Kismayo for the first time in more than four years.

Conflict and insecurity have prevented WFP and many other humanitarian agencies from working in the area, but improved security and access now make it possible to reach Kismayo's most vulnerable people.

A recent survey showed high levels of malnutrition and food insecurity in the city.

WFP is providing hot meals to 15,000 people and specialized nutritional support to some 5,000 mothers and children under the age of five years.

"It is extremely important that we are again able to work again in Kismayo, as our recent rapid food security and nutrition assessment found there is great need," says  Stefano Porretti, WFP's Representative in Somalia.

"The survey showed that almost half the households in Kismayo are really struggling to meet their daily needs, and 24 percent of children below the age of five are malnourished."

WFP has set up five special nutrition centres around the city, where pregnant and nursing women and young children are checked for malnutrition. If found to be suffering from moderate acute malnutrition, they receive fortified ready-to-use food to supplement their daily diets. So far, two thirds of those in need of treatment are children.

WFP now has three hot meal centres in Kismayo, each able to provide meals for 5,000 people a day. Since the programme started earlier this month, large numbers of people are turning up at the centres, and providing them with cooked food is considered a safer option than distributing dry rations that can be the target of thieves.  

In preparation for re-starting its food assistance programmes in Kismayo, WFP has been training local partners and has also dispatched a chartered vessel with over 1,100 metric tons of food to the port city - enough to support the hot meal programme for an initial period of three months and the nutrition programme for six weeks.