Kenya has secured £1.3 billion (KSh170 billion) from the UK in investments deals during the UK-Africa Investment Summit.
In this case, the investments will focus on housing, finance, renewables, and entrepreneurship.
A new memorandum of Understanding was signed to collaborate on mobilizing private finance into Kenyan projects. This partnership will bring British expertise and mechanisms to increase economic development in Kenya.
On renewables, Kenya is set to benefit from a £30m (KSh3.9 billion) investment in affordable energy-efficient housing, which will see the construction of 10,000 low-carbon homes for rent and sale.
An investment of £167 million (KSh22 billion) by Diageo to build state of the art, environmentally friendly breweries in Kenya and wider East Africa. Diageo already invested £120m into EABL’s Kisumu Brewery in 2017. This investment is supporting over 100,000 direct and indirect jobs (over half of the beneficiaries are women) including recruiting 15,000 new farmers taking the total number of farmers employed in their Kenyan supply chain to 45,000.
The UK also announced that it would support and finance a range of infrastructure projects across Africa including Kenya that are attractive to businesses and investors.
Sustainability will be central to these new infrastructure projects, focusing on investments with low carbon emissions and projects that will be resilient to a changing climate.
Today, Kenya’s first ever green bond was listed on the London Stock Exchange, becoming the first Kenyan Shilling Bond to be listed on the globalmarkets -the inaugural “Simba Bond”.
The UK-Africa Investment Summit, hosted by the Prime Minister, brings together 21 African countries as well as UK and African companies. This is the first-time governments and businesses from the UK and Africa have come together for an event of this scale.
