By JOSEPH MUTUA NDONGA
Thursday, July 21, 2016
Delegates following the UNCTAD session in Nairobi on July 18. Photo/Enos Teche
Nairobi is hosting an international conference that brings together 7,000 delegates from across the world.The choice of the venue clearly demonstrates that Kenya is a safe and secure destination.
Prior to this conference, the country hosted two other high profi le meetings, the Global Entrepreneurship Summit and the 10th ministerial conference of the World Trade
Organization. This is in addition to hosting the world’s most powerful leaders including US President Barack Obama, Pope Francis and the Prime Minister of Israel and his Indian counterpart. This is the first time some of the holders of these high positions have visited Kenya while in office.
At the 14th UNCTAD conference, President Uhuru Kenyatta recalled that the last time this meeting was held in Africa was in 1976. UNCTAD holds the conference after four
years and so far, it has not achieved anything worth talking about.
While singling out the US and Europe, Uhuru hit out at the developed countries for patronising Africa and shortchanging the continent on matters of trade and investment. The UN has so far spent billions on shillings on peacekeeping missions in a few African countries. The global agency, which is run and controlled by the Western powers, has done so without consulting the African leaders on how these crises can be tackled and addressed.
This explains why the billions of shillings they have spent have had no impact. Notably, matters of trade, investments and democracy have always dominated the deliberations at the previous conferences. As it turns out, the developed world has not heeded the call by the developing countries to address the international trade imbalances and tax evasions.
The mentality that third world countries are beggars while developed nations are the drivers of the world economy and creators of wealth is wrong, ill-advised and unacceptable.
The powerful nations cannot survive without goods from Africa. Therefore, one would not expect the issue of who is big, and who is not, to arise.
The Nairobi trade talks should pass resolutions that ensure the hurdles in the way of the previous policies are removed and the new policies are fully implemented.
If the member states fail to do so, then one would not see the need of holding the conferences in future.