Kenya’s Agriculture Minister announces postponement of khat signing deal

GOOBJOOG NEWS|NAIROBI: Kenya’s Agriculture Minister Peter Munya told the BBC that a trade agreement between Kenya and Somalia would not be signed today.

This follows failure by the Somali president to attend the IGAD Extraordinary Summit which is currently underway in Nairobi. The signing of the agreement between the two countries was to be sealed at the IGAD meeting in Kenya, and was expected to lift the two-year ban on khat from Kenya.

In late June, Kenya’s Agriculture Minister announced that the export of the crop mainly grown in Meru County would begin in a fortnight when the two heads of state sign a formal trade agreement on July 5.

Somalia closed access to its market for Kenya in 2020 following a political fallout between the two countries under former President Mohamed Abdullahi Farmaajo. The ban led to a loss of more than 50 tonnes of Kenyan khat valued at more than Ksh20 million ($171,000) a day.