Businesses Participate in Nairobi Business Conference
Source: Business Daily
According to Maxwell Okello, CEO of AmCham Kenya, the third AmCham business summit provided an opportunity for corporate executives to exchange market intelligence and discover areas of opportunity.
According to organizers, more than 700 attendees and 300 companies attended the third edition of the American Chamber of Commerce conference in Kenya’s capital, Nairobi. Delegations from the US government and corporate sector met with peers from Rwanda, Tanzania, Uganda, Ethiopia, and Kenya.
Kenya’s President William Ruto declared on Thursday that his country was open for business, stressing a contract his administration had made with the US biotech firm Moderna.
” It is with pleasure that I announced the finalized deal between Moderna and the government of Kenya to build a $500 million dolla MRNA vaccine facility in Nairobi,” he said.
According to Maxwell Okello, CEO of AmCham, the two-day AmCham business summit, which concluded Thursday, provided an opportunity for business leaders to exchange market knowledge and discover areas of opportunity, particularly for commercial involvement.
AmCham “does two things: ..One: it’s a perfect demonstration of some of the commitments we had from the US…. Two: We are very keen in seeing how we can actually advance commercial engagement,” Okello said. ” We thought this would be a good platform to create partnerships, bring local companies that could be counterparts to those American companies that are interested in coming into Kenya.”
Scott Eisner, president of the US Chamber of Commerce’s Africa Business Center, sent a delegation of more than 30 CEOs. He told VOA that they aimed to establish concrete private-sector possibilities and cooperative partnerships.
” We have plenty of tech companies with us, but we also have pharmaceuticals, medical devices, technology, satellite companies that are doing mapping of the world, infrastructure developers around Caterpillar, the GEs of the world,” he said. “So we really have arranged for a very strong delegation representing the complexities of the American business community.”
Nzonzi Katana works as a process engineer with Kenyan startup semiconductor Technologies Limited, which has a presence at the show. Microprocessors, memory chips, and sensors are all manufactured by the company.
” We have been able to meet many representatives from many African American companies,” Katana said. “I believe there’s one person who might be a potential supplier of our raw material.”
