How will Kenya manage to forge mutually beneficial relations with the West and yet sustain constructive engagement with China?

It's of essence that the country balances the relations it has with both of these countries more to the benefit of its people. Both china and the west offer favorable opportunities and good business environments for the country to reap from.

Recently, fruit farmers in Kenya are set to reap more after China announced plans to expand imports from the continent. Kenya has the perfect environmental conditions necessary for the growth and thriving of a variety of fruits and china offers a ready market due to its huge population.

A well-established business relationship of this kind will help create a wider market share for Kenyan agriculture products especially avocado which is one of the major agricultural exports to China, and in the long run, reduce the deficit Kenya is currently suffering from.

In March, China cleared Kenya to export fresh avocado, a departure from the previous directive that restricted exports to frozen fruits only. “Kenya was granted market access to export the frozen avocados to China, making Kenya the first African nation to export frozen avocados to China," said Kenya Export Promotion and Branding Agency (KEPROBA), chief executive, Wilfred Marube.

He said Kenya is now among the largest African producers and exporters of Avocados to China. Mwarube said China is working with Kenya to enhance production and supply capacities adding that this will drive growth in the agricultural sector and at the same time improve the country’s economy.

“The General Administration of Customs of the People's Republic of China (GACC) is working closely with relevant institutions in Kenya on matters of plant health, in a bid to benefit from China’s commitment to enhancing production and supply capacities,” Mwarube added. Strategically, the incoming government should move to encourage China that relations with Kenya will be better and deeper if it based some of its manufacturing and processing in Kenya. This, apart from creating local employment, will reduce the country’s dependency on imports while curbing the depletion of foreign exchange. This move will reduce the over-dependence on the west and the world bank for both loans and aid. A well-sustained economy through proper and well-implemented strategies will ultimately free the country from poverty and enable it to fairly compete in the global markets.

Building on several years of growing exchanges between China and Africa, the summit on Africa-China relations approved a three-year action plan to forge a “new type of strategic partnership.” That partnership, the plan says, would be based on pragmatic cooperation, equality, and mutual benefit. The plan pledges that China will:

• Double aid to Africa by 2009 (to about $1 bn).

• Set up a $5 bn China-Africa development fund to encourage Chinese companies to invest in Africa.

• Provide $3 bn in preferential loans and $2 bn in preferential buyer’s credits to African countries.

• Cancel all debt stemming from Chinese interest-free government loans that matured by the end of 2005, for the 31 highly indebted and least developed countries (LDCs) in Africa that have relations with China (an amount estimated at around $1.4 bn).

• Further, open China’s markets to exports from African LDCs by increasing from 190 to 440 the number of products receiving zero-tariff treatment.

• Train 15,000 African professionals, double the number of Chinese government scholarships given annually to Africans (to 4,000), and send 100 senior agricultural experts and 300 youth volunteers.

• Build 30 hospitals, 30 malaria treatment centers, and 100 rural schools.

• China also vowed to support the African Union, the continent’s regional organization, including by building a new convention center at the AU headquarters in Addis Ababa. It likewise reaffirmed its commitment to the New Partnership for Africa’s Development (NEPAD), the AU’s development plan.

The china government has made many notable steps towards ensuring that the relations it has with African countries is mutually beneficial.