Interaction with Kassym-Jomart Tokayev has been phenomenal – President of Kenya William Ruto

This is a historic visit to Kazakhstan. What were the main objectives that you set before coming to this visit? And do you think you achieved them? Which of the agreements reached with the Kazakh side do you see as the key momentum for expanding future cooperation?

First, I must say I am really proud to have taken this step to visit this great city of Astana. Your President is a wonderful gentleman, a great leader, and the interaction between me and him from last evening to today’s morning, to today’s afternoon has been monumental and phenomenal. As you know, Kazakhstan and Kenya, the relations were started in 1993 at a bilateral level. We didn't do much about it until the President last year appointed an ambassador to Nairobi. It created the momentum that led to me coming to this great country to synergize the relationship between our two countries.

First and foremost, we share between Kenya and Kazakhstan very common positions on very important regional and international issues. We are friends of both the West and the East together. We have trade relations. We subscribe to the same philosophy in terms of our relations.

And there is a huge opportunity for our two countries to grow, specifically in areas of energy.

Kenya is looking at generating 10,000 megawatts of energy. We believe that this great country, with the technology that it has, with the investment resources that they have, the President just told me that they have $85 billion in their sovereign wealth fund and they are looking for opportunities to invest. There is a huge opportunity in Kenya to invest in energy generation with a very good return. There is a good investment opportunity in Kenya for water harvesting, water storage, and irrigation. And there is another very important opportunity for us to explore in transport and logistics. These are areas that are of priority to Kenya, but are also of great interest to Kazakhstan.

The biggest outcome that I see out of this visit is, number one, we have agreed that Kazakhstan is going to provide for us a logistics hub for products coming from Kenya, tea, coffee, avocados, macadamia, and all the other products that we produce out of Kenya, flowers. We have also undertaken that both Nairobi, Mombasa and Lamu will become available to Kazakhstan for export of their products, grains, wheat, which is also important not just to Kenya, but also to our region. Much more importantly, we have said that we're going to twin our private sector.

Today, there was an agreement between the Kenya Chamber of Commerce and a business council here in Kazakhstan to bring the private sector into the equation for them to actualize all the agreements that we have signed today, we have signed an agreement in mining.

Kenya’s mining sector remains underdeveloped. This country has great mining expertise. They have built their mining industry over the years. Today, Kazakhstan exports 40% of the world's processed uranium for energy generation and for matters to do with peaceful uses of nuclear energy. These are opportunities that Kenya can leverage on. We are building our mining sector now in Kenya. We have huge resources of gold, cobalt, rare earths, and many other minerals and Kazakhstan is looking for opportunities for investment.

There lies the opportunity for Kenya and Kazakhstan to take these relations to an all-new level. I saw the rapport that was struck between me and the President, the opportunity that I see between our private sector and especially the space around developing capital markets. Astana International Financial Center and Nairobi International Financial Center, we did sign an agreement with them, not just for building opportunities, but also for making sure that there could be cross-listing of some of the companies listed on the Nairobi Securities Exchange, and right here in Astana, as we look for creating new opportunities, building bigger resources at the capital markets for purposes of development.

More in detail about the cooperation between businesses. What message would you like to send to Kazakh entrepreneurs and businesses that view Kenya as a gateway to the East African market? And what sectors currently offer the greatest opportunities, aside from those that you already mentioned?

Kenya has built a substantial middle class and medium and small enterprise ecosystem, just like this country. Our micro, small and medium enterprises, including fintechs and the venture capital ecosystem has been built in Kenya just the same way that's been built in Kazakhstan. And what will happen is while Kenya will become the focal point for the East African community, Kazakhstan will become the focal point for Eurasia, or Central Asia for that matter.

You have 300 million people in the East African community, you have 250 million people on this side, that becomes a balance you know, of opportunity on both sides. The private sector has a real and present opportunity because trade between our two countries is limited at the moment, but with great potential. So that presents a big opportunity for the private sector to leverage on the bilateral relationship now between our two countries.

We are seeking to expand this into a bilateral air services agreement that will provide direct flights between Astana and Nairobi to be able to move people faster, services faster, and even goods faster, especially flowers, vegetables and all the other things that Kenya would want to export to this country. So to the private sector, this is a real and present opportunity to scale up trade between our two countries and between our two regions.

As I have said, there is a whole array of areas of interest. Sectors. Mining is a sector that brings on both government and the private sector. Transport and logistics bring on both private sector and the public sector. Our public-private partnership framework brings into the equation opportunities to build public infrastructure using private sector resources through a public-private partnership framework.

We have opportunities in the building of a new airport in Nairobi extending the Standard Gauge Railway, extending some of our big highways into the East African region. And there are opportunities both ways. In the FinTech space, Kenya is the Silicon Savannah of Africa. Same case with what we have here in Astana. We've come from your space agency, which has, and we have signed a collaboration with our space agency, and we think there is opportunity there for earth observation, for information on agriculture, information on forestry, information both for public consumption and for commercial use and commercial activity.

We have also walked into the AI centre here, and we are building a similar facility at Konza Technopolis (Ed. note: a flagship project of the Government of Kenya, developing as a Science Park and Area of Innovation within largest smart city project in east and central Africa) in Nairobi, and we believe there is huge opportunity, not just to be consumers of technology, but to also be producers and commercializing the technology that is coming from the expertise, the innovation of our young people both in Nairobi and in Astana. So I see a relationship that is going to present a win-win outcome that is mutually beneficial for Kenya and for Kazakhstan.

We discussed a lot of things so far, but one of the things that I also need to address is dialogue on climate change, which is a very important topic nowadays. Recently, Kazakhstan hosted a big environmental international summit - Regional Ecological Summit EXPO 2026 (RES) where those topics were discussed among the international communities and experts. How important is cooperation between our countries and developing countries in general on climate resilience, sustainable development, as well as particularly for our regions?

Climate change is a present reality. It used to be distant. It used to be discussed in corners, but now it is being discussed at the center. It's really at the heart of any conversation on sustainable development. I congratulated the President of Kazakhstan for convening a big conversation about how to undertake development in a sustainable manner and leveraging on green energy to be able to drive our development.

I did the same two years ago. I convened the first Africa Climate Summit complete with the Nairobi Declaration that provides a roadmap how Africa is going to participate, how Africa is going to contribute its ideas and resources in making sure that we have green industrialization, we leverage on all the assets that we have, especially the assets that we have in the African continent, solar energy, wind energy, geothermal and hydropower energy and all the other resources that are available for decarbonizing world industrialization or global industrialization.

These present real opportunities for collaboration between Kazakhstan and Kenya, and our drive for renewable energy as we seek to generate 10,000 megawatts of energy in the next seven years, is properly aligned with what Kazakhstan and the technology they can bring and the resources they can bring around renewable energy in driving our own growth and in generating energy that will be mutually beneficial for all the industrial undertakings we want to carry out.

As I mentioned before, this is a historical state visit. And I would like to ask you, what was your image of Astana, of Kazakhstan in general, before coming here? And what changed after you experienced it firsthand?

Before visiting Kazakhstan, our understanding of the region was fairly limited. Today, I see Kazakhstan as a modern state whose vision and philosophy closely align with Kenya’s, and one that offers great opportunities for engagement and cooperation. And that is why I have taken the decision that immediately we will open a consulate-general office to provide a mechanism for companies in Kazakhstan to get better information, more information, greater engagement between the government of Kenya and the business community here and the government here, and progress it to a full embassy shortly.

The President has undertaken that within the next one or two months, there will be a very big delegation from here, led at the ministerial level to engage with the Kenyan officials, Kenyan government, and most importantly, to engage with the private sector, because the President and I agree that there is huge opportunity for engagement and for building a stronger relationship and providing a mechanism for Kenya to access the Central Asia market, and for Kazakhstan to access the market in the East and Central Africa through our port of Mombasa, Lamu, and through Nairobi. That was said in very clear terms in the statement that I released with President Tokayev.

Does this next step also include a very important part of diplomacy, which is cultural and educational development of our cooperation between the countries?

Already we have Kenyans here in Kazakhstan. I was really pleasantly surprised, including athletes from my own village right here. And that speaks to the people-to-people engagement. I think the people-to-people engagement is actually ahead of our government. The people are ahead of us and that will go a long way in building the culture, tourism.

We have agreed with the President here that the air connectivity will give us an opportunity for more people from Kazakhstan to connect with Kenya and experience our culture, and to build the people-to-people relationship as we build a business and enterprise and relationship between our two countries. The President was gracious enough to offer opportunities for Kenyans to attend college and university in Kazakhstan. I believe that there will also be mutual exchange of students so that we can enhance the people-to-people engagement and relationship.

One of the most important things right now to ask at the end of the state visit is, what do you think the future holds for our cooperation?

The future is very promising. I have invited the President Tokayev to come to Nairobi with a big delegation of business people, of government people, so that we can build a much more solid relationship. And the President has promised to come to Nairobi at an appropriate moment.

It is a very exciting moment, sitting where I sit, and I see a huge opportunity for growth of our bilateral relationship going all the way to business, going all the way to joint ventures and public-private partnerships, investment opportunities. We intend to learn from this great country about sovereign wealth fund, which at the moment in Kenya, I have proposed sovereign wealth fund, which is currently in Parliament on its way to being law.

That way, we can learn from the experience of the sovereign wealth fund of Kazakhstan, which I am told today has a portfolio of $85 billion. That is something to be very proud about. And it's along the same lines that we have established in the last couple of months the National Infrastructure Fund, again to mobilize resources, public resources, private sector resources, public-private partnerships for purposes of development. There is a wealth of expertise and capacity and knowledge that can be shared between our two countries. So, the future, I should say, the sky is the limit.