Kenya and Tanzania will on Friday engage in bilateral talks following the July decision to ban foreigners from doing small businesses.
EAC cabinet secretary Beatrice Askul told the National Assembly’s Defence, intelligence and foreign affairs committee that a technical team is currently in Tanzania to negotiate on the lifting of the ban.
Ms. Askul said Tanzania had assured Kenya that the ban will not affect its citizens and any issues will be addressed diplomatically.
“As much as the ban is anchored in Tanzania law,it may not directly apply to Kenya. They were addressing their other interests on this and they’ve given us assurance that through our embassy, should any Kenyan fall victim to this, they will address,” Ms Askul said.
“And it is a local situation. Their problem was China and the Chinese who were infiltrating their markets. The Chinese, the Turkish who are now in all the business, and maybe in Kenya it’s the same. That is their problem.”
She said that the medium small and Micro Enterprises(MSMEs) have been infiltrated by foreign apparatus.
“So those are the things that they(Tanzania) want to address and they have to do so by law. And they have assured us that any Kenyan face that, then we should address it with them,” Ms Askul said.
“They did not have any other way of communicating rather than saying foreigners. So we fall under that cluster. But as I said, in terms of implementation, they shared with us in confidence and we believe that it is also their confidence that they had a bigger problem that they are trying to address.”
“We have a technical team currently negotiating with Tanzania. We will be meeting Ministers on October 3, 2025 in Tanzania where we expect to sign a bilateral agreement.”
By Bradley Shahenza
