Raila Odinga meets Chinese envoy for talks on BBI, coronavirus vaccine

Former Prime Minister Raila Odinga on Tuesday held talks with China’s ambassador to Kenya Zhou Pingjian at his Capitol Hill offices.

The two leaders discussed local and global issues, including the BBI report, search for COVID-19 vaccine as well as the U.S. elections and its implications to the world.

“The world needs a speedy return to multilateralism and co-operation in managing global affairs, including COVID-19 and climate change,” Mr. Odinga said during the meeting.

He also welcomed China to scale up its support for infrastructure development in Kenya and Africa.

Mr Odinga took opportunity to explain key aspects of the Report of the Steering Committee on the Implementation of the Building Bridges to a United Kenya Taskforce.

He reiterated that there won’t be significant new ideas brought into the document ahead of the referendum expected early next year, except for editorial work to make the report explicit on certain demands by various groups where it sounds vague or general, as is the case with the issues of pastoralists.

“The report is basically done and there is little likelihood that new ideas will be pushed into it. However, there are groups that feel their views were not captured in the manner they were presented during the collection of views and those are the corrections we are promising to make,” Mr Odinga said.

On his part, the Chinese ambassador reiterated his country’s commitment to taking the lead in the search for a safe and effective COVID-19 vaccine and making it affordable and available to Africa.

He pledged more support for Kenya’s industrial development, in line with Mr. Odinga’s calls for more focus on productivity.