This is why Kenya is hosting UNCTAD 14
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This is why Kenya is hosting UNCTAD 14
About a year after hosting the Global Entrepreneurship Summit, Kenya is once again hosting a global meeting, the UNCTAD 14.
The meeting is hosting about 7,000 delegates including heads of State and Government, ministers, economists, private-sector representatives, and civil society.
At the monthly consultations between the President of the Trade and Development Board, Ambassador Alberto Pedro D’Alotto, and UNCTAD member States on 17 November 2015, Kenya offered to host the fourteenth United Nations Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTAD XIV), including the World Investment Forum and the civil society events, in Nairobi in July 2016. The generous offer was unanimously endorsed by the member States.
UNCTAD XIV was originally set to be held in Lima, Peru in March 2016, but in early September, the Government of Peru informed UNCTAD that it could no longer host the conference due to the latest negative forecasts for the El Niño weather event.
Following this announcement, other members of the group of Latin American countries (GRULAC) expressed an interest in hosting the quadrennial conference, but none could formalize an offer. The host of UNCTAD conferences usually alternates between Africa, Asia and the Pacific region, and the Latin America and Caribbean region. Without an alternative proposal from GRULAC, the membership agreed to allow countries in other regions to make an offer.
Unctad IV
Kenya previously hosted UNCTAD IV held in May 1976. The last two conferences were held in Ghana for Africa in 2008 and in Qatar for Asia and the Pacific region in 2012.
The Conference was opened on Sunday by Kenya’s President Uhuru Kenyatta in the presence of Mr. Ban and UNCTAD Secretary-General Mukhisa Kituyi. The Vice-President of Uganda, Edward Kiwanuka Ssekandi, represented Yoweri Museveni, Uganda’s President, who is attending the African Union summit taking place in Kigali.
Speakers at the ceremony reflected on the theme of the Conference – “From decision to action” – and on the fact that it was the first international Conference since a series of goal-setting exercises in 2015, including the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development, the climate deal agreed in Paris at the twenty-first session of the Conference of the Parties and the Addis Ababa Action Agenda for financing development.