Angola formally opens embassy in Nairobi

Angola on Friday formally opened its embassy in Nairobi a week after Kenya said it would start a diplomatic mission in Luanda.

The move is part the provisions in three agreements the Kenyan government signed with Angola following President Uhuru Kenyatta’s visit to Luanda in June 2014.

Angolan government officials led by the President of the Angolan National Assembly Jose Dapiede Dias Dos Santos said the new embassy will boost the friendly relations between the two countries and make it easier for Kenyans planning to visit Angola.

“We are glad to open our mission in Nairobi because it will help the relations of the people of both countries,” Mr Dos Santos told reporters after unveiling the embassy plaque along Nairobi’s Red Hill Road at Gigiri.

“Having this facility here is significant because it will boost our friendly relations with the people of Kenya,” he added.

The new Angolan ambassador to Nairobi, Mr Virgilio Marques de Faria, said the embassy will start offering services in two weeks once renovations on the offices are complete.

On January 15, 2015, a Cabinet meeting in Nairobi resolved to open embassies in Luanda and Havana, Cuba.

“Cabinet noted that the opening of an embassy in Luanda will solidify Kenya’s presence in the Southern Africa Region,” the meeting chaired by President Uhuru Kenyatta resolved.

“The Mission will serve the interests of Kenyans who are working, studying and transiting through Angola to other African countries, in particular, through the provision of consular services,” the Angolan officials said.

SIGNED THREE AGREEMENTS

When President Kenyatta toured Luanda in 2014, both governments signed three agreements: to establish a Joint Commission Cooperation, Memorandum of Understanding on Political Consultation between the Ministry of External Relation of Angola and Kenya’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs and International Trade, and the General Agreement on Economic, Scientific, Cultural and Technical Cooperation between the governments of Kenya and Angola.

At the time though, none of the countries had embassies. The nearest Angolan embassy to Kenya, for instance, was in Dar es Salaam, Tanzania which was also accredited to Nairobi.

The two countries could be seen as implementing what they agreed on last year. But it is also Kenya’s long shot to tap into Angola’s presence in key regional and international bodies.

Angola is currently a non-permanent member of the UN Security Council having secured votes in October during the last UN General Assembly meeting.

Luanda’s term in the UN’s most powerful organ expires in 2016 and Kenya is eying to take up one of the five non-permanent seats that are often given to Africa.

Ever since President Kenyatta’s government came to office, his diplomats at Foreign Affairs ministry have been holding silent lobbying to gain as much support as possible ahead of 2016.

Kenya has sat on the UNSC twice before, in 1973 and in 1997.

Every year, the General Assembly elects five of the ten non-permanent members.

Each region given slots, but a member must get at least two thirds of the General Assembly votes to secure the seat.

There are, in total, ten non-permanent members and five permanent members to the UNSC.

But Angola which rose from three decades of civil war also chairs the regional body, International Conference on the Great Lakes Region (ICGLR) to which Kenya is a member.

The body is tasked to resolve conflicts in South Sudan, DR Congo and the Central Africa Republic.

Besides, Angola also chairs the Group of African Ministers and Central Bank Governors at the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank.

Being Africa’s fastest growing economies, and with 60 per cent of its national budget funded by revenues from oil and diamonds, Kenya may want to learn a thing or two from Angola to run its nascent oil business.