OPINION: Why Kenya faces challenges in the Strategic Trade and Investment Partnership (STIP) talks with US

United States President Joe Biden recently pledged to make Nairobi the investment magnet in Africa.

For this to happen, both Kenya and the US will need to make considerable progress towards a bilateral trade deal under the framework of the Strategic Trade and Investment Partnership (STIP) talks.

The trade talks highlight initial focus areas into which major concerns for Kenya emerge.

These are in the negotiations around agriculture, good regulatory practices, workers’ rights, and environmental sustainability.

In the area of agriculture, Kenya will need to make sure that its bilateral trade deals with the US do not undermine broader African trade interests in the Common Market for Eastern and Southern Africa (COMESA), the East African Community (EAC) or the African Continental Free Trade Area (AfCFTA).

The continental rhetoric by Kenya at African Heads of State meetings of the African Union (AU) does not always match the veracity with which Kenya pursues its parochial national economic interests.

Kenyan access to US agricultural markets for its produce will need to be negotiated for a win-win outcome. The US agricultural sector is highly subsidized, corporatized, and industrialized.

Special interests in agriculture create tariff and non-tariff barriers to imports that compete with American produce. This is especially true with the economic nationalist environment created by Trump and continued by the Biden administration.

Kenya will run into many of these trade barriers. Kenya will also struggle to negotiate anti-dumping measures, especially in the poultry sector where a big US agro-industry that is heavily subsidized, can flood Kenya with cheap poultry products thus crippling the domestic market.

In relation to good regulatory practices, the area of intellectual property emerges.

When US companies come to invest in Kenya, the government does not have patent and intellectual property laws keeping pace with innovation, to protect Kenyan intellectual innovation in Artificial Intelligence (AI) and information technology more broadly.

There is a danger of the next MPESA being shipped off to Silicon Valley.

Lastly, workers' rights and environmental sustainability are issues that need key review.

US corporate investment in Africa need not lead to a race to the bottom. Corporations have a social and legal responsibility to protect workers’ rights and to protect the environment.

Of concern is the glaring absence of the Central Organization of Trade Unions (COTU) and workers’ representatives in the negotiations around workers’ rights.

Included in this, are issues of fair and livable wages, workers' compensation, health, death, and disability payments.

At what level will government-driven policy work to ensure American employers are encouraged to maintain local and international standards in working conditions for their workers in environments of weak enforcement?

Regarding environmental sustainability, private corporate interests will need to be regulated to ensure the common pool of environmental resources they use is sustainably exploited.

Both the American and Kenyan governments should create frameworks for investors in both countries to develop green technology industries that reduce their carbon footprint and transfer technologies for a cleaner and safer environment.

Trade negotiating is about compromise. The Kenyan and US teams will engage in tough negotiating banter to advance and protect the interests of their representative states.

Professor Monda teaches political science, international relations, and foreign policy at the City University of New York. @dmonda1, davidmonda.com