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Arusha — The Aga-Khan Hospitals in Dar-es-salaam, Kisumu and Mombasa in Kenya will soon be expanded and upgraded following a financial agreement that has just been signed between the Aga Khan Development Network (AKDN) and French Co-operation Agency (AFD).

The disclosure was made here recently by East African Community Secretary General, Ambassador Liberat Mfumukeko while meeting the Aga Khan Diplomatic Representative in Kenya, Dr Azim Lakhani. He said their expansion programme will cost the three branches more than 40m USD in total, adding that the Aga Khan work in Dar es Salaam has already started.

The meeting was a followup of the Secretary General's visit to His Highness the Aga Khan on 11th November 2016, where the two met to discuss the possibility of expanding the Aga Khan Integrated Health Systems across all the EAC Partner States, especially in secondary cities of Kisumu, Mombasa, Arusha, Mwanza, Entebbe, Jinja, Butare and Ngozi, among others.

During the meeting, Ambassador Mfumukeko had also requested His Highness the Aga Khan to support their staff to build their capacity through scholarship programmes and also in different projects.

In another development, Dr Lakhani requested for Investment Promotion Service (IPS) programme in the areas of Agro-processing to be also supported by the Aga Khan, and informed the Secretary General that currently, AKDN has an Export Agro-processing industry where it empowers rural areas.
He said already the programme is being implemented in Kenya where about 7,000 farmers are being involved in Premier Food Inc (food processing), rigoken (vegetable processing) and All fruit (fruits processing), among others.

The Secretary General urged AKDN to ensure similar programmes are replicated in Tanzania and other EAC Partner States, where they also agreed to visit the AKDN Food Processing Plant in Ruiru and Murang'a in Kenya and implement their findings also in other partner states.

The East African Community and Aga Khan Development Network have a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) that was signed in 2012 specifying for poverty reduction, employment creation and income generation programmes as major cooperation areas.

They were to be implemented in the selected regions of the EAC Partner States through stronger regional and local markets by investing in infrastructure, social and educational enterprises, media and communications, financial services, among others.