Kenya Plans Foreign Flights from August in Phased Reopening

NAIROBI (Capital Markets in Africa) — Kenya announced a resumption in international flights from Aug. 1 and lifted a ban on travel into its two biggest cities, saying the East African nation’s counties have reached a “reasonable level of preparedness” to fight the Covid-19 pandemic.

Travel into and out of the capital, Nairobi, Mombasa, and Mandera will resume from 4:00 a.m. on Tuesday, President Uhuru Kenyatta said in a televised speech. Domestic air travel will restart on July 15, while a nationwide night-time curfew will remain in place, he said.

Authorities will study patterns of interactions and any indications that the spread of the virus is worsening will result in reintroduction of travel restrictions, Kenyatta said. Kenya confirmed its first Covid-19 case in mid-March and by July 5 the nation had registered 7,886 of them and 160 deaths, according to the Ministry of Health.

“We are all much more at risk than we are when the restrictions were in place,” Kenyatta said. “Although the path to recovery is rocky and uneven, it is navigable.”

Places of worship can resume religious services for a maximum of 100 people and for not more than one hour. Worshipers younger than 13 years and older than 58 years will not be allowed to attend, Kenyatta said. The Ministry of Education will announce details on the resumption of the 2020 academic calendar by Tuesday, he said.

Output growth in sub-Saharan Africa’s third-largest economy slowed to an almost three-year low of 4.9% in the three months through March from a year earlier, compared with 5.5% in the previous quarter.

Source: Bloomberg Business News