- Kilifi North MP Owen Baya wanted the Committee on Implementation to inquire into the state of agreement between Kenya and Italy on training.
- Italy has been accused of failing to honor the agreement.
Image: COURTESY
Parliament will today issue a statement in response to a petition filed by a legislator regarding a deal by the Italian government to train Kenyan youth in aerospace.
In a five-year agreement signed in 2020, Italy which runs the Luigi Broglio Space Centre in Malindi, is required to provide 15 scholarships to Kenyans each at Sh2.6 million annually.
The deal which has been negotiated since 2012 also allows Kenya to earn Sh25 million annually from Italy for the use of the land hosting the centre.
In his petition, Kilifi North MP Owen Baya wanted the Committee on Implementation to inquire into the state of the agreement on the enhancement of the capacity of Kenyan public institutions of higher learning in training in space science and technology.
“Could the chairperson also explain the current state of training of Kenyan nationals on aerospace science technology, courses and scholarships in other disciplines as per the agreement?” a statement by Baya read.
Baya also sought to know from the Defence Ministry the nature of development support programmes that the Italian government has undertaken for the people of the Ngomeni area in his county.
His statement follows a recent move by the government to initiate a process to withdraw from a joint treaty accusing their counterpart of threatening the sovereignty of the country.
Defence Cabinet Secretary Aden Duale told MPs recently that he has briefed both the President and Attorney General of the intention to pull out from the bilateral treaty he termed as a raw deal to Kenya.
“Kenya is yet to see the significant benefit of this agreement either locally or nationally despite its existence for the last 60 years. The centre is only benefiting the Italian government. The Italian side has made only token fulfillments on select obligations while avoiding the substantive ones,” Duale said.
The centre has been in existence since 1962.
Based on the agreement signed in 1975 and 1995, the centre was not meant to be an income-generating venture.
In 2020, however, the government retired the agreement after eight years of negotiations meaning the Sh25 million it earns is set for review every five years, with another Sh5 million being increased.
The space centre was set up through a public-private partnership between the Aerospace Research Centre at the Sapienza University of Rome, the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) in the US and the government of Kenya.
It is used for the launching of sounding rockets, studying the propagation of radio waves and archiving satellite data.
Under the new deal, Kenya is expected to pocket 50 per cent of the profits of contracts with third parties for commercial services provided by the facility, including launching services, satellite tracking and telemetry, communication, data acquisition, surveillance and navigation.