Mr. Kariuki Kevin Kihara
Trade and Investment Officer, The AGOA Linkage in COMESA Program
 

Mr. Kariuki Kevin Kihara is the Trade and Investment Officer for the AGOA Linkage in COMESA (ALINC), a constituent program of the Common Market for Eastern and South Africa (COMESA).

Mr. Kihara holds a B.A in Government and Economics from The University of Texas at Austin and serves on the boards of numerous editorial and charity organizations in the United States and Kenya. He is an avid golfer and collects monographs and the early colonial photography of indigenous East African communities.

COMESA (Common Market for Eastern and Southern Africa) is a regional economic grouping (REC) with 21 member states with a total population of 385 million people and is the only REC with presence in the United States. In his position he is responsible for trade and business development for 106 companies across the COMESA region, exporting to the United States under the Africa Growth and Opportunities Act (AGOA).

While AGOA serves as a catalyst for increasing exports from eligible Sub-Saharan African countries to the United States, ALINC is designed to accelerate completion of export trade transactions between African sellers and US buyers. ALINC is also mandated to leverage technical and financial resources from the United States to the member states of COMESA in areas such as in the development of small and medium scale enterprises (SME's), housing and infrastructure finance, renewable energy and agribusiness