What the Consulate has been doing on the ground.

Honouring a Kenyan officer at the Army Command and Staff College

The Honorary Consul attended as a special guest at the graduation ceremony of Major Tonny Mwenda Gitari of the Republic of Kenya, held at Nilkantha Hall, Army Command and Staff College, Shivapuri.

Kenyan officers training in Nepal are among the most concrete expressions of the two countries' shared standing as major troop contributors to United Nations peacekeeping. Attending in person is a small thing that matters: it tells an officer far from home that his country's representative is in the room.

Nepal–Morocco Relations: The Way Forward

The Consulate attended a forum on Nepal–Morocco relations at Jhamsikhel, Lalitpur, organised by the Centre for South Asian Studies with the Moroccan mission — part of a widening set of Africa-facing conversations in Kathmandu.

Kenya's interest here is direct. The more Nepal engages with the African continent as a whole, the stronger the case for the trade corridors, air connectivity, and institutional links this office has been working to open.

Broadening Kenya's diplomatic network

The Consulate widened Kenya's relationships across Kathmandu's diplomatic corps this quarter — five foreign missions engaged in total, opening new entry points for cultural and economic cooperation.

• Lithuania — H.E. Amb. Diana Mickeviciene, at the Lithuanian Contemporary Textile Screen Exhibition (16 Apr)
• Slovenia — H.E. Amb. Tomaz Mencin, at the CNI Secretariat (19 Apr), exploring economic-diplomatic cooperation
• Canada — H.E. High Commissioner Chris Cooter, Hon. Consul Dr. Buddha Basnyat, and Commercial Minister Ed Jager, via the Nepal–Canada Chamber of Commerce (20 Apr)
• Armenia — Counsellor Tigran Grigoryan and Second Secretary Dr. Ani Yeremyan, at the official opening of Armenia's Honorary Consulate (21 May)

African Day 2026 — Celebrating Unity, Diversity and Partnership

The Honorary Consul represented Kenya at African Day Celebrations 2026, hosted by the African Consulate of Nepal at Mercure Kathmandu, alongside representatives of eleven other African nations: Ethiopia, Guinea, Tunisia, Uganda, Zambia, Mauritius, Morocco, Rwanda, Seychelles, South Africa, and Tanzania.

Consular duty of care — supporting a Kenyan national in need

The quarter's foremost consular responsibility involved locating and supporting a Kenyan national in the welfare and legal process following detention in Kathmandu. Securing access required sustained coordination across the Consular Office, the Department of Immigration, and the Department of Prison Management.

Once contact was established, the Consulate delivered essential supplies and humanitarian support, and has since maintained regular welfare check-ins to confirm the individual remains safe and well cared for, with monitoring ongoing. Out of respect for the individual's privacy, further case details are not published here and are reported directly to the High Commission.

Navigating Nepal's political transition

Following Nepal's general elections on 5 March 2026 — a landslide for the Rastriya Swatantra Party and a generational shift in Nepal's politics — and the appointment of Prime Minister Balen Shah, the Consulate made a high-level courtesy visit to Nepal's Ministry of Foreign Affairs to engage with the new leadership, and initiated discussions to revitalise the Kenya–Nepal Political Consultation Mechanism.

The incoming administration's emphasis on transparency and results-oriented diplomacy opens a window for Kenya to be positioned as a strategic partner on the African continent. The Consulate's priority through the transition was continuity: consistent representation of Kenyan interests between outgoing and incoming administrations, and uninterrupted consular service to the Kenyan community in Nepal.

Culture, camaraderie, and a farewell

Alongside the formal programme, the exhibition of Kenyan artifacts and traditional items at the College opened a people-to-people channel that institutional cooperation alone does not reach.

The Honorary Consul later hosted a farewell dinner at his residence for Major Daniel W. Kasamba, attended by his counterpart Major Sunil Shrestha of the Nepali Army. Informal engagements of this kind are where goodwill between two defence communities is actually built and sustained.

Telecommunications and the digital economy

The Honorary Consul hosted a dinner meeting with Mr. Michael Foley, Chief Executive Officer of Ncell, one of Nepal's leading telecommunications operators and a significant actor in the country's digital connectivity and mobile financial services ecosystem.

Mr. Foley holds both Kenyan and Canadian citizenship, and the conversation turned on where telecommunications and digital platforms might carry Kenya–Nepal collaboration — cross-border payments, digital services, and the commercial infrastructure that trade between distant markets depends on.

Trade, investment & tourism groundwork

The Consulate is progressing an institutional partnership between the Confederation of Nepalese Industries (CNI) and the Kenya Chamber of Commerce & Industry, and has engaged Mr. K.K. Mutai, Acting CEO of the Kenya National Chamber of Commerce & Industry (KNCCI), to build momentum toward a formal MoU. With Nepal's business community restructuring around the new administration's Economic Vision 2030, the approach has deliberately favoured sustainable B2B linkages over large set-piece events that may not survive a shift in policy.

Three sector priorities carry the work forward: market research for Kenyan tea and coffee exports, aimed at premium distribution channels in Kathmandu; promotion of Kenya to Nepal's fast-growing adventure travel market, supported by a proposed offline General Sales Agent arrangement with Kenya Airways — discussed with Chief Commercial Officer Mr. Julius Thairu — to improve route visibility and lower fares; and continuous monitoring of bilateral trade volumes against the 2024 baseline.

On tourism, discussions with the Nepal Tourism Board and Kenya Tourism Board are exploring how to promote Kenya as a destination for Nepal's large trekking and adventure travel community.

On outward investment specifically, the Consulate has been transparent with the High Commission that current Nepal Rastra Bank policy under the Foreign Investment and Technology Transfer Act, 2019 restricts direct outward investment by Nepali citizens and entities — a structural constraint the Consulate is working around through joint ventures, institutional collaboration, and diaspora-driven investment channels.

The Honorary Consulate is inaugurated

Kenya's Ambassador to Nepal, H.E. Peter Maina Munyiri, inaugurated the Consular Office on the fourth floor of the City Express Complex in Kamaladi, Kathmandu, at a ceremony hosted by Honorary Consul Mr. Chandra Tandan. The Ambassador committed to joint work on promoting trade and on widening cooperation in cultural and other fields.

A reception followed that evening at Aloft Kathmandu Thamel, under the theme of fostering friendship and exchange between Kenya and Nepal.

Received by Kathmandu's diplomatic community

The inauguration drew heads of mission and diplomats posted in Kathmandu, representatives of Nepal's business community, and members of the African diplomatic community in Nepal, with mementoes exchanged between the Consulate and its guests.

Those introductions became the working relationships recorded further up this page — the missions engaged through 2026, the chamber-of-commerce channels, and the African Day platform.