Kenya and Somalia have agreed to reopen there border after a more than a decade of closer in October 2011 after attacks by radical Islamists Somali group “Al- Shabaab”.
This follows an announcement from a high level joint ministerial meeting held in Nairobi that focused on cooperation, security as well as trade and the movement of people.
“ We have resolved that the border between Kenya and Somalia will be reopened in a phased manner within the next 90 days effective today,” minister for interior Mr Kithure Kindiki said.
This had been announced earlier in July last year after frontier talks between the then president of Kenya Uhuru Kenyatta and his Somali counterpart Hassan Sheikh Mohamud though it didn’t materialize.
Meanwhile during the press conference Kindiki said that they work closely with Somalia to improve on security, information sharing and mechanism for cross border collaboration between the two countries.
Earlier in 2011 Kenya sent troops into Somalia to combat the Al Qaeda affiliated Jihadists and up to date its a major contributor of troops to the African Union military operation against the group.
In 2013 there was a retaliatory assaults that included the bloody siege at the West gate mall in Nairobi that left 67 dead and an attack on the Garrissa University in 2015 that also left close to 148 dead.
Sheik Muhamud on resuming office launched a war against the militants and by 2011 they were ousted from Mogadishu though still remain entrenched in some parts of the rural central and southern Somalia.
However despite their shared fight against the militants, Kenya and Somalia have had a tumultuous relationship.
Meanwhile Kenya and Somalia share a close to 680 kilometre land border and have been locked in a dispute for years over a potentially oil and gas rich chuck of the Indian Ocean.