(MENAFN – SomTribune) Following targeted meetings between the two parties in Nairobi, the Republic of Somaliland and the Republic of Kenya agreed to further develop cooperation in several education sectors.

Somaliland’s Education Minister Ahmed Mohamed Derie, currently on an official visit to the East African country, met his Kenyan counterpart, Cabinet Secretary for Education, Professor George Magoha, in his Jogoo House office.

Details of the cooperation were not disclosed.

“Our visit aimed to explore other avenues of cooperation with international partners based here and Kenyan educational institutions headed by the Ministry of Education,” Minister Derie said.

Somaliland currently hosts what is said to be the largest number of Kenyan teachers in the region. Other professional Kenyan nationals are placed in various government and private institutions in various capacities. In addition, there is a large Kenyan expatriate community living permanently in Somaliland.

In December last year, relations between Kenya and Somaliland reached a stage where the two presidents, Uhuru Kenyatta and Musa Bihi Abdi, respectively, signed a memorandum of understanding proposing broad collaboration covering education, travel, diplomacy, agriculture and infrastructure. among others.

President Musa Bihi’s visit to Kenya and the agreement between the two established democracies in the region caused a stir in neighboring Somalia.

The troubled Horn of Africa country, which is still protected by regional and international security agencies thirty years later, was loath to see Somaliland further recognized for its laudable history of peace, stability, development and of democracy. Somalia interpreted the visit as another manifestation of the deterioration of its relations with Kenya, which rested mainly – but not solely on – a line of maritime borders between the two countries in the seas of the Indian Ocean which ‘they shared.

Somaliland partially lost its internationally recognized independence in 1960 to merge with Somalia in an unhappy partnership that had never been legally consummated. Somaliland pulled out of the disastrous, one-sided affair in 1991 by deciding to stand on its own two feet – a step it has never regretted since.

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