PRESIDENT Uhuru has said Kenya will rely on Arab countries to manage the newly discovered oil in Turkana county. Addressing the Third Africa-Arab Summit in Kuwait city on Wednesday, Uhuru said his government wants oil to be beneficial to Kenya and not a curse as has been witnessed in some countries.

He said Kenya is already reaching out to the region on how to extract the mineral without causing conflict. "We intend to borrow a lot and rely heavily on the brotherly generosity of Arab nations to get the knowhow and technology to conduct cost effective exploration and extraction of the resource," Uhuru said.

He said Kenya has discovered economically viable reserves of oil, coal, natural gas and underground water, which need to be exploited to steer the country to greater heights.

"We have already reached out to various Arab states to encourage their private investors to consider the opportunities in Kenya in the energy subsector," Uhuru said.

The President said Kenya has reached out to Arab nations to strengthen the supply of crude oil and liquefied petroleum gas."Energy is a critical component of commodity prices and the cost of living. A key pillar of our economic management is prudent intervention to bring and maintain these costs to a sustainable level," Uhuru said.

He said the framework of the Africa-Arab brotherhood offers the best opportunity to facilitate key economic advantage of the country in the energy sector.

Uhuru said the closer Kenya-Arab relation will lead to the creation of more jobs for youth locally and in the Arabian region. He said Kenya is streamlining immigration issues that will see its citizens seeking jobs in the Arab world having better working conditions.

“We want those who are coming to work here and indeed the entire Arab countries to have decent wages, be always accounted for and have a better working environment,” Uhuru said.

The President said more than 100,000 Kenyans are currently working in the United Arab Emirates, Bahrain, Jordan, Dubai, Qatar and Kuwait.The summit is the third to be held after a lull of 36 years. The first one was held in 1977 and the second in 2010.

The meeting was attended by Cabinet Secretaries Amina Mohamed (Foreign Affairs), Davies Chirchir (Energy), Najib Balala (Mining) and Phyllis Kandie (Tourism). President Uhuru skipped the 23rd Commonwealth Summit in Sri Lanka last week to attend the summit.

State House spokesman Manoah Esipisu said the President opted to attend the Africa-Arab Summit as he considered it to be of more value to Kenyans than the Commonwealth one.