This archive report was first published on 27 November 2019.
Uhuru Kenyatta, the President of Kenya, has spoken out for the first time about his historic meeting with opposition leader Raila Odinga, which lasted over 19 hours.
Speaking at the launch of the Building Bridges Initiative (BBI) report at the Bomas of Kenya on November 27, 2019, Uhuru Kenyatta revealed that he had not been prepared to meet with Odinga after the 2017 general elections due to the backlash that followed.
According to Uhuru, the two leaders spent an hour sipping tea without discussing anything, and no one knew that the meeting would lead to the formation of the BBI.
"I thank Raila for the fact that our first meeting was not easy, each of us was afraid to speak, it took 45 minutes without discussing the agenda of the meeting, we were just drinking tea," Uhuru said.
Uhuru added that after a one-hour break, they began discussing and discovered that their differences were resolvable, and that was when the BBI was born.
