The German carmaker has announced it will resume producing cars in Kenya by the end of the year, in a partnership with a local automaker aimed at selling more cars across Eastern Africa.
Kenya is back in the business of assembling vehicles after Volkswagen South Africa on Wednesday signed a deal with the Kenyan government aimed at establishing an assembly plant in Thika – an industrial town northeast of the capital Nairobi.
VW South Africa said in a statement it would assemble its popular Polo Vivo model there, in collaboration with local carmaker Kenya Vehicle Manufacturers (KVM), in which the government is a major shareholder.
Volkswagen South Africa chief executive Thomas Schäfer noted that the world’s biggest carmaker by numbers believed in Kenya’s potential to develop “a very big fully-fledged” automotive industry. “The East African Community has got the potential, and today is the first step in this direction that we want to take with our passenger cars,” Schafer said. Read the rest of this story here.