By Yassin Juma
NAIROBI
Kenya on Wednesday will host a joint U.N.-World Bank summit on peace and development in the Horn of Africa.
"U.N. Secretary General Ban Ki-moon and World Bank President Jim Yong Kim will be attending the summit," Kenyan Foreign Ministry spokesman Edwin Limo told Anadolu Agency on Monday.
"Both are expected in the country from Tuesday," he said.
The foreign ministers of Djibouti, Somalia, Kenya, Ethiopia, South Sudan and Eritrea are expected to attend the summit.
The African Union; the Intergovernmental Authority on Development (IGAD), a regional bloc; and the European Union will also be represented at the summit.
"The summit's main agenda will be peace and development," said Limo.
"Our region is currently going through many challenges relating to security; this has become an impediment to the development of Horn of Africa countries," he asserted.
Instability in Somalia and South Sudan has had a negative impact on the two countries' neighbors – especially Kenya and Ethiopia, which host the largest number of refugees in Africa.
"How do we deal with this? That is what the meeting will be focusing on," the spokesman explained.
South Sudan, which became the world's newest nation in 2011 after seceding from Sudan, descended into chaos and bloodshed late last year following an alleged coup attempt against President Salva Kiir by his sacked vice-president, Riek Machar.
Thousands of South Sudanese have since lost their lives in the conflict, while more than 1.7 million have been displaced.
Somalia has remained in the grip of on-again, off-again violence since the outbreak of civil war in 1991.
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