This morning the President of the Italian Republic, Sergio Mattarella, will fly from Nairobi to Malindi on a private flight, but he will not stop in the town that hosts (mostly temporarily) hundreds of his compatriots. His is an institutional and strategic visit to the Luigi Broglio Space Centre in Ngomeni, located about 35 kilometres from Malindi.
The President is due to return to the capital in the afternoon, to meet part of the community of Italian residents in Kenya (including entrepreneurs from Malindi and Watamu) at the residence of the Italian Ambassador. Here he will give a short speech for the benefit of his compatriots.
At the Space Centre, he will be accompanied by the director of the Italian Space Agency, Giorgio Saccoccia, and two Kenyan ministers. He will have time to visit the base, meet the Italian technicians and engineers and appreciate the technologies used, and share them with representatives of the current Kenyan government, for a very important visit to reaffirm the sense of our presence in Kenya for almost sixty years and to confirm the promise of a future in which Kenya will be called upon more and more to take advantage of Italian know-how in the field of space technology and research.