Kenya will relax some of the restrictions that have been progressively building since the first case of Coronavirus was announced in the country in early March.

New Presidential Guidelines on COVID-19 pandemic.#KomeshaCorona pic.twitter.com/CkWq9FOJZV

— State House Kenya (@StateHouseKenya) July 6, 2020

Speaking in Nairobi today, President Uhuru Kenyatta said the decision to re-open the country was a balance between a health crisis and an economic crisis. He mentioned that while the country was not quite ready, a “reasonable levels of preparedness” to reopen had been attained.

He called on citizens to be responsible and to engage in minimal contact and movements and to delay “non-essential up-country travel.” They should also avoid interacting with the elderly and the ill

Some of the changes will be:

• The restriction of movement in and out of Nairobi, Mombasa and Mandera counties will end on July 7. The Government will then study patterns of infection over the next three weeks.
• Local air travel resumes on 15 July.
• International air travel resumes on August 1.
• Churches can re-open with a maximum of 100 attendees and each ceremony will be not more than an hour. Also the ill, and no one under 13 years or over 58 years will be allowed to attend.
• The evening curfew across the country, restrictions on wedding & funeral numbers, and a ban on political gatherings were all extended by another 30 days.

The President said it was not enough for the Government to pump resources into the economy using stimulus instruments, and that such efforts will go to waste if the people do not co-create solutions with the government.

He called on businesses to create new business models to find opportunities presented by the crisis. He cited the textile industry in Kenya, which had ramped up manufacturing, and emerged as a net exporter of PPEs (personal protective equipment) to the region and he called on other industries to emulate this.

The president has spent more of this speech emphasizing personal responsibility on citizens than he has on government efforts

He's also basically admitted that they're out of money for economic interventions and that we're on our own

Let's reimagine having money in our pockets https://t.co/TZEBoMuO4l

— mwanaume.com (@MarigaThoithi) July 6, 2020

EDIT: A day later, Prof George Magoha, Kenya’s Cabinet Secretary in the Ministry of Education, announced that the 2020 school calendar year will be considered lost due to COVID-19. He proclaimed that they had shelved a proposal to open for candidate classes in September. Instead, there will be two Form One class cohorts in the 2021 academic calendar, all learners in Grade 1 to 4; Standard 5 to 7; and Form 1 to 3 in 2020, will remain in their current classes in 2021 and there will be no KCPE and KCSE examinations in 2021.