The Kenyan government is determined to end the terrorist threat to the country’s tourism industry, Cabinet Secretary Phyllis Kandie said at a forum in Washington last Tuesday. “We must fight and win this war,” said the Secretary for East Africa, Commerce and Tourism.

The terror attacks carried out following Kenya’s 2011 intervention in Somalia represent “the price we are paying — not only for Kenya, but for the rest of the world,” Ms Kandie said, noting that terrorism is an international scourge.

The country therefore needs “understanding” from its international partners. Ms Kandie criticised the US State Department’s recent travel warning as “something that is really hurting us.”

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She also faulted sections of the international media for allegedly exaggerating the degree of danger faced by visitors to Kenya. Some reports make it appear that terrorism is widespread when it is actually “isolated,” she said.

“I’m telling you Kenya is safe,” Ms Kandie said at the forum in Washington attended by about 100 members of the diaspora as well as some prospective investors in the country’s tourism sector.

The minister spoke the day after a national radio network in the US reported that no American has been killed in a terror attack in Kenya in the past decade. During that same period, added the report by Public Radio International, more Americans died at the hands of terrorists in the state of Texas than in all of Africa.

The number of US visitors to Africa has steadily declined in recent years — from about 408,000 in 2010 to 352,000 last year.

Americans travelling to Kenya account for a sizable share of US tourist totals for Africa. About 123,000 US citizens came to Kenya in 2012, with the number falling to 115,000 last year.