Cabinet nominee has an impressive career record in international affairs and diplomacy

Amb Amina Mohammed

By MACHARIA GAITHO May 8  2013

 In Summary

• She has also worked as the UN assistant secretary-general and deputy executive director of the United Nations Environment Programme in Nairobi, from where she made her abortive bid for the World Trade Organisation leadership just before President Uhuru Kenyatta tapped her to head the Foreign Affairs docket.

If the vetting team Thursday questions Ms Amina Mohammed’s experience and credentials to serve as Cabinet Secretary for Foreign Affairs, she might wow the committee with a resume that covers extensive stints in the docket.

The lawyer and career diplomat has risen through the ranks in the diplomatic service since 1986.

She was appointed Justice PS in 2008 when the ministry required a diplomat as the nerve centre of delicate negotiations involving various western powers; the UN, the International Criminal Court and other multilateral institutions in the wake of Kenya’s descent in post-election violence. She was also at the Justice ministry during the road towards a new Constitution.

She has also worked as the UN assistant secretary-general and deputy executive director of the United Nations Environment Programme in Nairobi, from where she made her abortive bid for the World Trade Organisation leadership just before President Uhuru Kenyatta tapped her to head the Foreign Affairs docket.

Ms Mohammed was still awaiting vetting when President Kenyatta travelled to the Somali Conference in London on invitation by British Prime Minister David Cameron.

It was a significant first visit to a western capital that served to confirm an about-turn on threats to shun the new government over President Kenyatta and Deputy President William Ruto’s indictment by the ICC.

If confirmed, Ms Mohammed will come into office when relations between Kenyan and its key western allies — notably the UK, the US, Germany and the Scandinavian countries — hit an all-time low with the pre-election spats over the ICC charges and accusations from the Kenyatta camp that the west was backing his rival Raila Odinga and had engineered the indictments.

Ms Mohammed will have a challenging task smoothing over diplomatic and economic relations, especially if things get worse in the weeks and months to come depending on the stance adopted by President Kenyatta and Deputy President Ruto as the trials approach.

The soft-spoken Ms Mohammed is the quintessential diplomat, low key, apolitical on the surface, and non-controversial.

Thus it remains to be seen whether she will assert herself at the Foreign ministry where PS Thuita Mwangi exerts a powerful presence as a key political strategist and drafter of what might be termed the Uhuru Kenyatta doctrine in relation to The Hague and western powers.