By Fred Mwangi Having been born to a father who was a doctor and a mother who was a nurse, many expected that Jonathan Mueke would pursue a ‘quiet career’.
However, from his days as a student in the US, Mueke started honing skills in political organising and campaigning. He was among a group of African students campaigning for Barack Obama in the the senatorial race in Illinois in 2004.
Mueke was organising secretary for the African Students Association and a founder and president of the Kenya Community Abroad, Michigan Chapter.
When Obama declared interest in the senatorial seat, he led a group of Kenyans to form ‘Kenyans for Obama’. The group would later attract other students from other African countries.
“We became a lobby group support to Obama though we could not vote for him,” he says. He says he picked important lesson in leadership and politics.
Mueke was born and raised in Kilimani and went to the nearby Kilimani Primary School. The 37-year-old with an impressive CV as an IT expert in various firms in the US joined Nairobi School for his secondary education and soon after left the country to join Wayne State University in Michigan, USA.
He studied for his BSc in Computer Science while working as a systems administrator for the university’s libraries. While still in Michigan, he enrolled for his MBA and managed to, over the years, work as a systems developer in enterprise messaging for K-Mart Corporation, a project leader in plant technology; as support for Daimler-Chrysler Corporation and as a technology services manager for FiServ Inc.
In some quarters, he was deemed as a new entrant in politics as he unsuccessfully vied for Westlands parliamentary seat in the 2007. However, last year, he was a surprise running mate for the Nairobi governor Dr Evans Kidero’s.
One of the many factors that saw him get the ticket was that he was deemed as technologically savvy and with entrepreneurial and management skills. “This is what Nairobi needs to face the challenges of youth unemployment, infrastructure development, service delivery, inefficiency and change management,” he says.
And although many Nairobians say the county government is not working like it should, Mueke says the county leadership will have delivered most of its promises before the next General Election. He reckons that the county government has been losing a lot of revenue from dishonest workers, which can only be sealed through computerisation.
And since he is mandated in ensuring the ICT roadmap for Nairobi is achieved, the deputy governor believes services will be fully computerised by 2015. “The county did not even have a server, consequently private and crucial documents were easily lost and hacked into.
A website is already up and running,” he says. Mueke says that issues touching on deputy governors and their job-descriptions and other terms of service need be defined properly and entrenched in the Constitution. He says that the Constitution says nothing about impeaching a deputy county governor as it happened in Machakos county DG Bernard Kiala who was later reinstated.
He said the Constitution is silent on their roles and makes them look as if they have no role and that the County Government Act should be amended. Mueke is married to Catherine Wanjiku and they have a son, Trevor Mueke. He enjoys travelling and spending time with his family.
He also goes to the gym. One of his favourite books is The World Is Flat: A Brief History of the Twenty-First Century, which is an international bestselling book by Thomas Friedman. The other is the 21 Irrefutable Laws of Leadership.
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