Powerful roles give minister high visibility

Perhaps because she has had to play a high profile role in most of flagship projects paraded by the administration of President Uhuru Kenyatta, Devolution and Planning Cabinet Secretary Anne Waiguru has been permanently in the limelight.

She was at the centre during the launch of the Uwezo Fund, the Huduma Centre, the national dialogue on the wage bill, name it.

A strong personality who talks straight and plainly, she has a reputation of a boss who does not suffer fools gladly and quick to display impatience with officers she considers  sloppy and old-fashioned.

Within the civil service, unsubstantiated claims and tales abound of officers who rubbed her the way and ended transferred to positions and offices not related to either their skills nor experience.

Her story is a compelling study on the impact of personality in a powerful office. The former powerful directorate of personnel management, the ultimate authority on human resources management in the national government, is in her office.

Although the Public Service Commission and the Salaries Review Commission are independent institutions, they report to her in a dotted line, especially when it comes to implementation of decisions.

Among her peers, she is more or less a first among equals because of wielding power over decisions like hiring of staff and deployment, which cuts across the whole public sector.

As minister in charge of devolution, she co-chairs the Inter Government Council that brings together all governors and national government ministers and the Transitional Authority.

Indeed, Ms Waiguru  is in-charge of a docket that combines big departments which used to be fully fledged ministries with large budgets, including the former ministry of Planning  and National Development, the former ministries of Local Government,  Public Service, Special Programmes, Youth Affairs, Northern Kenya and Gender.

Yet, apart from a stint at the Treasury where she worked as a relatively junior officer, her experience in public service is not expansive.  Her CV shows that she has   limited experience running a large organization.

She holds a Masters degree in Economic Policy from the University of Nairobi and is evidently bright but her rise to prominence can be described as meteoric.

Before Mr Kenyatta was appointed as minister for Finance following the exit of Mr Amos Kimunya in 2009, she was a low key Treasury official working as a governance adviser.

One of the assignments she performed as governance adviser was the hiring of forensic auditors to investigate the maize scandal.

She worked under the Directorate of Economic Affairs under Mr Justus Nyamunga and Mr Henry Rotich, the current Cabinet Secretary, National Treasury.

Later she was appointed director of the Integrated Financial Information Management Information system (IFMIS).

She  has won accolades for having re-engineered the project.

She sat her A-level exams in 1989 at the Moi Forces Academy in Nairobi where  she studied Mathematics, Physics and Chemistry.

On graduating from the University of Nairobi, she worked for Transparency International under John Githongo and Mwalimu Mate as an intern and research assistant. After TI, she joined the Kenya Leadership Institute then ran by well-known economist, David Ndii.