Government failed to ensure Amina landed top post
What you need to know:
International positions of that kind are extraordinarily competitive.
Very highly qualified individuals from very many states do apply.
And it takes extraordinary and highly expensive organisation for a candidate to succeed.
Without direct official assistance from his or her country, he or she is doomed to failure.
Ever since my days in Kenya’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs – where I was in charge mainly of drafting replies to queries and complaints from the foreign missions in Nairobi – Kenya has gone on to play only the most lackadaisical role in international organisations.
And the reason is clear for all and sundry to see. I later came face to face with it when, as a Unicef employee in Geneva in the mid-1970s, I sometimes stumbled upon Dr Julius Gikonyo Kiano – a senior Cabinet minister in the Kenyatta and Moi regimes – in the eateries or drinking houses of that Alpine Swiss city, eating or drinking completely alone.
There was not a single person – leave alone mission – from Nairobi officially attached to Dr Kiano and well briefed to facilitate his activities to ensure his mission succeeded. Among the probable reasons he did not succeed in getting proper grounding was that Dr Kiano, a humble person, did not crow whenever he had an impending journey to Europe or the United States.
And yet, if the minister had secured that important UNCTAD job in Geneva, official Kenya would have gained directly and immensely. But, in Nairobi’s apparent official lack of interest in Dr Kiano’s mission, the post went to the candidate of a West African state better schooled in international behaviour.
TO CONCLUDE
That is why it is easy for me to assume that our sister Amina Mohamed failed the other day to secure an important African Union post. It was easy for me to conclude the reason lay in official Kenya’s failure to put up any important campaign machinery to help her.
International positions of that kind are extraordinarily competitive. Very highly qualified individuals from very many states do apply. And it takes extraordinary and highly expensive organisation for a candidate to succeed. Without direct official assistance from his or her country, he or she is doomed to failure.
The point I am trying to make is that a member state which is fully conscious of its interests in the world’s extraordinarily competitive international marketplace should know that such an office will be competed for by very many skilled persons from very many other countries and that each of those states will invest everything to ensure that its candidate is the one latched onto.
In short, for such a post, a government has to campaign officially, systematically, seriously and generously for its woman or man. That is why it never ceases to amaze me that official Kenya never officially campaigns for Kenya’s individuals seeking international posts that can be secured only with involvement by the applicant’s government.
IMPORTANT POSITIONS
A number of Kenyans whom I know do occupy important international positions in organisations in such important United Nations cities as Geneva, London, New York City, Paris and Rome. But they did not secure those posts with any help from their Government.
Though I have never met Ms Mohamed, she sounds serious, knowledgeable, skilled and industrious. That is why I am convinced that, had she succeeded, she would have gone very far towards securing for her country very many of the interests that Kenya can secure only through such an organisation.
But, because her country has officially failed to help her to get that job, the post has gone to the national of a state which knows that if you want a citizen of yours to secure a post in a certain international body, you have to invest resources in helping him or her to do so.
