Kenyatta appoints envoy to defence ministry

President Uhuru Kenyatta decision to appoint top diplomat Raychelle Omamo as the new defence minister was in response to the continuing foreign engagements that the country’s defence was continually handling from the rest of the world. Omamo, Kenya’s ambassador to France and Serbia and delegate to the UN Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization, is required to help reform the Defence Forces to reflect the gender and youth balance stipulated in the country’s new constitution. But her main task would be to manage the complex relationship between the AU, EU and UN, the main financiers of the AU Mission in Somalia, where Kenya has deployed 4,649 peacekeepers. “Our defence is responsible for the engagements with the world,” President Kenyatta said after naming 12 new members of his cabinet on Thursday. Those engagements would require the need to lobby the world to agree to a new push to double the number of troops on the ground in Somalia. Experts said Kenyatta’s naming of a female defence minister and tasking her to work with the rest of the world was recognition of the fact that issues of security require additional acts of diplomacy. Kenyatta said in his inauguration speech that he intended to “open new frontiers” in the country’s foreign relations, but also emphasised that a strong security mechanism was part of his main agenda. In that plan, a stable and a prosperous Somalia, which has been a key part of the Kenyan government policy for over 22 years, would make it top of the new Presidents list of successes. “We will not tolerate those who threaten peace of our citizens,” Kenyatta said.