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Uhuru confident as Kenya nominates Amina Mohamed for top AU job


Kenya has nominated Foreign Affairs Cabinet Secretary Amina Mohamed to contest as the chairperson of the African Union (AU) Commission, President Uhuru Kenyatta revealed Monday.

Ms Mohamed, who has had an illustrious career as a diplomat and who has been celebrated as one of the most successful Cabinet Secretaries, will battle it out with three other Africans for the influential post.

“I see that Amina is doing well and this looks like an Amina thing. We have nominated her (the CS) to be the AU chairperson,” President Kenyatta said at State House while addressing the Youth Summit.

The Summit was moderated by the CS’s namesake, Capital FM’s Amina Abdi.

OTHER NOMINEES

The other three nominees who will battle it out with Ms Mohamed are former Ugandan Vice President Specioza Wandira Kazibwe, the Equatorial Guinea Foreign Minister Agapito Mba Mokuy and his Botswana counterpart Pelonomi Venson Moitoi.

The election of the members of the AU Commission in Kigali, Rwanda in July 2016, was suspended after the three contenders for the position of the Chairperson of the Commission failed to obtain the required two-thirds majority after seven rounds of voting.

The post became vacant the expiry of Nkosazana Dlamini-Zuma’s first term. She rose to the commission’s helm in 2012 and did not seek a second term.

By October 14, the panel recruiting the team will circulate the list of those who want to be elected, in readiness for the election in January 2017.

Ms Mohamed has served in the public service for 29 years and was once Kenya’s Ambassador at the Permanent Mission of the Republic of Kenya to the UN in Geneva.

The United Nations (UN) Secretary General then appointed her the United Nations Assistant Secretary General and Deputy Executive Director of the United Nations Environment Programme (Unep) in Nairobi.

GLOBAL CONFERENCES

The CS has led Kenya host significant global conferences starting with the Global Entrepreneurship Summit addressed by US President Barack Obama, the World Trade Organisation 14th ministerial conference and recently the 14th United Nations Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTAD) conference, all in Nairobi.

Her ministry has overseen almost regular visits by world leaders. These include President Obama, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, his Indian counterpart Nerandra Modi, Italy’s Matteo Renzi and the leader of the 1.4 billion-people Catholic Church, Pope Francis.