Listen On 12 February 2020, President Uhuru Kenyatta’s Cabinet Secretary without portfolio, Raphael Tuju, almost died – again. He was strapped in and fast asleep in the front passenger seat of his official vehicle on this cold, wet early morning as his driver cruised towards Nakuru County, where the CS was expected to join the […]
Listen Few people of Rashid Mohammed Echesa’s social and educational background have had the good fortune to rise to national prominence at his age. Echesa, the son of a respected company driver Mohammed Lukungu, was born in a modest family in the neighbourhood of Mumias Sugar Company in Western Kenya. He was by all accounts […]
Listen At 46, Simon Kiprono Chelugui was one of the youngest Cabinet secretaries to join President Uhuru Kenyatta’s Cabinet in January 2018. The soft-spoken entrepreneur from Baringo County was picked to head the Ministry of Water, Sanitation and Irrigation, a docket that was poised to play a crucial role in the attainment of the President’s […]
Listen Amina Chawahir Mohamed Jibril is the epitome of the ideal Kenyan bureaucrat. Hers is the quintessential story of an African woman who rose from a humble background to become one of Kenya’s leading diplomats and a public servant in three different regimes. Over the long span of her public service career, Mohamed distinguished herself […]
Listen She seemed destined for greatness right from the start. Betty Maina attended the prestigious Alliance Girls High School before joining the University of Nairobi for a degree in Land Economics, followed by a stint at University College London, from which she emerged with an MSc in Development Administration and Planning in 1998. Still, nothing […]
Listen The wheels of fortune turn in peculiar ways for certain people. If anyone had suggested in the 1980s that Charity Kaluki Ngilu would one day be one of Kenya’s most prominent female politicians, few would have believed it. There was nothing extraordinary about her early life to suggest this. But by sheer force of […]
Listen Felix Kiptarus Kosgei served in President Uhuru Kenyatta’s Cabinet between April 2013 and March 2015 as the Cabinet Secretary (CS) for Agriculture, Livestock and Fisheries. As he formed his first Cabinet in 2013, the President was faced with the unsettling fact that Kenya’s agriculture sector was slowly failing to sustain the nation’s food security. […]
Listen Charles Cheruiyot Keter was not among the first choices for Cabinet slots when Jubilee Party came to power in 2013. However, he would go on to become one of the longest-serving Cabinet secretaries for Energy despite joining the government slightly over two years after its inauguration. Charles Cheruiyot Keter was not among the first […]
Listen If ‘stick-with-it-ness’ were a word, it would perfectly describe the career of Adan Mohamed. He is one of the few Cabinet secretaries who served in the same ministry for the entirety of each of President Uhuru Kenyatta’s government terms: first in Industrialisation and Trade, then in East African Community and Regional Development. Before that […]
Listen In the years just preceding the advent of the Uhuru Kenyatta administration, something refreshing was brewing at the Tea Board of Kenya. And its Managing Director, Sicily Kariuki, had everything to do with it. The beverage has become part of the Kenyan identity. And in a country that produces one of the highest quality […]