Raila Odinga’s loss of the African Union chairmanship to the Djibouti candidate may have resulted from Kenya’s apparently not-so-strong partnerships with other African countries.
This is because Raila is not the only Kenyan who has tried to win the seat. We have seen other Kenyans attempt and fail. This brings me and many others to think about whether or not, we have sustainable partnerships with our immediate neighbours in East Africa, and the rest of Africa, especially Francophone Africa.
What does creating sustainable partnerships, therefore, mean? Creating sustainable partnerships in diplomacy simply means establishing long-term, mutually beneficial relationships among countries, organisations, or stakeholders that are resilient, adaptable, and based on trust and shared interests.
These tenets should go beyond short-term agreements and focus on long-term cooperation instead, especially in areas such as peace, development, trade, security, and most recently. climate action.
Establishing these parameters of sustainable partnerships is not enough. Having the right representatives sent to represent Kenya in the foreign missions in the other African countries is also a big factor that should be considered after Raila’s AU loss.
We cannot run away from the fact that political appointments to missions abroad are here to stay, but for heaven’s sake, let it not be political sycophants, who lack balanced views. Let it also not be very fresh political appointees.
Further, let it not be politicians who have lost seats in elections, but have greased the ruling party’s palms to be rewarded by representing the country in such serious assignments.
Political appointees sometimes might make serious diplomatic blunders, ruining bilateral relationships, that might take a very long time to repair. Many of our private universities, year in year out, produce graduates in International Relations.
A good number of them get absorbed into the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, which becomes the pool for trained diplomats, who once they have advanced, are appointed as attaches to different missions abroad.
These are the people our leadership needs to consider at all times. Instead of our having a mixed system of political and career diplomat representing Kenya, let the president decree that only vetted career diplomats that should represent Kenya abroad.
How can career diplomats mend Kenya’s relationship with other African nations and beyond, therefore creating sustainable partnerships? First of all, career diplomats build trust and credibility with countries they want to partner with.
This may be one of the factors that favoured the new AU chairman Mohamoud Ali Yossouf. The elected Djibouti national is the former Djibouti Foreign Minister, who in his CV on his campaign manifesto on the AU page, says he has more than three decades of solid experience in diplomacy and governance, citing different diplomatic experiences over the years.
This in itself gave him more credibility for conversations around sustainable partnerships, based on his experiences. Nevertheless, the new AU Chairperson, HE Mohamoud Ali Yossouf, has a lot on his plate, and more than one billion Africans are watching. cooperation, political cooperation, security or cultural diplomacy.
The writer is a
democracy support
researcher and
scholar
