Amina Mohamed, whose full name is Amina Chawahir Mohamed Jibril, is a Kenyan lawyer, diplomat and politician. Amina is now serving as the Cabinet Secretary for Sports, Heritage and Culture in Kenya. Previously, Amina served as chairwoman of the International Organization for Migration and the World Trade Organization’s General Council, and also as Assistant Secretary-General and Deputy Executive Director of the United Nations Environment Programme. From May 2013 to February 2018, Amina served as the Cabinet Secretary for Foreign Affairs of Kenya, when President Kenyatta moved her to the Education docket after re-elected. She was moved to the Ministry of Sports to replace Rashid Echesa in March 2019. Prof. George Magoha, the KNEC Director, replaced her in the Education docket.
Age
Amina was born on 5th October, 1961, Kakamega, Kenya, to an ethnic Somali family.
Family
Amina is the eighth born in the family of nine siblings. Amina’s family belongs to the Dhulbahante Harti Darod clan and comes from the northern SSC region of Somalia. She spent her childhood in a modest household in Amalemba, Kakamega, where she passed her time reading Sherlock Holmes stories and other detective fiction and later developed a taste for international affairs.
Marriage
In 2002, she got married to Khalid Ahmed, a fellow Somali to whom she credits a lot of her success. The two have two children and four orphans who they take care at their home.
Education
She attended the Township Primary School in Kakamega and later went to Butere Girls and Highlands Academy. Amina’s mother believed strongly in the importance of education. Her mother would frequently drop by her classes to monitor her performance. She moved to Ukraine, upon graduation, on a scholarship to study at the University of Kiev. Amina completed the institution’s courses, getting a Master of Laws in International Law. Later, she obtained a Post-graduate Diploma in International Relations from the University of Oxford. Through a Fellowship at the UNITAR (United Nations Institute for Training and Research), also Amina followed several training courses on international law.
Career
In 1985, she began her career as a legal officer at the Kenyan Ministry of Local Government and her duties included assessing World Bank projects and tabling municipal by-laws. From 1986 to 1990, she served as a Legal Advisor in Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Kenya, where she drafted and negotiated various bilateral and international treaties. Among these were Bilateral Air Services Agreements with the UAE, Oman, Iran and the UK, and also the African Convention on the Rights of the Child. Amina chose to remain with her parents as her father was ailing although a number of job opportunities overseas were available.
She acted as a Legal Advisor to Kenya’s mission at the UN head office in Geneva, Switzerland from 1990 to 1993 where she worked together with officials from the International Labour Organization, World Health Organization and General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade & World Trade Organization. Amina took a brief sabbatical to pursue higher studies in the United Kingdom, before returning to diplomatic service in Geneva. She began serving as Legal Advisor to the Kenyan delegation at the UN Security Council in 1997.
From 2000 to 2006, she worked as the Ambassador and Permanent Representative for the Kenya diplomatic mission in Geneva. Amina was also the Chairperson, Coordinator and Spokesperson for the African Group in the Human Rights Commission of WTO. She acted as President of the Conference on Disarmament and was appointed the first female chairperson of the International Organization for Migration in 2002. Kenya was the only African country included in the organization at that time. She agreed to accept the candidacy only if the organization opened up to more African countries when approached for the chairmanship.
From 2008 to 2011, Amina was the Permanent Secretary in the Justice’s Ministry, National Cohesion and Constitutional Affairs of Kenya. In 2010 she supervised the redraft of the Constitution of Kenya while still in that role. From 2010 to 2011, she served as the president of the United Nations Conference on Transnational Crime in Vienna. She was named Assistant Secretary-General and Deputy Executive Director of the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) in July 2011. Amina was appointed Kenya’s Cabinet Secretary for Foreign Affairs on 23rd April 2013. She was among 18 Cabinet Secretary nominees to the new Uhuru Kenyatta administration. Later, Amina was sworn in to the office, on May 20th 2013, at Sagana State lodge. She was nominated by President Uhuru Kenyatta, to be chair of the African Union Commission (AUC) in 2017. She lost the position to the foreign affairs minister of Chad despite lobbying for the role from the Kenyan government. Afterwards Uganda denied reports that it had failed to support Amina in her bid for AUC chair
