Thursday night Uhuru Kenyatta, the current Kenyan President, released a statement announcing the appointment of new ambassadors. Among this list was also the new ambassador to Germany.
Last year after his elections analysts had speculated who would be appointed to head the German office. The analyst were right in that most politicians would get diplomatic appointments but on who would get the German office, everyone was far from the mark.
The new Ambassador to Germany as announced is, Joseph Magutt. The statement released last night simply listed the names without giving much information on the individuals.
However a quick search and calls from Mkenya narrowed down the identity of our new ambassador to two individuals. (PS: This could also be quite far from the real person).
The first individual with the name, is a Joseph Magutt from Eldoret who has worked for several years in the provincial administration across the country having worked as a DC and a PC at one time. If this is the guy then we should expect quite an authoritarian.
The second individual is a more well known political scientist who lectures at Kenyatta University. From his wikipedia profile, he is “a political scientist and political commentator in Kenya. He is a reader, a university lecturer and a motivational speaker.” He was a member of ODM in 2007 but seems to have fallen out with the party according to some of his articles published in the Daily Nation before and during the elections in 2013. One such article is the: Apologists for the West treacherous; Kenyans must chart their own destiny. He has also come under fire on some comments he made against the diaspora. If he happens to be the real ambassador, seems Kenyans in Germany will have to forget their hopes of dual citizenship or having their Kenyan citizenship due to birth right. According to his article: Demands by Kenyan diaspora are patronising, he shared:
Another demand is that Kenyans who have renounced their Kenyan citizenship in favour of other countries do not need to re-apply for citizenship due to what they call their “birth right”.
This argument is infantile and amounts to intellectual dishonesty. If that is the logic, then resident Kenyans would not really have to bother applying for national identity cards or passports by virtue of being Kenyans by birth.
The Immigration ministry should not bend rules to accommodate, this warped demand. Dual citizenship as guaranteed in Article 16 of the Constitution, while laudable, must not be abused.
The next step is the induction of the new appointees and their spouses on their new responsibilities by the Foreign Service Institute. This will take about 4 weeks and thereafter, the Ambassadors and their families shall report to their new stations. For the Kenyans in Germany, Romania and Bulgaria, you’ll have to wait until end of September before you find out who your new Ambassador is.
The picture above confirms the identity of the new Ambassador as the Joseph Magutt, a political scientist and lecturer at KU.