Yvonne Wamalwa to steer counties on foreign policy issues

By Margaret Kanini

Nairobi, Kenya: The Government has established a directorate to facilitate Parliament and the county governments on diplomatic engagements with the rest of the world in advancing Kenya’s national interests.

Close to three months now since her return from Australia where she had been working as the deputy High Commissioner of Kenya to Australia, Yvonne Wamalwa, wife to the late Vice President Michael Kijana Wamalwa was last week appointed the Deputy Director in charge of parliamentary and county affairs in the country.

She will be working with Ambassador Eliphas Barine, the director in charge of parliamentary and county affairs, to form a cohesive and harmonious relationship between the national and the county governments on foreign policy matters.

“I hope it will be a wonderful experience working in my own country, getting to meet all the governors, senators, MPs and members of the county assembly in the new Kenyan governance structure,” she told The Standard when reached for a brief interview.

Yvonne says there was a great need for the Government to initiate this office because previously, the county governments used to strike deals directly with foreign countries, which appears unofficial. They needed a liaison who is well experienced in international matters to advise them on how to go about beneficial deals.

Yvonne has had vast experience in the world of foreign affairs. Until last month, she has been the deputy Commissioner of Kenya to Australia for six years where she had been appointed by President Mwai Kibaki. Prior to that, Yvonne was the deputy Ambassador to the UN Habitat in Kenya for two years.

She is both an alumni of City Primary in Nairobi and Cardinal Otunga Girls High School in Bungoma. She says the new appointment marks a great milestone in her career.

 “I recently graduated with a degree in Terrorism, Counter Terrorism and Extremism from the Murdoch University in Australia where I studied between 2008 and 2011 and I’m currently undertaking a Masters programme in Policing, Terrorism, Counter terrorism and International Security at the Macquarie University in Australia,” she says.

Yvonne discloses that she has realised, through her many researches that terrorism is one of the most difficult challenges that Kenya and Africans have to deal with. “I have established that acts of terrorism in Africa are more of economic factors than ideological,” she says.

She says developing countries should invest in providing job opportunities for its youths to prevent them from being lured into terrorism.