Amina Mohamed, Cabinet Secretary for Sports, Kenya

By
herstorywomen

July 31, 2019

Amina Mohamed is a Kenyan lawyer, diplomat and politician. Former Cabinet Secretary (Minister) for Education, Mohamed has been in public service since 1985. She is the current Cabinet Secretary for Sports in Kenya, having formerly served as the Cabinet Secretary (Minister) for Foreign Affairs and International Trade, the first woman to hold this position in Kenya. Her work as the Minister for Foreign Affairs which raised Kenya’s international profile spiked Foreign Direct Investment in the country by 400%.

Mohamed achieved many other firsts in her illustrious career. She was the first African to chair the World Trade Organization’s General Council’s global trade round at the 10th World Trade Organization Ministerial Conference held in Nairobi. She was also the first woman to chair the governing General Council of the World Trade Organization, the Dispute Settlement Body, the International Organization for Migration, and the United Nations Office for Drugs and Crime.

Mohamed graduated with an LLM in International Law from Kiev State University, Ukraine. She also has a postgraduate diploma (PGDip) in International Relations from the University of Oxford. She was the Assistant Secretary-General of the United Nations and Deputy Executive Director of the United Nations Environment Programme at Nairobi. She was also the Permanent Secretary of the Kenyan Ministry of Justice, National Cohesion and Constitutional Affairs and former Ambassador of Kenya to the United Nations at Geneva.

We celebrate Amina Mohamed today as our Woman of the Week for her audacity in public service at both local and international levels, and for doing so quite admirably.