Kenyan president reshuffles cabinet to boost economy

By Andrew Wasike

NAIROBI, Kenya (AA) – Kenya’s President Uhuru Kenyatta announced a cabinet reshuffle on Tuesday in a bid for a fresh breath, especially in the defense, finance and agricultural sectors.

In a televised address from the presidential State House in the coastal town of Mombasa, Kenyatta named Ukur Yattani as the new finance minister, Raychalle Omamo appointed as the foreign affairs minister and Monica Juma assumed the office of the defense minister.

Kenyatta said that his focus in 2020 will be in improving the country’s economy.

"Today, I will spell out the areas that my administration intends to focus on over the next few months. The primary thrust of that strategy is economic. I want the economy to bear a more important focus than politics."

Contrary to opinions on social media claiming that frequent al-Shabaab attacks in Kenya culminated in the changes in the offices of the interior minister and defense minister, top security analysts in Kenya disagreed with this idea.

George Musamali, a Kenyan security analyst and CEO of Executive Protection Services in Nairobi, told Anadolu Agency that "I don’t think that the reshuffle has anything to do with the enhancement of security in the wake of recent attacks that we have from al-Shabaab."

"We are just seeing a cosmetic change, what we can do is reduce the frequency of these attacks and the only way we can do this is having proper intelligence collection mechanisms.

"Al-Shabaab have developed local intelligence networks and they are using this information in carrying out successful attacks, we should also invest in that. Let's have local intelligence networks as opposed to relying on the National Intelligence Service (NIS)."

Governance and security experts Benard Wakoli and Richard Tuta voiced the same views as Musamali.

Tuta noted that "the reshuffle has nothing to do with the attacks, I don’t think al-Shabaab have the capacity to influence the government to make any changes in its policies."