The global environment in which diplomats operate is dynamic and constantly changing. Thus, besides being equipped with a robust doctrine, diplomats should have multifaceted skills in the economic, social, environmental and political fields to enable them to effectively promote national interests on the international stage.  

The Kenyan Ministry of Foreign Affairs established the Foreign Service Academy (FSA) in 2007 to champion the professional needs and enhance the capacities of its officers through training and foreign-policy research and analysis. However, a recent assessment of the FSA’s performance indicated that it has been unable to effectively deliver on its mandate. Major shortcomings identified include a lack of a clear organizational structure and a nonresponsive curriculum, as well as inadequacies in financial and human resources. Moreover, factors such as a lack of systematic recruitment, outdated foreign service regulations and unfocused career development have not been able to stimulate key staff.

The Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Kenya has been seeking to reengineer the FSA to provide for continuous training of the entire foreign service cadre and selected governmental officers. The aim is to strengthen their capacity to advance Kenya’s foreign policy goals and to provide career development pathways within the national and multilateral contexts. 

The Capacity Development Support to the Foreign Service Academy project was implemented by the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Kenya and supported by the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP). It was a multipronged initiative that involved: 1) the establishment and launching of the FSA’s International Advisory Board; 2) a review of the FSA’s programmes and activities to align with Kenya’s foreign policy goals; and 3) the establishment of partnerships with the United Nations and other international entities to enhance skills and career pathways for national staff within the MFA and in the multilateral system. 

The first phase of the initiative contributed to equipping the Ministry of Foreign Affairs with the appropriate policy framework for effective, accessible, participatory, equitable, transparent and accountable service delivery. The outputs of this phase comprised: 

• enhancing the operational and project management capacities of the MFA (including through the setting up of digitized procedures), enabling staff to administer protocol services and manage diplomatic privileges and immunities in the most efficient manner; and 
• strengthening the training, research and advisory capacities of the FSA, geared towards making it the leading diplomacy institute in the region. 

Activities of the initiative’s second phase encompassed: 

• designing and developing a knowledge management information system and an integrated library information management system; 
• expanding the FSA’s resource centre; and 
• documenting and archiving Kenya’s foreign policy evolution since independence, to reinforce institutional memory. 

With UNDP support, the initiative benefited from South-South engagements that offered opportunities for learning best practices from other countries and domesticating these to the local context. Benchmarking visits were carried out to congenerous FSAs in Egypt and India (besides the Republic of Korea and the United States). The team involved then interacted with four diplomatic training institutions, three government-affiliated research and policy analysis bodies and five privately funded think tanks. Lessons learned through these meetings resulted, among others, in the proposition of a new curriculum. 

Furthermore, a consultative forum of African diplomatic academies was organized in Nairobi in December 2019, bringing together 12 countries to share experiences: Algeria, Central African Republic, Democratic Republic of the Congo, Djibouti, Egypt, Ethiopia, Gabon, Kenya, Nigeria, South Africa, Sudan and Uganda. The richness of the discussions in this South-South meeting prompted the participants to call upon the African Union to provide overarching guidance on training and skills development within all regional diplomatic academies. It also engendered a collective commitment to strengthen consultations and collaborations within participant networks to provide support to the diplomatic academies in their respective countries. This included establishing partnerships to ensure the financial sustainability of the academies, reinforcing their research and policy analysis units and working closely with think tanks to refine their agendas for government engagement.