Kabetesi to head new government's strategic communications office

Public communications guru Kibisu Kabatesi has been appointed the Secretary, Government Strategic Communications.

Mr Kabetesi will be tasked with supervising government strategic communication of policy, its articulation and dissemination in his new patch at the presidency.

The new office comes with wide-ranging powers, among them, overseeing and guiding strategic communication across government ministries, State departments and agencies under the new "whole-government" approach to achieve seamless communication within various levels of administration.

He will also take charge of strategic communication capacity building for ministries, departments and agencies (MDAs) through the development of training, monitoring and evaluation mechanisms of strategic communication practice within the government.

Kabatesi has vast experience in media convergence having served as a TV producer, public relations officer, writer, editor, media trainer and publicist.

He is a renowned public intellectual and media practitioner with more than 40 years of experience.

He has served as Research Fellow/Publications Editor at the Institute for Development Studies (IDS), University of Nairobi, for 28 years, with editorial responsibility for policy research briefs, teaching material, training papers and manuals, and development of strategic research dissemination as well as a lecturer in public relations.

In the 1990s, he ran "Sound and Vision" and Theater and the Arts review columns in the Daily Nation newspaper.

He is a long-serving aide of Prime Cabinet Secretary Musalia Mudavadi, alternatively serving as his director for communications, private secretary and lately as spokesman.

The office located at the Office of the Prime Cabinet Secretary places it at arm's length of the various oversight institutions/units key to the execution of government policy, programmes and projects under Mudavadi's docket.