In a week that tested the government’s mettle, Deputy President Prof. Kithure Kindiki once again proved that quiet resolve delivers louder results than political rhetoric.
While public attention was elsewhere, the law professor worked behind the scenes to broker a solution to the University lecturers’ strike that had threatened to paralyse university learning across the country.
Sources close to the negotiations say the Deputy President personally engaged both the Ministry of Education and university staff union, urging dialogue over disruption, a move that diffused tensions and restored normalcy in record time.
Barely catching his breath, before the ink dried on the agreement with the Universities Academic Staff Union (UASU) and government, Kindiki left the country for Belém, Brazil, where he represented Kenya and President William Ruto, at the Leaders’ Summit ahead of the 30th meeting of the Conference of the Parties (COP) to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) – COP 30.
He championed Kenya’s climate action agenda, focusing on resilience, climate finance and adaptation. His attendance underscores the country’s commitment to global climate action, even as he balances pressing domestic responsibilities.
True to form, Kindiki remains the worker, not the talker, a steady hand guiding the nation through crisis and towards progress.
At the high-level event marking ten years since the Paris Agreement, the Deputy President made an impassioned plea for climate justice, warning that the road to net zero could not be built on the backs of the world’s most vulnerable.
He did not mince his words. True to his firm and unflinching demeanour, he noted that “The process of realising Kenya and Africa’s climate action commitments adopted in the African Climate Summits of 2023 and 2024 is threatened by a two trillion dollar funding gap. Filling this gap is the non-negotiable floor for global solidarity.”
He went on to add that “The current Nationally Determined Contributions (NDCs) are a glide path toward up to 2.7 degrees Celsius of catastrophic global warming.”
Kindiki called on developed nations to scale up climate financing, restructure it as grants rather than loans, and prevent a scenario where “the victims of climate change are forced to pay for their own survival.”
