On March 27 last year, Director General of the National Intelligence Service Noordin Haji gave the inaugural public lecture on the country’s evolving security landscape, including threats and opportunities.
At the time, the country was reeling from the June 2024 “Gen Z insurrection”, which shook the core of the country’s body politic. In the aftermath, the perceived role of the service in quelling the uprising came into sharp focus, invoking the necessity for a public dialogue.
In that lecture, Haji painted the contradicting demands of intelligence work in a democratic setting. NIS cannot be as loud as others, cannot always explain itself, yet it must account for itself in light of the requirements of Articles 238, 239 and 242 of the constitution.
He confessed that the organisation’s initial formulation was primarily intended to serve the interests of the colonial administration. Indeed, the pre-independence intelligence body was the ears and eyes of the colonial government against African nationalism.
After Independence, the Special Branch and its successor, the Directorate of Security Intelligence, focused largely on regime survival in the context of Cold War politics and other internal threats.
When the Berlin Wall collapsed and multiparty democratic order reintroduced in Kenya, the agency was at a loss for a moment. That was until the spectre of global terrorism reared its ugly head and the National Security Intelligence Service (NSIS) redirected its focus to this new threat.
Still, it retained its original blood, regime-survival. I remember the ire of Narc apologists who felt NSIS should have anticipated and tamed the 2007 Orange revolution before it happened.
In 2010, Kenyans adopted a new charter that assigned the role of guardian of national security – protection against internal and external threats to territorial integrity and sovereignty, its people, their rights, freedoms, property, peace, stability and prosperity, and other national interests – to NIS and other security organs.
Thus, NIS was transitioned by the will of the people from the traditional regime survival mindset of yesteryears to a people-centric approach to national security encompassing the protection of people's rights and promotion of their aspirations.
Together with the Kenya Defence Forces and National Police Service, NIS is expressly forbidden from acting in a partisan manner, advancing any interest of a political party and prejudicing a political interest or cause that is legitimate under the constitution.
Last week, the service hosted the Mashariki Cooperation Conference, bringing together security and intelligence chiefs from Africa and beyond to discuss the emerging geopolitical dynamics and their implications on Africa’s security architecture.
Discussions focused on the new multi-polar power dynamics, weakening multilateralism, shifting geopolitical alliances, surge of populism and nationalism, weaponisation of emerging technologies, the war in Europe and the Middle East, climate change and the possibility of renewed, sustained global pandemics, as well as the effects of unpredictable trade policies on vulnerable states.
They narrowed down to Africa’s economic resilience, resource governance, social cohesion, supply chains, technological advancement, digital integrity and data sovereignty. There was a strong push for regions to pool strategic resources, co-invest in projects, and merge the utility of public and private capital.
Haji pushed his colleagues to adopt a broader, proactive approach to intelligence in the emerging global order. They must see Africa’s strategic resources as drivers for prosperity and work to reduce points of vulnerability in their deployment.
Strategic partnerships, decisive actions towards African unity, good governance and resilience against global shocks are what will save Africa. The agencies Haji & Co. lead must see the enemies of national security for who they are.
They are to be found among Africa’s thieving political class, the mandarins who frustrate devolution of power and resources, promoters of a weak, inept political party culture that only churns out goons for leaders and closed political space that locks out the youth from national development.
The real enemies of Africa’s security are those who capture national security organs for their own survival at the expense of the greater good, those security leaders who adopt a narrow outlook of national security and those who inhibit national prosperity.
Haji is right to see a greater role of the intelligence world in the existential race for survival of the African nation.
Musau, an Advocate of the High Court, is a Senior Project Manager with the Friedrich Naumann Foundation. The views expressed here are his own
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