Mishael Wambua’s role sits at the intersection of technical expertise, diplomacy, and economic vision as the lead for Kenya’s chapter of the GIZ Support Programme for the African Continental Free Trade Area (AfCFTA). He develops budgets, steers consultants, guides thematic negotiations, and helps Kenya shape coherent, evidence-backed positions at the continental level. “It’s people and companies that trade, not governments, whatever we support must ultimately work for them,” he explains.
“What we do now determines how Kenyan producers, traders and consumers integrate into a 1.3-billion-person market. The opportunity to be in the engine room is now.”
He always wanted to be a lawyer. While at Sunshine School in Nairobi, he read a brochure about Strathmore Law School’s moot court. He applied without his parent’s knowledge. “I got rejected repeatedly before I finally got accepted in my second year.”
They were the first African team to win the John H. Jackson WTO Moot Court Competition where he was named Best Orator globally, earning a full-merit LLM scholarship at the University of Bern in Switzerland.
"Our actions now shape how Kenyan producers, traders, and consumers tap into a 1.3-billion-person market—the time to act is now."
His career took him to the WTO, ENS Africa and Google where he worked for just four months as a legal specialist, before joining GIZ.
Despite not having the required five-year experience for his first role at GIZ, he applied because he understood trade. In the next phase, he plans to focus on policy coherence across Kenya’s trade deals; data-driven decision-making; and, value chains grounded in comparative advantage.
His next summit: ensuring Kenya takes its rightful place in Africa’s new trading order.
-Ndugu Abisai