Belgium has about 110 embassies across the world and every year, there are between 30 and 40 diplomats who present credentials to presidents of their host state.
Among those, there is the likelihood two or three are sons or daughters of diplomats.
What never happens is a Belgian ambassador presenting his credentials to a President who himself is the son of the President to whom the ambassador's father also presented his letter of credence.
But it happened here in Kenya. In a quite interesting coincidence, Belgian Ambassador Peter Maddens, who apparently doesn’t believe in coincidences, presented his credentials to his classmate at St Mary’s School, Nairobi, President Uhuru Kenyatta, on September 1 last year.
His father, Pieter Maddens, was Belgium’s fourth envoy to Kenya between 1975 and 1979. He presented his credentials to President Jomo Kenyatta in November 1975.
It was “quite a reunion”, he told the Star in an interview last Tuesday, adding that his posting to Nairobi is “a coming back home”.
“I have reconnected with a whole lot of my friends from when I was a teenager, and it has been quite amazing,” Maddens said at his office in Nairobi.
He is yet to hang out with Uhuru as old-time buddies, the ambassador says, as the President is too busy.
“I'm hoping to be able to hang out when he's done being President,” he says.
Maddens has spoken to the President a couple of times, had a couple of interactions.
“When he receives the diplomatic corps at State House for other visiting presidents, he always makes a point to have a chat,” he says.
His father being ambassador at the time means he was here when Mzee Kenyatta died and was replaced by President Moi, then Vice President. So, he was around during the first transition.
“It was also the time when we Western European countries started extensive development programmes, including for the World Bank, but also through the European Economic Community at the time,” he says.
“Dad, for example, arranged for a water distribution scheme in Marsabit, which was the very first time there was water distribution there.”
In this interview with the Star's Eliud Kibii, he reminisces about growing up in Nairobi, his priorities, elections in the region and global issues.
THE STAR: How was it growing up in Nairobi?
AMB MADDENS: My sister and I went to school here. My sister moved here when it was her 13th birthday. She went to Msongari Loreto Convent and I was still in boarding school in Belgium for the first couple of years and after that, I came here to finish A-levels at St Mary’s.
Uhuru was in my class and you know the whole crowd of boys who are well-known contemporaries, which was quite fun.
Nairobi was a lot smaller then. People ask me, has Nairobi changed? Well yeah, it has. But you can still recognise a lot of large parts of it. The roads are bigger, the cars more plentiful. It's a lot busier. A lot more dangerous as well.
I remember I was a 15-16-year-old boy and I would ride my bike from our house in Muthaiga to the office, which was on Mama Ngina Street. I think I can only remember two power cuts for the whole period I was here. But Kenyans have not changed, they are still the same, with their amazing sense of humour, really warm and welcoming and outspoken.
You previously served in Tanzania. How was the experience?
My wife and I and the family spent five years in Tanzania, from 2003-08. That was a different experience.
It is a different country as it has a different history. The initial generation of Tanzanian leadership focused its energy on building the Tanzanian nation, while in Kenya, it has focused on economic development, and that follows through to today.
Would you say your father influenced you to join the foreign service?
Doesn’t every father inspire his son to at least consider the same profession? Sometimes you follow your father’s footsteps, sometimes you don’t. It is a human thing to consider that.
Belgian activities have previously been on water and energy projects. Are these your priority areas or will you develop a new framework?
It is a question I am still thinking about. However, we have made lots of investments and contributions in infrastructure and water.
With former Prime Minister Raila Odinga and then Water CS Sicily Kariuki, we opened a water treatment and distribution centre in Homa Bay built by a Belgian company a couple of weeks back. We are still in that field.
Belgium trade with Kenya is relatively small. In my previous posting in Argentina, we had $1 billion worth of trade. Here is only a little more than $100 million in total trade.
I, however, think the projects we do and the products we sell here are important.
There is a [Belgian] company that has developed hydropower systems in a shipping container. You take the container and you drop it in a river, open the doors and out comes electricity. There are companies involved in wind energy in Ngong Hills. We have a small company that runs a carbon-neutral camp in Maasai Mara.
So, we are very active in innovative sectors and there is a new company, Odoo, that does all kinds of back-office services for SMEs, which is coming in.
Other than the distance, what else would you say is inhibiting bilateral trade?
I think it is getting better, but still not good enough. People like Chief Justice Martha Koome are working on it quite hard through legal security: Being in a position where when you have a claim, you are given a fair hearing because up until a number of years ago, that was difficult. It's now a lot better.
However, before the reputational consequences of that improvement falls through to company level, it takes a while, and we are in that phase. And that is the kind of job your embassy in Brussels has: To communicate that the situation is changing, that the Judiciary is independent and there is a lot of competence and capacity. That is one issue.
There are also cultural differences and not easy to overcome for many businesses in Europe. With time and as the younger generations come up, in the private sector, we lose a lot of the connection we had. We have a shared history, which is not nice history as there was bad stuff that happened, but it was a shared history and it gave us a connection. But with time, we are losing it.
Then there is a whole bunch of knowledge and expertise that we have not been able to develop because we don’t have the connections we used to.
Are there efforts to encourage people-to-people engagements through cultural diplomacy?
It is hard to get the funding for it, but we try. We are going to have a Belgium Week in May, and we will bring a musician and a cook and mix them up with Kenyan counterparts. We would love to have similar events organised in the opposite direction, but that’s up to your embassy in Brussels.
You are also accredited to the UN Habitat and Unep here in Nairobi, and we recently had Unea-5 and Unep@50. Some resolutions were made but there has been the criticism that it is all talk and less action. What is your response?
The UN is always about talking and if you don’t talk, you are not going to get some action. You, thus, need a forum somewhere on any issue to talk to each other, and that is the United Nations, and that’s why Unep is here. They have that conversation every two years and then formalise it and plan for the next two years. That’s how multilateralism works on any issue.
It is not always enough. Sometimes, it is too much for others, but it is a good middle ground. My son is an activist. He is climate change through and through, so I have been indoctrinated.
The voter registration was less than was hoped for and showed some degree of apathy. I think that will lead to non-violence. People don’t care, so they won’t come out screaming
Western diplomats recently met with the Executive and called for a peaceful and smooth transition in August. Do you share these concerns and what are they?
Yes, and the concerns are from what we have seen in the past. It is legitimate to say in the past, the process has been more torturous than needed. But in the three cases, the elections ended up with a President who was recognised across the country.
It is, therefore, not unnatural for us to be concerned that history could repeat itself.
Personally, and maybe I'm not the only one, I have great confidence with this election. One of the consequences of the two Covid-19 years is that it was a huge silver lining for Kenya in that it has shown the role of the middle class in Kenya's stability.
Because the middle class has a huge stake in stability, I don’t think they will allow a repeat of 2007.
The voter registration was less than was hoped for and showed some degree of apathy. I think that will lead to non-violence. People don’t care, so they won’t come out screaming.
You put those two things together and I am hopeful it will be a peaceful election.
At the global stage, we have the ongoing war in Ukraine. The world is already feeling the heat through fuel and food prices. What do you think of the conflict?
You don’t invade another country. Ukraine is an independent nation and did nothing wrong, they attacked no one.
It is a solid member of the international community that has been attacked by a neighbour, whose analysis of the situation was based on an assumption we don’t share. Nato is a defensive, not an offensive, military institution. It is for our own defence.
The EU is not a military organisation. It is about peace. All the instruments that make up the EU — the common market, the Schengen visa or the scientific policy — all serve the one purpose that is peace.
And the fact that many countries from the former Soviet Union aspire to be members shows how successful the concept and the idea is. And the fact that Russia doesn’t want to see beyond its very narrow and self-centred self-interest and considers anyone who does not simply bow to its opinion as an enemy that is worth attacking, is something that takes us back 70 years.
Russia argues NATO keeps expanding east contrary to the earlier agreement, thus threatening its security and sphere of influence.
We talk at each other instead of to each other. There was a time in the early 90s at the end of Cold War when the conversation was about Russia’s sphere in Europe and how it would keep the buffer that it created for itself after the Second World War.
You can argue whether sphere of influence is something you should have in international politics or whether that injures other countries’ sovereignty. The fact is that Russia’s perception is based on the old agreement after the Second World War that there should be a buffer between Western Europe with its values and Russia, and that buffer was from 1945-90. The Warsaw Pact.
What I think Russia has failed to do is to convince us of the need for that buffer and what we have failed to do is convince ourselves that those countries joining Nato or the EU are not angels. So we have not talked to each other enough.
We are where we are but we cannot do anything but reject the Russian invasion of a country that has never been a threat to it for reasons based on an analysis based on wrong assumptions.
Your parting shot?
There will come a time in the not-so-distant future when African countries will be independent more years than they were colonised. In only eight years' time, Kenya will be independent more years than it was colonised.
Pretty soon, African presidents will have been born in an independent country. Those will be watershed moments for our relations. They should be grabbed as watershed moments.
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