Martin Kimani is fascinated by politics, violence and security. His scholarly work is on the role of the Catholic Church in the genealogy of genocide in Rwanda. He also works on terrorism and counter terrorism in the Horn of Africa, the formation and deployment of militias and the nexus of conflict and economics. He has been a Teaching Fellow at the Joint Services Command and Staff College in Shrivenham, UK and lectured postgraduates at King’s College London. He was a faculty member of the 2008 Sommerakademie seminars and art installations at Paul Klee Museum in Bern, Switzerland.
Until late 2008, Martin was based in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia working in a senior capacity for a pilot security program launched by IGAD, a sub-regional diplomatic organization of the seven countries in the Horn of Africa region. He simultaneously held the position of Senior Researcher at the Institute for Security Studies. Prior to this, he was Head of the Africa Division at a London-based Exclusive Analysis Ltd., a provider of political risk analysis and forecasting to Lloyd’s of London. Before moving to London, Martin was based in New York and made a living working for a currency trading fund.
Martin writes regularly for the East African, the region’s leading weekly, among other publications and has commented on African security for a wide variety of television and radio shows in the UK, Rwanda, Australia and New Zealand. He is one of six Kenyans awarded an Africa Leadership Initiative Fellowship, which is part of the Aspen Global Leadership Network, partly for the articles he wrote following Kenya’s post-election violence in 2008.