Kenya appoints first female air chief

Kenyan President William Ruto has appointed the first female commander of the air force.

Major General Fatuma Gaiti Ahmed becomes the first woman in Kenya’s history to lead any of the military services.

She was appointed alongside other leaders, including a new head of the armed forces, following the deaths of the military chief and others in a helicopter crash last month.

General Charles Kahariri was promoted to fill the vacant position.

Major General Ahmed has previously held other firsts in the male-dominated military leadership: She was the first woman to reach the rank of brigadier general and major general.

She joined the Army in 1983 and served under the Women Service Corps, a women-only unit that operated as a separate entity from the other branches of the armed forces.

It was an auxiliary service that provided supporting tasks such as administrative work, logistics, medical and communications.

The unit was disbanded in 1999 and only then were its members allowed to join the major military services: the Navy, Air Force and Army.

The co-optation of the unit provided women with more opportunities to participate in military duties and also allowed women like Major General Ahmed to rise through the ranks.

Her rise is seen as an achievement in promoting gender equality in the armed forces.

In 2018, when she was promoted to major general, then-President Uhuru Kenyatta said he was counting on her “as a positive role model for women in this country.”

“Prove to them that there are no boundaries for women,” the president said.

Major General Ahmed has previously said she was inspired to join the army by an uncle who was in the army, and admired his discipline and hard work which “shaped my life from a very early stage”.

She said some of her relatives discouraged her from joining the armed forces — “they said ‘that’s not a profession for women,’” she told Citizen TV in 2018.

“But I was determined to make a difference in my life,” she said.

BBC