Appointment as Senior Counter Terrorism Advisor, IGAD Capacity Building Program Against Terrorism (ICPAT)

Martin Kimani served as Senior Counter Terrorism Advisor to the IGAD Capacity Building Program Against Terrorism (ICPAT), based in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, from April 2006 to June 2008.

ICPAT was created to implement a 2002 decision of the IGAD Heads of State, meeting in Khartoum, to build member states' national capacity to resist terrorism and to promote regional security cooperation across the Horn of Africa. The program worked across five areas: enhancing judicial capacity, optimizing interdepartmental cooperation, strengthening border control, providing training, and promoting strategic cooperation among IGAD member states — including the negotiation of the IGAD Extradition and Mutual Legal Assistance Conventions and the strengthening of cross-border law enforcement networks across the region.

A 2008 report by the Center on Global Counterterrorism Cooperation, Implementing the UN Global Counter-Terrorism Strategy in East Africa, credits Kimani by name alongside ICPAT colleagues Ambassador Hiruy Amanuel, Hanna Tilahun, and Nejat Abdulrahman for organizing the research team's meeting in Addis Ababa and for their comments and contributions over the course of the project — the earliest independently documented trace of his counterterrorism practice, nearly a decade before he would go on to direct Kenya's own National Counter Terrorism Centre.