She has founded an intercultural Association (DAWA) to promote mutual awareness, integration and cooperation between Italy and Africa, particularly in her country of birth, the Democratic Republic of Congo.

[1] She supports the introduction of a Jus soli law to grant citizenship to children of immigrants born on Italian soil.

She collaborates with many Italian magazines, including Combonifem and Corriere Immigrazione, an online newspaper and a weekly journal on the culture of Italy of the present and future.

[citation needed] In 2004, Kyenge was elected in a district of the town of Modena for the Democrats of the Left and later became the provincial head of the Forum of International Cooperation and Immigration.

[citation needed] On 7 June 2009, Kyenge was elected provincial councilor in Modena for the Democratic Party (PD) and joined the committee Welfare and social policies.

[1] Her ministerial nomination was repudiated in some circles on cultural and/or racial grounds, being met by racist insults from individual politicians belonging to the Northern League such as Roberto Calderoli, VP of the Italian Senate, who called her an orangutan,[4] in addition to racist campaigns orchestrated by the New Force party and other far-right groups.

[8] Writer and University of Tokyo Professor Flavio Rizzo further analysed the climate around Minister Kyenge in the context of Italian inability to relate to diversity and "the emergence of institutional racism".