[dennisw]

Do you really this he speaks it well? Or is it to puff up his resume, his CV?

[zimdog]

Well, you can't really tell from the article, since it only mentions this in passing.

On the one hand, people in the US know so little about African languages, there's a much lower standard for what it takes to be able to claim that you "know" Swahili versus Spanish or German. At the same time, Swahili is taught in many schools and those who study it are usually eager to speak it, so if he was faking someone probably would have caught him by now.