On this day 48 years ago, Kenya became an independent dominion of the United Kingdom, and exactly one year later the country became a republic with Jomo Kenyatta as the first president. The struggle for independence had been ongoing for many years, particularly with the Mau Mau Uprising in the 1950s. Kenyatta had been imprisoned in 1953 but was released in 1961 as the transition towards independence progressed.
Once in power, Kenyatta’s style changed from that of independence fighter to that of tribal benefactor, embracing policies that favoured his own ethnic group at the expense of all the other tribes, and setting the scene for the ethnic conflict that was to pervade Kenyan politics for decades. Like other African “big men”, Kenyatta remained president of the country for life, being replaced on his death in 1978 by Daniel arap Moi.
Moi carried on where Kenyatta left off, ruling with a combination of dictatorial oppression and kleptocracy. Remarkably, he agreed to leave office in 2002 and was succeeded by the current president Mwai Kibaki. Kenyan newspapers continue to report frequent incidences of grand corruption within the government, but like several other poor African countries Kenya has at last started to make a small amount of economic progress over the past decade.