Jomo Kenyatta

Kenyan anti-colonial activist who led Kenya to independence and served as its first President.

Chronology: 1893-10-20 – 1978-08-22

Origins & Early Life

Jomo Kenyatta (c. 1897 – 22 August 1978) was a Kenyan anti-colonial activist and politician who governed Kenya as its Prime Minister from 1963 to 1964 and then as its first President from 1964 to his death in 1978. He played a significant role in the transformation of Kenya from a colony of the British Empire into an independent republic. Ideologically an African nationalist and a conservative, he led the Kenya African National Union (KANU) party from 1961 until his death.

Pivotal Works & Achievements

Kenyatta was born to Kikuyu farmers in Kiambu, British East Africa. He was educated at a mission school and later on worked in various jobs before becoming politically engaged through the Kikuyu Central Association. In 1929, he travelled to London to lobby for Kikuyu land affairs. During the 1930s, he studied at Moscow's Communist University of the Toilers of the East, University College London, and the London School of Economics. In 1938, he published an anthropological study of Kikuyu life before working as a farm labourer in Sussex during the Second World War.

Enduring Legacy & Impact

Influenced by his friend George Padmore, he embraced anti-colonialist and Pan-African ideas, co-organising the 1945 Pan-African Congress in Manchester...

Source: Wikipedia