Kenya

Famous Kenyan People: Kenyan Artists, Scientists, Leaders, Musicians, Politicians and Athletes

Kenya is a very old country, which has existed as long as human history. Through its colorful yet tumultuous past rose some great people, who made remarkable contributions that shape the nation politically, sports-wise and artistically.

:: List of Famous People from Kenya ::

Wangari Maathai
Professor Wangari Muta Maathai was born in the village of Ihithe in the Nyeri District of Kenya on April 1, 1940. Her family descended from the Kikuyu tribe. Her grades had always been good, she was always on top of her class, and in 1960 she qualified to study in the United States through Airlift Africa (Kennedy Airlift) in of then U.S. Senator John F. Kennedy. She received a scholarship and studied biology with minors in German and chemistry at the Mount St. Scholastica College in Kansas, then took her master’s degree in biology from the University of Pittsburgh with the Africa-America Institute providing her with educational funding. Back in Kenya in 1966 she was appointed as a research assistant at the University College of Nairobi although she was not able to get the job as it was given to someone else. Professor Reinhold Hofmann from Germany’s University of Giessen took her as his assistant in microbiology at the University College of Nairobi’s School of Veterinary Medicine, Department of Veterinary Anatomy. She also met her future husband, Mwangi Mathai that same year. The kind professor also encouraged her to pursue doctoral studies and convinced her enroll at the University of Giessen, which she did. She also studied at the University of Munich. She became the first East African woman to receive a PhD in 1971. She received from the University College of Nairobi her Doctorate of Anatomy degree.

She became involved in activism and politics while she was associate professor and became a Human Rights Activist and environmentalist in Kenya. She received various awards for her social endeavors, reaching the pinnacle when her various works on sustainable environment and better quality of life for the citizens, particularly the women in Kenya led to her receiving the Nobel Peace Prize in 2004, a first for an African woman. Sadly she passed away due to ovarian cancer complications in 2011.

Ngugi wa Thiong’o
Kenyan author Ngugi wa Thiong’o was born on January 5, 1938 in Kamiriithu. His given name was James Ngugi, which he later renounced, together with his Catholic religion. He used to write his literary works in English but is now using the Gikuyu language. He is one of the most influential writers in East Africa. Ngugi wa Thiong’o is not only a writer, he is a playwright as well as lecturer and journalist.

He was greatly admired by the public for his open criticisms of the colonial rule, post-colonial abuses perpetrated by those in power and his views on Christianity after he adopted Marxism, which earned him the intense ire of the government.

He rose to prominence in the literary community within his country when his work, The Black Hermit was performed in 1962 at Uganda’s National Theater in Kampala. He was most productive during this time, writing plays, novels and stories, as well as a column in a Sunday newspaper. Some of his most famous works include Weep Not Child, written in 1964, The River Between, which he wrote in 1965, the 1967 novel, Grain of Wheat and the Petals of Blood that he wrote in 1977.

His Devil on the Cross, written in 1980 in the Kikuyu language and entitled Caitaani Muthara-Ini was banned in his country and caused him to be detained in prison without the benefit of a trial. He was released in 1985 then went on exile in London. In 1992 he accepted the professor of literature position at New York University.

Jomo Kenyatta
Considered the founding father of Kenya, Jomo Kenyatta, who was born in 1894, was the first Prime Minister of Kenya, serving from 1963 to 1964 before becoming Kenya’s first President in 1964. He served as president of his country until 1978. His given name was Kamau wa Ngengi and his birthplace was in Gatundu, a village in British East Africa, the former name of Kenya.

He lost his father while still young and although adopted by his uncle, he started working at an early age to support his mother and send himself to school. He worked as an apprentice carpenter, interpreter in the High Court of Nairobi, ran a store, became a store clerk and a water meter reader. Being a water meter reader allowed him to meet many people, people who would later become some of his most significant allies.

He joined the Kikuyu Central Association in 1924 and quickly rose up the ranks, becoming the association’s secretary general after four years. He even became the editor of its newspaper. He was sent by the association to London in 1929 to lobby on the tribal affairs of the Kikuyu tribe. In 1931 he went back to London to study, getting active in movements related to Africa and establishing important contacts. He returned to Kenya after 15 years abroad. He started teaching and going around the country giving lectures before he was implicated in the Mau Mau Rebellion in 1951. He was arrested in 1952 and remained in prison until 1961. It was not proven that he was a Mau Mau leader. Upon his release, he was admitted to his country’s legislative council and led the negotiations for Kenya’s independence in 1961 and 1962 and won the 1963 elections, with Kenyatta appointed as the Prime Minister.

Catherine Ndereba
Africa has always bred outstanding athletes and Catherine Nyambura Ndereba is one of them. Born on July 31, 1972 in Gatunganga in the district of Nyeri, she started her career as a marathon runner while she was in secondary school. She was recruited by the Kenya Prisons Service in 1994 as a runner for their athletics program. Despite getting married and giving birth, she remained an outstanding athlete, being named Road Racer of the Year by Running Times and Road Runner of the Year by Runner’s World in 1998. She received the Kenyan Sportswoman of the Year awards in 2004 and 2005. That same year Catherine was awarded the Order of the Golden Warrior

Catherine won the Boston Marathon four times and had established a world record in her second Chicago Marathon win. She won gold at the World Championships in Paris in 2003 and in Osaka in 2007. At Helsinki World Championships in 2005 she won silver. As the representative of Kenya, she garnered the silver medal during the 2004 Olympic Games in Athens and in Beijing in 2008.

Richard Leakey
Richard Erskine Frere Leaky might not have dark skin but he is a Kenyan through and through. Born in Nairobi on December 19, 1944, Leaky is still very active as a conservationist, paleoanthropologist and politician. He took after his parents, Louis and Mary, who were both archeologists and were some of those who did innovative research work in East Africa for the origin of humans.

He made headlines in the early 1990s when he ordered the burning of piles of ivory seized from poachers. He also gave orders to guards at the Kenya Wildlife Service, which he headed, to shoot poachers on site. He established a political party he named Safina in 1995 to be able to fight government corruption on the same level. Leakey had been director of the Kenyan Wildlife Department and the National Museum of Kenya. He established and acts as chairman of WildlifeDirect, a world conservation front liner. In 2007, he was appointed as the head of Transparency International’s Kenyan branch.

Mohamed Amin
He brought to world attention the famine in Ethiopia through his photos and videos. Mohamed Amin, born in Eastleigh, Nairobi on August 29, 1943. He was a photojournalist, publisher and cameraman of world renown. His pictures of the famine in Ethiopia stirred the hearts of people, which led to the Live Aid concerts for charity. He was one of the most sought after photographer and cameraman when Western media needed photographs and videos of what is going on inside Africa. He allowed people around the world to see exclusive photographs of the fall of Ethiopia’s Mengistu Haile Mariam and Uganda’s Idi Amin.

He lost his left arm in 1991 during the Ethiopian Civil War and eventually lost his life at the age of 53 in 1996 when the Ethiopian Airlines Flight 961 he was in from Ethiopia to Nairobi was hijacked.

His son is now managing the Camerapix company he founded in 1963. Before his death, Amin was the publisher of the in-flight magazine of Ethiopian Airlines, Selamta.

Karen Blixen
If you are familiar with “Out of Africa” then you know that its writer, whose pen name was Isak Dinesen, was Karen Blixen. She was born in Denmark on April 17, 1885 and was christened as Karen Christenze Dinesen. Her last name came from her husband, her second cousin by the name of Bror von Blixen-Finecke, a Swedish Baron.

She and her husband moved to Kenya in 1914 and started a coffee plantation, employing Kikuyu people to work in their farm. Her novel, Out of Africa, written in 1937, later turned into a film starring Meryl Streep, was an account of her life in Kenya.

Although not a Kenyan, her contribution to the country made her a loved citizen and the suburb in Nairobi where she resided and had her coffee plantation is now named Karen. The area also has a Karen Blixen Coffee House and Museum.

Daniel arap Moi
Daniel Toroitich arap Moi was the Kenyan President from 1978 until 2002, after serving as the Vice-President of Jomo Kenyatta from 1967 to 1978. He was born in the village of Kurieng’wo in the district of Baringo on September 2, 1924. He is a member of the Kalenjin tribe, a small tribe in Kenya, which is not very active politically as politics was dominated by the largest tribe, the Kikuyu.

While he initially followed the footsteps of his predecessor, President Kenyatta, he later became authoritarian and only recognized his own political party. He was constantly at odds with his political rivals. So that Western funds would not stop coming to help the country’s economy, he reinforced his country’s pro-Western stand during the Cold War. Despite that, his authoritarian rule was later discovered after the Cold War ended and foreign funds promptly stopped coming. Although he allowed multi-party elections since 1990 when the country was in crisis and experiencing stagnation, he eventually lost in the 2002 elections.

Paul Tergat
Paul Kibii Tergat, a professional long distance runner, was born in the village of Riwo in the district of Baringo on June 17, 1969. He realized his talent for long distance running after his graduation from high school. His time of 2:04:55, a world record, which he set in Berlin in 2003, was unbroken from 2003 to 2007. Tergat has been regarded among the most accomplished long distance runners in the history of the sport. Throughout his career he acquired a long list of citations and medals and established several world records in cross-country, on the road and on the track. He won two gold medals in World Half Marathon Championships, five golds and one bronze in World Cross Country Championships, two silvers and one bronze in World Championships. He won silver in the Atlanta and Sydney Olympics.

Tergat is the Kenyan ambassador for the UN World Food Program since 2004. This same program allowed him to have lunch in school and gave him the means to finish his schooling. The Paul Tergat Foundation, supporting some of Kenya’s disadvantaged sports people was founded in 2005. Tergat, whose nickname is “The Gentleman”, is an enterprising person who also runs a PR and marketing office for sports-related activities.

Pamela Jelimo
She was a virtual unknown in the international community when at 18 years of age she won the gold medal in 800-meter running event at the Beijing Olympics in 2008. She was the first woman athlete from Kenya to win an Olympic gold medal and was the first to win the Golden League Jackpot, an annual track and field series organized by the International Association of Athletic Federations.

Pamela Jelimo was born in village of Kiptamok in Nandi District on December 5, 1989. Although from a poor family she was determined to continue her schooling and went as far as selling milk produced by the cows cared for by her mother. At age 13 she started running and eventually had to run against boys in sprint events because the female runners gave her no competition at all. Daniel Maru, her school’s headmaster donated money so she could buy running shoes and track suits. She quickly established a name for herself in her country before her breakthrough performance at the Beijing Olympics. Her career suffered a decline in 2009 up to 2011 but made a successful 2012 comeback with a second place win at an indoor meet in France, followed by a gold medal win at the 2012 World Indoor Championships held in Turkey.

Henry Wanyoike
One of the most inspiring athletes from Kenya is Henry Wanyoike. The 38-year-old athlete was born on May 10, 1974. He went blind after suffering a stroke in his sleep in 1995. He competes in marathon racing and Paralympic games. He is one person who did not let his disability bring him down. Wanyoike is considered as one of the fastest runners in the world. He had established a still-to-be-beaten world record time for blind runners of 2:31:31, which he did at the Hamburg Marathon in 2005. The fact that he does not concentrate on just a single event singles him out. Wanyoike competes in and have won silver and gold medals in half-marathons, 10K road races, marathons, and in 10,000-meter, 1,500-meter and 5,000-meter races.

Wanyoike made a promise to himself that he will help other people like him. He learned to get back on track when he lost his sight at the Low Vision Project of the Kikuyu Clinic. He was taught to know pullovers by the project’s chief, Petra Verweyen. Through his prize money and donations after he won his first gold medal at the Sydney Paralympic Games, he bought knitting machines and employed blind Kenyans to knit pullovers.

Dedan Kimathi
Dedan Kimathi Waciuri was born on October31, 1920. He is hailed as one of Kenya’s most prominent freedom fighter, being the leader of the Mau Mau, a militant group that boldly opposed the colonial government imposed by the British in Kenya. He was a member of the Kikuyu tribe. He was Nelson Mandela’s inspiration on his fight against apartheid. Kimathi also provided inspiration to many freedom fighters not just in Africa but in other parts of the world. Kimathi was convicted for alleged terrorism and murder without receiving a fair trial in 1957 and was eventually executed. A bronze statue was erected in his honor in Nairobi.

Tom Mboya
Thomas Odhiambo Mboya, a prominent politician during the time of President Jomo Kenyatta was born in Kilima Mbogo on August 15, 1930. He was credited for the formation of the Kenya African National Union. He received his higher education at Ruskin College in Oxford, England, graduating with a degree in industrial management.

Mboya was the founder of the Nairobi People’s Congress Party, and introduced many ideas on proper governance. His activities, when he formed a trade union were closely monitored but he was never found out. He organized Airlift Africa in 1959 together with the African-American Students Foundation that was based in the United States. At that time, 81 deserving Kenyan students were able to study in the United States. Barack Obama, Sr., also a Luo tribe member was a friend of Mboya. He was part of the Airlift Africa project but he received his education in Hawaii rather in continental United States. The project was extended to Tanzania. Zambia. Uganda, Tanganyika, Malawi and Zimbabwe after Mboya’s meeting with Senator Jack Kennedy in 1960. It was during that meeting that the Kennedy Foundation agreed to underwrite the project.

Although the actual reasons were never divulged, some people saying that it was because Mboya will be a formidable presidential candidate, he succumbed to gun wounds at the age of 38 in 1969. A street in Nairobi as well as a statue was erected in Nairobi to honor him.

:: References ::
http://www.kenya-travel-packages.com/famous-people-from-kenya.html
http://www.my-kenya-guide.com/famous-people-from-kenya.html