Kenyatta was born as Kamau, son of Ngengi, at Ichaweri, southwest of Mount Kenya in the East African highlands. His father was a leader of a small Kikuyu agricultural settlement.

About age 10 Kamau became seriously ill with jigger infections in his feet and one leg, and he underwent successful surgery at a newly established Church of Scotland mission. This was his initial contact with Europeans. Fascinated with what he had seen during his recuperation, Kamau ran away from home to become a resident pupil at the mission. He studied the Bible, English, mathematics, and carpentry and paid his fees by working as a houseboy and cook for a European settler. In August 1914 he was baptized with the name Johnstone Kamau. He was one of the earliest of the Kikuyu to leave the confines of his own culture. And, like many others, Kamau soon left the mission life for the urban attractions of Nairobi.

There he secured a job as a clerk in the Public Works Department, and he also adopted the name Kenyatta, the Kikuyu term for a fancy belt that he wore. After serving briefly as an interpreter in the High Court, Kenyatta was transferred to a post with the Nairobi Town Council. About this time he married and began to raise a family.

The first African political protest movement in Kenya against a white-settler-dominated government began in 1921

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David Mathenge (born August 1976), better known by his stage name Nameless, is a Kenyan pop artist signed to the Ogopa DJ’s record label.

He rose to fame in 1999 through a star-search contest on Kenya’s urban music station 98.4 Capital FM, which he won with his original song “Megarider.” The song was about a penniless young man who is trying to seduce a woman but only has enough money for Kenya Bus tickets, and not the rich lifestyle she desires.

He later recorded the track with producer Tedd Josiah and it went on to be hot on the charts for weeks. This was the turning point in his musical career. He went on to sign with the Ogopa DJ’s label in 2001 and collaborated with artists such as the late E-Sir on “Boomba Train,” and Amani on the regional hit “Ninanoki” in 2002 which broke Kenyan chart records by remaining 110 days at number one.

He has gone on to tour across the East African region and in the U.S.A and U.K. In 2004, he released his debut album On Fire, and has since won 3 categories in the 2006 Kisima Music Awards He won the Best East African Single category at the 2007 Tanzania Music Awards (Kilimanjaro Music Awards) with his single Sinzia

In 2004, Mathenge married Ogopa DJ’s label mate Wahu Kagwe. They have one child, a daughter who was born in 2006. He is also an architect and graduated from the University of Nairobi.

South African pop group Jamali

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Richard Erskine Leakey was born in Nairobi, Kenya, a grandson of English missionaries. His father and mother, Louis and Mary Leakey, were distinguished paleontologists who had pioneered the archaeological exploration of the Great Rift Valley of East Africa.

The second of three brothers, Richard Leakey spent his childhood trailing after his parents on archaeological digs, searching for the fossils of extinct species and human ancestors. He found his first fossil when he was only six — the jaw of an extinct species of giant pig — but he was more interested in tracking living animals in the wild.

In 1959, Mary Leakey discovered the fossilized cranium of an extinct hominid, Zinjanthropus in Olduvai Gorge, Tanzania. The discovery of a presumed human ancestor of unprecedented antiquity focused the anthropological community’s attention on Africa as the cradle of mankind and brought the Leakey family international renown. But at 16, Richard Leakey wanted no part of squatting under the African sun, scratching the dirt for fossils. He dropped out of school and struck out on his own. He trapped animals and collected skeletons for research institutions, learned to fly, and started a business taking tourists on photographic safaris.

While still in his teens, he joined a former colleague of his parents’ on a fossil-hunting expedition to Lake Natron on the Kenya-Tanzania border. To his surprise, he enjoyed the venture, but lacking academic credentials, he received little credit for the team’s discoveries, so in 1965 he traveled to England to catch up on his school work, with the intention of resuming his education. When this proved more difficult than expected, he returned to Kenya, where he managed paleontological expeditions and worked for the National Museum of Kenya. In 1967, he joined a successful expedition to the Omo Valley in Ethiopia. On a flight between Omo and Nairobi, he spotted an expanse of sedimentary rock on the shores of Lake Turkana, formerly known as Lake Rudolf. Leakey suspected the area was rich with fossils. When a return trip confirmed his hunch, he secured funding from the National Geographic Society to run his own excavation. With a crew of Kenyan fossil hunters who called themselves the Hominid Gang, he uncovered a rich vein of artifacts that startled the world. After years in his family’s shadow, Richard Leakey had earned a reputation as an outstanding fossil hunter in his own right.

In 1968, at the age of 25, he won appointment as Director of the National Museum of Kenya. Within a year, he was diagnosed with a terminal kidney disease and told he only had ten years to live. In spite of this diagnosis, he forged ahead with his life. He married zoologist Meave Epps , a primate specialist who had worked with his father at Tigoni Primate Research Center. As Director of the Museum, Leakey undertook intensive excavation at Lake Turkana. Over the next 30 years, the site yielded more than 200 fossils, including two of the most spectacular finds of all time, a virtually complete Homo habilis skull in 1972 and a Homo erectus skull in 1975.

By the end of the decade, Leakey’s kidney disease had grown severe, and he traveled to London to consult a specialist. He received a transplant from his younger brother Philip, but within a month, rejection set in. The drugs that suppressed the rejection weakened his immune system, and he nearly died from an inflammation of the lungs. Leakey survived, recovered, and returned to Kenya. In the eight months he had spent abroad, he wrote an autobiography, One Life , although the most dramatic chapters of his life were yet to come.

In 1984, his team found one of the most historic specimens of all, the nearly complete skeleton of a young male Homo erectus . The 1.6 million-year-old skeleton, nicknamed Turkana Boy, is one of the most complete hominid fossil skeletons ever found. Leakey described this discovery and its significance in the book Origins Reconsidered (1992). In 1985, the site produced the skull of a previously unknown species of extinct hominid, Australopithecus aethiopicus .

In nearly 30 years as Director of the National Museum, Richard Leakey had built the institution into a major international research center. In 1989, he accepted an appointment by Kenya’s President, Daniel Arap Moi, to serve as Director of the Kenya Wildlife Service. As Director he was called on to rescue the country’s chaotic park system and combat an epidemic of rhinoceros and elephant poaching. The illegal demand for the tusks of these endangered animals was pushing both species to the brink of extinction. Leakey created well-armed anti-poaching units, and when gentler measures failed, ordered the shooting of poachers. In 1989, Leakey staged a dramatic burning of 12 tons of confiscated tusks. The elephant population was soon stabilized and is now growing. Impressed with Leakey’s achievement, the World Bank approved substantial grants to the Wildlife Service.

Although Leakey’s accomplishments won international recognition, he had made enemies at home. In 1993, his plane suffered an unexplained equipment failure and crashed in the mountains outside Nairobi. The accident cost Leakey both his legs. An expert pilot, he had good reason to suspect sabotage by political enemies. Undeterred, Leakey returned to work, but political opposition forced his resignation in 1994. He recounted the experience in the book Wildlife Wars: My Battle to Save Kenya’s Elephants (2001). Long impatient with the corruption and inefficiency of Kenya’s one-party government, Leakey and other dissidents founded the Safina party in 1995. For two years, the government withheld legal recognition of the party. Government supporters subjected Leakey to public humiliation, death threats and constant surveillance, and finally attacked him with whips outside the courthouse, but Richard Leakey could not be intimidated.

As Secretary General of Safina, he won a seat in his country’s parliament, where he negotiated constitutional reform and introduced laws protecting the disabled. In 1999, international lending institutions cut off aid to Kenya because of rampant corruption in government. Leakey’s sometime adversary, President Moi, asked Leakey to join the administration as Cabinet Secretary and head of the Public Service, with a mission to restore the integrity of the civil administration. Leakey soon earned the confidence of international donor institutions, and lending to Kenya resumed.

Since retiring from government in 2001, Richard Leakey has served as a leading spokesman for Transparency International, a global coalition to fight corruption, and for the Great Apes Survival Project, a United Nations effort to defend mankind’s closest relatives. His books include The Origin of Humankind (1994) and The Sixth Extinction: Patterns of Life and the Future of Mankind (1995). His wife, Meave Leakey , and his daughter Louise carry on the family mission of searching for the evidence of human origins in Africa, while Richard Leakey continues his work as a highly public advocate for the disabled, for Kenya’s kidney patients, for the environment, and for the benefit of the continent that gave birth to the human race.

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Dr. P.L.O- Lumumba is an Advocate of the High Courts of Kenya and Tanzania and Law Lecturer at the Faculty of Law, University of Nairobi.

He is one of the Trustees and the Executive Director of the African Institute of Leaders and Leadership, Nairobi, Kenya. He received his LL.B and LL.M Degrees in Law at the University of Nairobi, followed by a PhD in the Laws of the Sea at the University of Ghent in Belgium.

Dr. Lumumba has attended several merit trainings including at the Afoul Wallenburg Institute at the University of Lund, in Sweden (Human Rights), Commonwealth Young Lawyers Course at the Institute of Advanced Legal Studies (University of London), International Committee of the Red Cross for University Teachers in Geneva (Humanitarian Law), The International Visitors Programmes in the United States of America among others.

P.L.O- Lumumba has lectured at the United States International University, Nairobi, the University of Nairobi, Widener University (USA) Nairobi Summer Programs.

P.L.O-Lumumba whoa was a Student Leader in his student days has also served in the Law Society of Kenya and has received recognition by the Law Society of Kenya and the International Commission of Jurists (Kenya Chapter) as a member in good standing.

He is also the founder of several organizations including the P.L.O- Lumumba Foundation, a charitable organization that has been in operation since 1990. The Association of the Citizens Against Corruption (ACAC), Movement for Dialogue and Non- Violence (MODAN), The African Institute of Leaders and Leadership (AILL), a Trustee of Ufadhili Trust and a Director of Makini Schools.

P.L.O- Lumumba is a renowned legal practitioner recognized by peers as a leading litigator in Constitutional Law and Judicial Review Cases. Ha also has been recognized by the Kenya- USA Society as a Leader in the mould of Dr. Martin Luther King Jnr. With several thousand speeches on diverse subjects delivered in and outside Kenya, Lumumba is recognized as one of the leading public speakers in Kenya. His selected speeches will be released in book form under the title,

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Hon. Stephen Kalonzo Musyoka, the vice President and minister for Home Affairs, was born on December 24, 1953.

He is a lawyer by profession and holds a Post Graduate Diploma (PGD)in Business Management from Mediterranean Institute of Management, Nicosia , Cyprus ; Diploma in Law from Kenya School of Law; Bachelor of Law from University of Nairobi .

He started Pupilage and as a Legal Assistant at Kaplan & Stratton Advocates; Manager (Legal Service), Comcraft services Ltd.; Private Practice, S.K. Musyoka & Co. Advocates.

He won the Kitui North By-elections in 1985 and was appointed an Assistant Minister for Works, Housing and Physical Planning. Re-elected MP in 1988 and elected Deputy Speaker of the National Assembly, Organizing Secretary of KANU and member of KANU National Executive Committee.

In 1992, he was re-elected MP and appointed Minister for Foreign Affairs and International Cooperation.

He was re-elected in 1997 and appointed Minister for Education and Human Resources Development, Minister for Tourism and Information, Elected National Vice-Chairman of KANU, re-elected MP in 2002 and appointed Minister for Foreign Affairs before his current appointment.

Musyoka has traveled extensively as Head and Member of Government Delegations to various countries: addressed the UN General Assembly from 1993-1998, chaired and spearheaded peace initiatives within the framework of Inter-Governmental Authority for Development (IGAD) peace processes for Sudan and Somalia, and within the Great Lakes Region.

After tirelessly working for the two IGAD initiatives, and therefore after witnessing the final conclusion, Hon. Musyoka had this into remark:

“I am keenly aware that each time, a man stands up for an ideal, or acts to improve the lot of others, or strikes out against injustice; he sends forth a ripple of hope to those involved. This commitment inspires my contribution to the cause of peace in Sudan , Somalia and the Great Lakes region as a whole. I therefore pledge my continued engagement in the pursuit of peace and stability in the region. I was dearly humbled by the Somali peaceful election and the peace at large.”

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President Mwai Kibaki was born on November 15th, 1931 in Gatuyaini Village, Othaya division, Nyeri, in the Central Province. He is the last-born son of the late Kibaki Githinji and the late Teresia Wanjiku. His siblings include Philip Githinji, Kinyua Kibaki, Anastasia wangui, Waruguru Kibaki (who are all deceased now), Ester waitherero, Bernard Nderitu and a half-brother Samuel Githinji.

Mwai Kibaki went to Gatuyaini village school where he completed what was then called Sub “A” and sub “B” which is the equivalent of standard one and two. He then joined Karima mission school for the three more classes of primary school. He later moved to Mathari School (now Nyeri High School) between 1944 and 1946 for Standard four to six. Here, he learnt carpentry and masonry because students would repair furniture and provide material for maintaining the school’s buildings. He also grew his own food as all students in the school were expected to do.

Kibaki extended the art of self-reliance to his school holidays where he earned extra money by working as a turn boy on buses operated by the defunct Othaya African Bus Union.

After Karima Primary and Nyeri Boarding primary schools, he proceeded to Man’gu High School where he studied between 1947 and 1950. He passed with a maximum of six points in his “O” level examination. He was influenced by the veterans of the two World Wars in his village and once considered becoming a soldier in his final year in Man’gu. This did not materialize because of a ruling by the Chief colonial secretary, Walter Coutts, which barred the recruitment of the Kikuyu, Embu and Meru communities into the army.

After Man’gu he proceeded to Makerere University to pursue a Bachelor of Arts degree in Economics, History and Political Science. While at the University, Kibaki was the Chairman of the Kenya Students Association and the Vice-Chairman of Makerere Students Guild.

He graduated in 1955 with a First Class Honours Degree (BA) in Economics and took up an appointment as Assistant Sales Manager Shell Company of East Africa, Uganda Division. It is during the same year that he earned a scholarship to do postgraduate work in any British University. He enrolled at the prestigious London School of economics for a B.sc in public finance, graduating with a distinction.

He went back to Makerere in 1958 where he taught as an Assistant Lecturer in the economics department until 1960. In December 1960, he quit Makerere and returned home to take up a job with Kanu as an Executive Officer. Earlier in March 1960,he had been involved in the founding of the KANU party.

In 1962, Kibaki married Lucy Muthoni, the daughter of a Church Minister, and together they have four children: Judy Wanjiku, Jimmy Kibaki, David Kagai, and Tony Githinji. They also have three grandchildren: Joy Jamie Marie: Mwai Junior and Krystina Muthoni.

In 1963 he made a debut in elective politics by contesting the Donholm Constituency (now Makadara) in Nairobi Province, which he won on a Kanu ticket.

He was made the parliamentary secretary to the Minister of Finance from 1963 to 1965 and in 1965 he was appointed a minister at the Ministry of Commerce and Industry where he served until 1969.In the same year, Mwai Kibaki was re-elected the MP for Donholm Constituency on a Kanu ticket.

He was later moved to the strategic ministry of Finance and economic Planning where he served from1970 to 1978. During this period Kibaki, moved his political base from Nairobi to Othaya and was re-elected in 1974 to represent Othaya constituency on a Kanu ticket. He was re-elected MP for the same constituency in the subsequent elections of 1979, 1983 and 1988. Besides being MP, Kibaki was the Othaya Kanu branch chairman from 1974 to 1991 when he resigned from Kanu to found the Democratic Party (DP).

Kibaki was appointed Vice-President in 1978 when Daniel Arap Moi took over the reins of power following the death of founding President, Jomo Kenyatta. He continued to serve in the Ministry of Finance and Economic Planning until 1983 when he moved to the Ministry of Home Affairs and National Heritage .He served until 1988 when he was again moved to the Ministry of Health. Kibaki was also the Leader of Government Business and Chairman of the Sessional Committee from 1978 to 1988.He was the Kanu vice-President from 1978 to 1988.

Kibaki founded DP on December 25th, 1991 and vied for the Presidency on its ticket in the 1992 elections.He came third after Daniel Moi and Kenneth Matiba.

In 1997 he contested for the Presidency again on the same ticket and came second to Kanu’s Daniel Arap Moi.He became Member and Chairman of Public Accounts Committee from 1997 to 2002.

In January 1998 DP became the Official Opposition Party hence Kibaki assumed status of the Leader of the Official Opposition Party. He also became a Member of the House Business Committee from 1998 to 2002.

Mwai Kibaki was sworn in as President on 30th December 2002 after winning in the preceding General Elections held on 27th December 2002. He is Kenya’s 3rd President.

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Prime Minister. Previously has been the Minister for Roads and Public Works. Was born at Maseno in Nyanza Province , the second son of nine children of the late Jaramogi Oginga Odinga and Mama Mary Emma Odinga.

After attending the Kisumu Union School, Maranda High School and the Herder Institute, Odinga spent 1965 to 1970 at the Technical University (Otto Von Guericke), Magdeburg in Germany leaving with a Master of Science degree in Mechanical Engineering (Special field: Production Technology).

Returning to Kenya , he joined the University of Nairobi – Department of Mechanical Engineering, where he taught until 1974.

In 1975, he was appointed Deputy Director of the Kenya Bureau of Standards, a post he held until 1982 when he was arrested and subsequently detained without trial by the Govemment.

He has also attended courses at the British Standards Institution in London , the National Bureau of Standard, Washington D.C. and the University of Denver in Colorado , and has several publications both technical and political to his credit.

In the dark days of political repressions in Kenya , Raila was detained three times without trial for a total period of 8 years. In 1991 at the height of the struggle for democratic change, he had to briefly seek asylum in Norway in order to escape a fourth detention.

After the re-Introduction of multi-party politics, Raila vied for the Lang’ata Parliamentary seat, a multi-ethnic constituency within Nairobi City and won.

Following disagreement however, within the leadership of the Party, he in December 1996 resigned from both FORD-Kenya and Parliament, and joined the National Development Party of Kenya (NDP). He contested the ensuing by-election in his former constituency on an NDP ticket, in March 1997. and retained the seat.

Raila was elected the Party Leader of the NDP and was the Party’s Presidential Candidate in the 1997 General Election, coming third in a field of fifteen (15) candidates.

The ill fated merger between NDP and KANU of March 18, 2002, lasted for three months before cracks emerged. Raila who had been elected as Secretary General along with a number of colleagues disagreed with KANU and teamed up with others in the opposition to form the National Rainbow Coalition (NARC), which won the 2002 General alection with a big majority.

He is currently the Prime Minister of the Republic Kenya.

PHILOSOPHY OF LIFE

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Uhuru Muigai Kenyatta (born October 26, 1961) is a Kenyan politician, currently serving as Deputy Prime Minister and Minister for Finance. He is the Chairman of Kenya African National Union (KANU), the former ruling party, which is currently part of the Party of National Unity (PNU).

Nominated to Parliament in 2001, he became Minister for Local Government under President Daniel arap Moi and, despite his political inexperience, was favored by President Moi as his successor; Kenyatta ran as KANU’s candidate in the December 2002 presidential election, but lost to opposition candidate Mwai Kibaki by a large margin. He subsequently became Leader of the Opposition in Parliament. He backed Kibaki for re-election in the December 2007 presidential election and was named Minister of Local Government by Kibaki in January 2008, before becoming Deputy Prime Minister and Minister of Trade in April 2008 as part of a coalition government. He is the son of Jomo Kenyatta, Kenya’s first president (1964

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“I am asking you to believe.
Not just in my ability to bring real change in washington…
I am asking you to believe in yours.”

Barack Obama

Barack Obama was born in Hawaii on August 4th, 1961. His father, Barack Obama Sr., was born and raised in a small village in Kenya, where he grew up herding goats with his own father, who was a domestic servant to the British.

Barack’s mother, Ann Dunham, grew up in small-town Kansas. Her father worked on oil rigs during the Depression, and then signed up for World War II after Pearl Harbor, where he marched across Europe in Patton’s army. Her mother went to work on a bomber assembly line, and after the war, they studied on the G.I. Bill, bought a house through the Federal Housing Program, and moved west to Hawaii.

It was there, at the University of Hawaii, where Barack’s parents met. His mother was a student there, and his father had won a scholarship that allowed him to leave Kenya and pursue his dreams in America.

Barack’s father eventually returned to Kenya, and Barack grew up with his mother in Hawaii, and for a few years in Indonesia. Later, he moved to New York, where he graduated from Columbia University in 1983.

The College Years

Remembering the values of empathy and service that his mother taught him, Barack put law school and corporate life on hold after college and moved to Chicago in 1985, where he became a community organizer with a church-based group seeking to improve living conditions in poor neighborhoods plagued with crime and high unemployment.

The group had some success, but Barack had come to realize that in order to truly improve the lives of people in that community and other communities, it would take not just a change at the local level, but a change in our laws and in our politics.

He went on to earn his law degree from Harvard in 1991, where he became the first African-American president of the Harvard Law Review. Soon after, he returned to Chicago to practice as a civil rights lawyer and teach constitutional law. Finally, his advocacy work led him to run for the Illinois State Senate, where he served for eight years. In 2004, he became the third African American since Reconstruction to be elected to the U.S. Senate.

Political Career

It has been the rich and varied experiences of Barack Obama’s life – growing up in different places with people who had differing ideas – that have animated his political journey. Amid the partisanship and bickering of today’s public debate, he still believes in the ability to unite people around a politics of purpose – a politics that puts solving the challenges of everyday Americans ahead of partisan calculation and political gain.

In the Illinois State Senate, this meant working with both Democrats and Republicans to help working families get ahead by creating programs like the state Earned Income Tax Credit, which in three years provided over $100 million in tax cuts to families across the state. He also pushed through an expansion of early childhood education, and after a number of inmates on death row were found innocent, Senator Obama worked with law enforcement officials to require the videotaping of interrogations and confessions in all capital cases.

In the U.S. Senate, he has focused on tackling the challenges of a globalized, 21st century world with fresh thinking and a politics that no longer settles for the lowest common denominator. His first law was passed with Republican Tom Coburn, a measure to rebuild trust in government by allowing every American to go online and see how and where every dime of their tax dollars is spent. He has also been the lead voice in championing ethics reform that would root out Jack Abramoff-style corruption in Congress.

As a member of the Veterans’ Affairs Committee, Senator Obama has fought to help Illinois veterans get the disability pay they were promised, while working to prepare the VA for the return of the thousands of veterans who will need care after Iraq and Afghanistan. Recognizing the terrorist threat posed by weapons of mass destruction, he traveled to Russia with Republican Dick Lugar to begin a new generation of non-proliferation efforts designed to find and secure deadly weapons around the world. And knowing the threat we face to our economy and our security from America’s addiction to oil, he’s working to bring auto companies, unions, farmers, businesses and politicians of both parties together to promote the greater use of alternative fuels and higher fuel standards in our cars.

Whether it’s the poverty exposed by Katrina, the genocide in Darfur, or the role of faith in our politics, Barack Obama continues to speak out on the issues that will define America in the 21st century. But above all his accomplishments and experiences, he is most proud and grateful for his family. His wife, Michelle, and his two daughters, Malia, 10, and Sasha, 7, live on Chicago’s South Side.

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