The Former president Mwai Kibaki was born in Gatuyaini village in Othaya on November 15, 1931.
He was the youngest in Kibaki Githinji and Teresia Wanjiku’s family.
The young Mwai was often left in the care of his elder sister, Waitherero, as their mother busied herself in the garden. Born in a large peasant Kikuyu family, Mwai grew among his eight siblings.
Like many of his colleagues, young Mwai spent most of his early childhood assisting in the family chores.
Due to the patriarchal nature of the Kikuyu society, Mwai’s chores tended to incline towards outdoor activities such as tilling land and taking care of the family livestock.
During this time Catholic missionaries had established their base in the nearby Karima Mission. They started going into the villages looking for boys to attend school. Young Kibaki was nominated to join to the mission school by his polygamous father, as he was not doing much in the garden.
Education
The Italian Consolata fathers had arrived in Nyeri in 1902 wanting to grow vines and olives on a 400 acre farm. When that failed they turned to education and arrived at Karima Mission in 1904 and started building schools, churches and dispensaries.
It is one of these primary schools in 1939 a barefoot Mwai Kibaki left home for the newly established, 50 cent-a-term Gatuyaini village school. This was when the World War II had started.
The Consolata Fathers were competing for children with the Kikuyu Independent School Association (KISA) which had started in 1934 and was opening its own schools in Central Kenya region.
Here apart from the elementary education he learned catechism classes. After completing his first and second grade he shifted to Holy Ghost Catholic Missionaries Karima Mission School (now Karima Primary).
It was this early association with the catholic that molded his character. After three years, he left Karima for Mathari Boarding School currently Nyeri High School in 1944 to 1946.
The Boarding school afforded Mwai better amenities and platform to learn new vocational skills such as masonry and carpentry. Much of these skills came in handy in availing the school manpower to repair furniture and school building maintenance.
He also had a farm within the school just like the rest of the students where he grew some food crops. He was business-minded with the holidays presenting an opportune moment for him to make extra money by operating as a bus conductor for the defunct Othaya African Buses that plied the Nyeri-Nairobi route.
In 1947, he joined Holy Ghost College (now Mang’u High School) for his secondary education. Mang’u was a prestigious secondary school started by Fr Michael Joseph Witts in Kabaa which is now situated along the Thika Superhighway.
He was one of the brightest students with a maximum of six points at his “O” level examinations (Cambridge School Certificate examinations) by passing six subjects with Grade 1 distinction in 1950. He, however, considered becoming a soldier after much influence from first and Second World War veterans in his village.
His ambitions were however thwarted by a colonial decree that barred the conscripting of the Kikuyu, Embu, and Meru communities into the army.
In 1951, Kibaki joined Makerere University College, Uganda where he studied Economics, History and Political Science between the years 1951 and 1954. Makerere University had been established in 1922 as the Native Technical College on Makerere Hill near Kampala. The initial aim was to provide technical training to East African students but the two-year general course diploma did not impress many students who felt that Makerere was not a real university and opted to go abroad for real degrees.
In 1944 the Asquith Commission recommended that Makerere should have a special relationship with the University of London. In 1949 Makerere became the University College of East Africa and awarded the first University of London Degrees in 1953. Kibaki was one of the first students who graduated with a University of London degree from Makerere.
Besides his studies at Makerere, MwaiKibaki also took a keen interest in Student Politics and was ones elected the Chairman of the Kenya Students Association and the Vice Chairman of Makerere Students Guild (154-1955). In 1955 Kibaki graduated with a First Class Honours Degree in Economics. Some of his lecturers thought that he should go to Oxford for the so-called Political Science, Philosophy and Economics (PPE). But he chose to accept a scholarship at the London School of Economics for a BSC in Public Finance.
As he awaited the scholarship, Kibaki worked briefly as an assistant sales manager in the Uganda division of Shell Company of East Africa.
After graduating with a First Class Honours degree in Makerere, Kibaki finally got a scholarship to study at the prestigious London School of Economics (LSE) which had distinguished itself as a centre of excellence. It was here that Kibaki studied for Bachelor of Science degree (Bsc) in public finance graduating with a distinction in 1958. He became the first African to graduate from the school with a first class honours degree.
It was here he was introduced to Keynesian principles, a theory that had emerged 20 years earlier after Milton Keynes transformed economics with his provocative ideas.
Keynes suggested- and Kibaki was a keen follower – that Governments should keep the price of money cheap, provided predictable and affordable loans to spur growth and that taxation should be reduced to allow job creation with an expanded tax base. It also called Governments to employ the jobless, like in Kazi kwa Vijana or National Youth Service, to improve national infrastructure.
In all these, Kibaki came to believe, Government should borrow money to achieve the policies since the debt could easily be repaid as soon as everyone had a job and could once again afford to pay tax.
On graduation from the LSE with a distinction,Kibaki returned to his alma mater, Makerere University, as an Assistant Lecturer in the Department of Economics from 1958 to 1960.
Kibaki in his own words; “Makerere is where my academic and intellectual foundation was laid. Many of my leadership skills were developed and nurtured here,” Kibaki would say 52 years after he left the Institution and as he received a Doctor of Laws (Honoris causa) from Makerere in January 2012.
Student politics also turned out to the training ground for a later career in public life. Kibaki was elected chairman of the Kenya Students Association was a notable voice in the debate over future of the country. He became a strong advocate for decolonization. While it was the London School of Economics that moulded Kibaki’s future views on Kenya’s economy.
In December 1960 Kibaki left the lecturing job to join the Kenya African National Union (KANU) as the Executive Officer.
Work
Tom Mboya and Kibaki were Mang’u alumni, they were both bright and staunch catholics. It was at the insistence of among others that Mboya made Kibaki decide to leave his new lecturer job at Makerere and become the Executive Officer of KANU a party he had helped to craft its constitution.
Initially Mboya had wanted Kibaki to join Nairobi Peoples Convention Party (PCP) as they waited for the registration of Kanu. After they had done the paper work in June 1960, Tom Mboya handed them for registration with Kenyatta as the President. The registrar refused to register Kanu as long as Jomo Kenyatta was the president and as long as trade unions formed part of the membership.
Later, Mboya invited Kibaki to become a member of Kenya Education Trust which was to coordinate the second airlift of students to United State of America (USA). Kibaki, and Dr. Munyua Waiyaki became the new faces of the airlift.
On the day that Kanu won election, a photo of Tom Mboya and Kibaki jumping and hugging captured their deep rooted friendship.
Both would together help to draft the famous sessional paper No. 10 on African socialism and its application to development that spelt out the pace which Kenya’s economy would take.
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