Here’s something you probably don’t know about outgoing President Mwai Kibaki - as a bachelor, perhaps not long before he met his wife Lucy, he lived in a one-bedroomed apartment at Nairobi West and on occasion found it difficult to raise the Sh6.50 electricity bill.
He and Njenga Karume were veritable drinking buddies and would occasionally patronise the African Corner Bar which was at the time the only pub that sold bottled beer to Africans in Nairobi and was as such Kibaki’s drinking joint when on holiday from Makerere University.
On the day that Kibaki was unable to raise his electricity bill, Karume and his business partner Charles Kigwe, an uncle to Mama Ngina Kenyatta, had dropped off Kibaki at his bachelor pad when he complained out loud about spending the night in the dark. As the executive officer of Kanu, Kibaki was paid next to nil and was often short of cash. Luckily, Kigwe decided to pay the electricity bill and the three men drank till late. All this is according to Njenga Karume, interviewed before his death in 2012 for the recently released book Mwai Kibaki: 50 Years of National Service.
A book with a coffee table feel, this book kicks off with a large, black-and-white photo of a younger Kibaki, bright-eyed with a fuller hairline and looking every inch the dapper gentleman in a well-fitting suit. An ‘old boy’ of Mangu High School, then known as the Holy Ghost College, Kibaki is remembered fondly by fellow Mangu old boy and former Vice President Moody Awori as “a tiny, very quiet boy whom many tried to bully but who most knew would one day be a hero.”
Kibaki was the first African to graduate from the London School of Economics with a first class honours degree in public finance in 1958.
It was at the LSE where he was introduced to the Keynesian principles, a theory that 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, provide predictable and affordable loans to spurt growth and that taxation should be reduced to allow job creation with an expandable base.
The Keynesian principles also called on governments to employ the jobless, like in Kazi Kwa Vijana or National Youth Service, and to improve national infrastructure. In all these Kibaki came to believe that government should borrow money to achieve policies since the debt could easily be repaid as soon as everyone had a job and could once again afford to pay tax. Thus, it was the London School of Economics which moulded Kibaki’s future views on Kenya’s economy.
In 2002, almost immediately after he became President of Kenya, Kibaki unveiled the Economic Recovery Strategy for Wealth and Employment Creation and as a result of its implementation, GDP expanded by 5.8 per cent in 2003 compared to 0.4 per cent when he took over in 2002.
However, Kibaki’s road to economic brilliance was not without its hurdles.The colonial authorities in Kenya were reluctant to give Kibaki travel papers to London where he was scheduled to take up a scholarship at the London School of Economics. His involvement in student politics while in Makerere where he was the chairman of Kenya Students’ Guild and Vice Chairman of Makerere Guild had made him a marked man by the Kenyan colonial authorities. It was Prof Kenneth Ingham, Kibaki’s former lecturer at Makerere, who persuaded Sir Andrew Cohen, the then Governor of Uganda (1952-1957) to save Kibaki’s studies by giving him Ugandan travelling papers to pursue his scholarship at the LSE. In an interview before his death in 2010, Ingham said, “When I heard that Kibaki was elected President of Kenya in December 2003, I was pleased Kenyans had chosen a good man. But I was equally worried for him because I thought there were issues which required a measure of ruthlessness to deal with them, and honestly I didn’t think it was his nature. Kibaki doesn’t crave prominence. He doesn’t like to push himself forward. God help him.”
Ingham sentiments seem especially true of Kibaki’s earlier years when the colonial authorities were leaving Kenya and Kibaki was thus offered the job as the Managing Director of East African Breweries Ltd but declined, it would seem, on the principle that he had a vision of establishing his own political party, the Democratic Party known simply as DP to many Kenyans. Incidentally, it was his friend Njenga Karume, then a distributor for EABL, who was sent to relay news of the job offer to Kibaki.
“That was an extremely big job and I agreed to persuade Kibaki to accept Hobson’s offer,” said Karume in the book.
Brian Hobson was at the time the Managing Director of EABL. “I kept [the job offer] a secret because I did not want other people to compete for the same position. I also knew if Kibaki got the position he would be able to buy me some beer.”
Karume encouraged Kibaki to quit as Executive Officer for Kanu but Kibaki politely declined the offer to focus, it would appear, on his political career which paid off in 1969 when he was appointed minister for Finance and Economic Planning, taking over the economic planning docket from his predecessor and fellow Mangu High old boy, the late Tom Mboya, who was killed in the same year.
Kibaki’s appointment as minister came during troubled times with the economy confronting one shock after another - the collapse of the East African Community, the oil crisis and the devaluation of the dollar. Kibaki however lived up to ministerial expectations and in 1974, Time Magazine voted him one the 150 men and women who would become the world’s new leaders. Mwai Kibaki was additionally instrumental in managing the crisis within the East African Community and in 1977, Time again recognised him as one of the top African leaders of the 21st Century with high potential and again singled him out for the third time in 1981 by naming him amongst its annual top 100 people capable of leading the world in various capacities.
Further, during his tenure as minister for Finance, Kenya recorded economic growth rates of up to 7 percent and Kibaki’s sterling performance in that docket is widely known to date.
In his tenure, President Kibaki launched Vision 2030 - his development plan to reach a GDP growth of 10 per cent annually so as to transform Kenya into a middle income economy by 2030 via rehabilitation and expansion of infrastructure including roads, rail, power generation, telecommunications and port services.
His tenure also saw the transformation of institutions of good governance as well as the promulgation of a new constitution in August 2011 following the disputed presidential election of 2007 which led to the death of more than 1000 Kenyans.
As he leaves office on Tuesday next week, Kenyans will perhaps also remember President Kibaki as a once avid golfer.
Peter Kanyago, the chairman Kenya Tea Development Agency, has been friends with the President since 1974. “I played the last golf, a four ball, with Kibaki, George Muhoho and James Koome on the Sunday before he got an accident,” said Kanyago in the book. “He had come to the campaign centre in Kilimani and he told me: ‘I want to play nine holes, I don’t know when I shall ever play golf again’.
This was because he knew for sure that he would be the next President. I still recall the statement because since then he never played golf again.”As he retires, Kibaki might just take up the sport again.
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