Uhuru Kenyatta (born October 26, 1961, Nairobi, Kenya) is a Kenyan businessman and politician who held several government posts before serving as president of Kenya from 2013 to 2022.
Early life
The son of Jomo Kenyatta, Kenya’s first president, Uhuru was raised in a wealthy and politically powerful Kikuyu family. He attended St. Mary’s School in Nairobi, where he played as a winger for the school’s rugby team. He then went on to study political science and economics at Amherst College in Massachusetts. After his return to Kenya, he started a horticultural business that became quite successful. He also assumed some responsibility for managing his family’s extensive business holdings.
Kenyatta became politically active in the 1990s. In 1997 he was chair of a local branch of the Kenya African National Union (KANU)—the longtime ruling party that his father had once led—and later that year ran unsuccessfully for a parliamentary seat. In spite of his loss, KANU leader and Kenyan Pres. Daniel arap Moi seemed intent on grooming him for a greater role in public service. He appointed Kenyatta to chair the Kenya Tourist Board in 1999, and the following year Kenyatta was given the additional task of chairing the Disaster Emergency Response Committee.
Kenyatta’s political profile rose considerably in October 2001, when he was nominated by President Moi to fill a parliament seat; Moi then elevated him to the cabinet as minister for local government a month later. In 2002 Kenyatta was elected as one of four vice-chairs of KANU. Also that year, he was named the KANU candidate for the presidency—a controversial move engineered by outgoing President Moi, who was ineligible to stand for another term and wanted someone of his own choosing to succeed him; many feared that Moi would continue to rule through Kenyatta if the younger man were elected. Moi’s machinations backfired, however, as some KANU members bristled at the lack of debate within the party regarding Kenyatta’s selection as Moi’s successor, and they left KANU to support opposition leader Mwai Kibaki, who handily defeated Kenyatta in elections held in December 2002. Kenyatta then assumed the position of leader of the opposition in parliament.
Kenyatta’s star continued to rise within KANU, and he was elected chairman of the party in 2005. In the run-up to Kenya’s next presidential election, held in December 2007, Kenyatta again threw his hat into the ring, but he withdrew his candidacy a few months before the election and opted instead to back Kibaki, who was running for reelection against Raila Odinga and several other challengers. When the election results showed that Kibaki had narrowly defeated Odinga, the outcome was rejected by many of the latter’s supporters and was followed by weeks of widespread violence along ethnic lines, with the Kikuyu, Kenya’s largest ethnic group, being both instigators and targets of violence. Kibaki initially named Kenyatta as minister of local government in January 2008, but in a coalition government formed in April Kenyatta was appointed deputy prime minister and minister of trade. The next year, he was moved from the ministry of trade and became the minister of finance.
Meanwhile, the International Criminal Court (ICC) had started an investigation into the violence that followed the December 2007 polls. In late 2010 Kenyatta was named by the ICC as being one of six suspects thought to be most responsible for instigating the postelection violence; he immediately disputed the allegations and proclaimed his innocence. In January 2012 the ICC announced that four of the six suspects, including Kenyatta, would face trial. They were charged with committing crimes against humanity; the charges included allegations that Kenyatta had helped mobilize and fund the Mungiki, a Kikuyu criminal gang, in the group’s attacks on Odinga’s supporters in the aftermath of the disputed election. Shortly after the charges were announced, Kenyatta resigned as minister of finance but remained in his post as deputy prime minister.
The ICC charges did not dissuade Kenyatta from once again pursuing his aspirations for the presidency. Kenyatta and KANU parted ways in April 2012, and the next month Kenyatta launched a new party, The National Alliance (TNA). Later that year he and TNA became part of a multiparty alliance known as the Jubilee Coalition, which also included one of the other ICC suspects, William Ruto, and his United Republican Party. Kenyatta and Ruto campaigned together for the posts of president and deputy president, respectively. In light of the ICC proceedings, the eligibility of the two men to stand in the election was called into question by some, but in February 2013 the High Court of Kenya dismissed a case that sought to bar them from standing. Kenyatta went on to win the presidential election in the first round of voting, held on March 4, 2013, squeaking by with 50.07 percent of the vote. His nearest challenger was Odinga, who garnered 43.31 percent. Odinga did not at first concede. Citing what he deemed irregularities with the election, he filed a challenge to the results with Kenya’s Supreme Court. The court later upheld the election results, and Odinga conceded. Kenyatta was sworn in as president on April 9, 2013.
By the time of the 2013 election, Kenyatta had an estimated net worth of $500 million, making him one of Kenya’s richest citizens. Among his family’s considerable business holdings were ventures in the areas of media, banking, tourism, insurance, and dairy. He and his family also owned more than 500,000 acres of land in Kenya, much of which had been acquired by his father during a postcolonial land-transfer program. Their real estate holdings made the family one of the largest landowners in a country where landownership disputes were a long-standing source of resentment among people whose families had been displaced during the colonial era.
As president, Kenyatta had to deal with the increasing threat from al-Shabaab, an Islamic militant group based in neighbouring Somalia and angered over Kenya’s military involvement against them in that country. In retaliation, the group launched a number of deadly attacks on Kenyan soil. Domestically, Kenyatta presided over the implementation of a new government administrative unit of counties, which replaced the previous unit of provinces, as well as fielded complaints of poor government, corruption, and insecurity.
Kenyatta continued to face charges at the ICC. Although the trial of his deputy president, Ruto, began in September 2013, Kenyatta’s trial was repeatedly delayed. The defense claimed that there was not a strong enough case against him and that the charges should be dropped, while the prosecution complained of a lack of cooperation from Kenyan officials in gathering evidence. In December 2014 the ICC prosecution dropped all charges against Kenyatta, claiming that the Kenyan government had obstructed the ICC in the gathering of critical evidence and citing the widespread intimidation of its witnesses, both of which had hampered the prosecution’s case. ICC judges formally approved the withdrawal of charges and terminated the case proceedings in March 2015. They noted, however, that ICC prosecutors could reinstate charges at any time if there was evidence to support such a course of action.
