Photo Credit: Ashworth Africa
Kenya
After years of resisting colonial rule with the “Mau-Mau” uprising, Kenya won independence from the United Kingdom in 1963. At independence, Jomo Kenyatta and his Kenya African National Union party (KANU) formed a government with Kenyatta as the founding president. Like Tanzania, early post-colonial Kenya operated a single-party system of democracy.
When Kenyatta passed on in 1978, he was succeeded by Daniel Arap Moi. In 2002, a landmark election saw the defeat of Moi and the ruling KANU party by Mwai Kibaki of the National Rainbow Coalition.
Kenya went through a period of political upheavals during the 2007 presidential elections, which were marred by irregularities and riots, before degenerating into ethnically motivated post-election violence that resulted in the death of nearly 1,000 Kenyans. In the aftermath of the violence, Kenya’s democracy has matured and is much stronger today.
Kenya is also one of the few African countries that has never experienced a military incursion in governance except for the unsuccessful coup attempt of 1982 that was promptly put down by forces loyal to the government.
