Daniel arap Moi

Daniel Toroitich arap Moi was born on the second of September 1924 in the Rift Valley village of Kuriengwo, in the Sacho area of Baringo District, in what is now Baringo County, Kenya. He was a son of the Tugen sub-group of the Kalenjin people. Raised in the highlands of the Rift Valley, he first attended the Africa Inland Mission school before pursuing his teacher training at Tambach Teachers Training College, which he attended from 1945 to 1947, and later at Kagumo Teachers College.

Moi entered the teaching profession and served as an educator until 1955, when he turned to public life. He was elected to the Legislative Council for the Rift Valley and rose steadily through the ranks of the movement carrying Kenya toward independence. Under President Jomo Kenyatta he served as Kenya's third vice-president from 1967, and upon Kenyatta's death in 1978 he ascended to the presidency.

For twenty-four years, from 1978 to 2002, Moi led Kenya as its second head of state, the longest tenure the nation has known. His years in office spanned a period of one-party rule under KANU that drew serious criticism, yet they also carried Kenya through decades of continuity in a turbulent region. In December 1991, at the KANU conference in Kasarani, he moved to repeal the constitutional clause that had banned opposition parties, opening the door to multi-party elections.

He presided over Kenya's first multi-party elections in 1992 and again in 1997, and in 2002 he stepped down in accordance with the constitution, yielding power to his elected successor. Daniel arap Moi died on the fourth of February 2020, at the age of ninety-five. A teacher who became a nation's steward, he is remembered as a defining figure of Kenya's first half-century of independence.