Uhuru Kenyatta, in full Uhuru Muigai Kenyatta (born October 26, 1961, Nairobi, Kenya), Kenyan businessman and politician who held several government posts before being elected president of Kenya in 2013.
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.