Mwai Kibaki: The man who changed Kenya’s money bag

Mwai Kibaki took power in 2002 and turned Kenya into a “working nation,”

US President Barack Obama recently smoked out retired President Mwai Kibaki — the man who gave his father Obama Senior a job — from hibernation. Kibaki, who is rarely seen in public, came to honour a dinner date with the US President on Saturday night at his former address in State House, Nairobi.

The next day, Obama went to Kasarani and acknowledged what the old man had done for the country — building the economy. The praise for Kibaki, whose rallying call when he took power in 2002 was to turn Kenya into a “working nation,” was hidden in a hackneyed comparison about Kenya’s economy at independence and that of South Korea, and what Kenya has achieved so far.
The numbers show “Kenya is making progress,” Obama said.