Daniel arap Moi

Daniel arap Moi, 1988.William F. Campbell—Time Life Pictures/Getty Images

Daniel arap Moi, in full Daniel Toroitich arap Moi    (born 1924, Sacho, Kenya Colony [now Kenya]), Kenyan politician, who held the office of president (1978–2002).

Moi was educated at mission and government schools. He became a teacher at age 21 and in the early 1960s, as Kenya began to move toward independence (1963), was appointed minister of education in the transitional government. Although he had originally been cofounder and chairman of the Kenya African Democratic Union, a party composed of minority peoples, he joined the Kikuyu-dominated Kenya African National Union (KANU) in 1964. That same year Moi was appointed minister of home affairs.

Named vice president in 1967, Moi became president in 1978 following the death of Jomo Kenyatta. He quickly consolidated his power, banning opposition parties and promoting his Kalenjin countrymen to positions of authority at the expense of the Kikuyu. He also curried favour with the army, which proved loyal to him in suppressing a coup attempt in 1982. His continuation of Kenyatta’s pro-Western policies ensured significant sums of development aid during the Cold War (1947–91), and under Moi’s stewardship Kenya emerged as one of the most prosperous African nations.

In the early 1990s, however, Western countries began to demand political and economic reforms, leading Moi to legalize opposition parties in 1991. The following year he won the country’s first multiparty elections amid charges of electoral fraud. Riots and demonstrations marred the 1997 elections, and hundreds of Kenyans, mainly Kikuyu, were killed. Easily elected to his fifth term as president, Moi promised to end government corruption and implement democratic and economic reforms. In an effort to combat corruption, in 1999 he appointed Richard Leakey, the popular and respected anthropologist, the head of the civil service and permanent secretary to the cabinet, a position Leakey retired from in 2001.

Required by the constitution to resign in 2003, Moi backed Uhuru Kenyatta, son of Jomo Kenyatta, as the KANU candidate in the 2002 elections, but many feared that Kenyatta would be a puppet for Moi. KANU split in two, with dissidents joining the National Rainbow Coalition, whose candidate, Mwai Kibaki, succeeded Moi in December 2002.