Kenya's former President Moi dies at 95

Kenya's second president Daniel Toroitich arap Moi is dead, President Uhuru Kenyatta has announced in a presidential proclamation.

He was 95 years old.

His death was confirmed by his press secretary Lee Njiru.

He passed away at night while receiving treatment at Nairobi Hospital.

"It is with profound sadness and sorrow that I announce the passing of a Great African Statesman, H.E. Daniel Toroitich arap Moi, the Second President of the Republic of Kenya. His Excellency the Former President passed on at the Nairobi Hospital on the early morning of this 4th February, 2020; in the presence of his family," president Kenyatta said in a statement.

Moi was president of Kenya for 24 years before relinquishing power in 2002 after Kenyans voted his hand-picked successor out in a landslide victory for former President Mwai Kibaki.

He became president in 1978 following the death of Kenya's first president Jomo Kenyatta the same year.

Moi was born in 1924 in Sacho, Kenya. He was educated at mission and government schools. He became a teacher aged 21 and in the early 1960s, as Kenya began to move toward independence (1963), he 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 into two, with dissidents joining the National Rainbow Coalition, whose candidate, Mwai Kibaki, succeeded Moi in December 2002.