The Late President Mwai Kibaki transformed socio-political economic aspects of Kenyans in many ways

It was the great philosopher Aristotle who opined that, three things matter in life arranged in the order of: Politics, Capital, and Education. Were it not for the political process that we have in the country, we wouldn’t have had the opportunity to be served by president Kibaki. Through the political process, he was able to rise from the Chief Executive Officer of KANU, to Member of Parliament, to Minister, Vice President and ultimately the president, where he instituted massive reforms. These reforms touched on the broader political, economic/capital and education aspects. I entered university in 2002 at the transition time between President Moi and President Kibaki. Our University Higher Education Loans (HELB) at the time were minimal but on his ascent to the presidency, our HELB loans were increased that saw persons like me to comfortably go throughout university life without many challenges because of revamped loans. Increases of university funding was accompanied by other reforms like expansion of the number of universities, the delinking of university management from the state such that the president was no longer the automatic chancellor of public universities.

The expansion of universities saw for example the growth and development of Chuka University, which has helped to mentor Tharaka University, which has transformed the lives of Tharaka community, which has been marginalized for some time. On politics, he redefined it so that finally, we would see it as an issue-based thing and not a personal issue that would make for example people fight or be physical in any way. On the capital side, he instituted many reforms at the taxation and revenue collection such that at some point, we were funding almost 95% of our development votes. The donor community was forced to look for him and renegotiate the terms for their lending, otherwise many of the employees of such organizations locally would lose their jobs. The Nairobi Securities Exchange (NSE) grew in leaps and bounds and many people had increased accumulation of capital. There were high growth of business and enterprises because of these reforms. The Constituency Development Fund (CDF) was introduced that has revolutionized service delivery in all constituencies in Kenya. On the education side, free primary education was globally acclaimed, and it led to higher transition to high school and later universities.