Kenya’s third president, Mwai Kibaki, died on April 21, 2022, and to keep his legacy alive, The Mwai Kibaki Memorial Lecture was launched.
This year, a memorial luncheon for Kibaki, president between 2002 and 2013, is scheduled to take place on Friday, April 11, 2025. Kibaki’s family and the Democratic Party of Kenya (DP) prepared the ceremony.
Inaugural ceremony
The first Mwai Kibaki Memorial Lecture was held on April 20, 2024, at a Nairobi hotel, and its theme then was ‘Mwai Kibaki: Celebrating the Legacy of a Pan-African Icon’. This lecture was prepared by a multi-stakeholder committee that included the Democratic Foundation (DF)-Kenya, the Democratic Party, independent experts, leaders, and the former president’s family.
From then on, the annual lecture series in honour of the former Othaya Member of Parliament (MP) and Vice President emerged. This lecture has one theme throughout: exploring the leadership and legacy of President Kibaki and why it matters for Kenya, Africa, and the world.
Second edition
This year’s edition is dubbed ‘Kibaki Memorial Lecture & Luncheon, and its theme is ‘A Resilient Nation: The Mwai Kibaki Legacy’. Kibaki’s legacy on development, focusing on his domestic and foreign policy, strategies, and actions that guided the former president, will be explored.
The lecture has been designed to unfold in sections, a panel of experts who will explore Kibaki’s legacy along four topics as follows: Political leadership and development. Here the focus is on political reforms, which involve changing laws, policies, and structures that had an impact on governance and development.
It will also include how the reforms undertaken by Kibaki enhanced democracy, reduced corruption, and increased citizen participation to create a more equitable and prosperous future based on economic inequality and good governance.
The second part is constitutionalism, the rule of law, and development. In this category, how constitutionalism ensured government power is limited by the supreme law, the rule of law ensured that everyone is subject to and protected by that law, and how these principles served in fostering sustainable and equitable development will be discussed.
Kibaki is hugely remembered for his efforts that turned around Kenya’s economy when he took power at the beginning of the year 2003. This will also be discussed under trade, markets, and development.
How trade and open markets impacted economic growth and development, including fostering job creation, reducing poverty, and increasing economic opportunities for all, will be key points under this category too.
On foreign policy and development, foreign policy strategies, the impact of development initiatives on foreign policy choices, and development goals will be deeply covered here.
Focus on the interconnected processes of economic, social, and environmental progress at both the regional and global levels will be discussed under the regional and global development legacy of the former president.
Kibaki in governance and politics
The late president was a graduate of Makerere University, Uganda, and the London School of Economics.
Under the founding president, Jomo Kenyatta, he served as assistant finance assistant minister between 1963 and 1966 before he was appointed minister and served in that capacity until 1991.
He was also elevated by the late President Daniel arap Moi and appointed the Vice President, serving from 1978 to 1988 as the second in command.
He joined the opposition politics at the height of the multiparty calls in Kenya. He remained in opposition from 1992 to 2002, when he won the presidency to succeed Moi with a landslide victory over Uhuru Kenyatta.
Although his legacy revolves more around the economic turnaround and the creation of Vision 2030, his political career is stained by the 2008 tribal conflict that erupted following the disputed elections of 2007.