MOI, DANIEL TOROITICH ARAP

born 1924, Sacho, Kenya Colony [now Kenya] politician who became president of Kenya in 1978. Moi, a Kalenjin (an ethnic minority in the predominately Bantu nation), 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 the favour of 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, 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 July 1999 he appointed the popular and respected anthropologist Richard Leakey head of the civil service and permanent secretary to the cabinet.