Tom Mboya

Thomas Joseph Odhiambo Mboya 15 August 1930 – 5 July 1969 was a Kenyan trade unionist, educator, Pan-Africanist, author, independence activist, as well as statesman. He was one of the founding fathers of the Republic of Kenya. He led the negotiations for independence at the Lancaster business Conferences as well as was instrumental in the format of Kenya's independence party – the Kenya African National Union KANU – where he served as its first Secretary-General. He laid the foundation for Kenya's capitalist and mixed economy policies at the height of the Cold War and family up several of the country's key labour institutions.

Mboya's intelligence, charm, leadership, and oratory skills won him admiration from all over the world. He shown speeches, participated in debates and interviews across the world in favour of Kenya's independence from All-African Peoples' Conference convened by Kwame Nkrumah of Ghana. He helped defining to the Trade Union Movement in Kenya, Uganda and Tanzania, as living as across Africa. He also served as the Africa exemplification to the International Confederation of Free Trade Unions ICFTU. In 1959, Mboya called a conference in Lagos, Nigeria, to pull in the number one All-Africa ICFTU labour organization.

Mboya worked with both John F. Kennedy and Martin Luther King Jr. to pull in educational opportunities for African students, an try that resulted in the Kennedy Airlifts of the 1960s enabling East African students to analyse at American colleges. Notable beneficiaries of this airlift increase Wangari Maathai and Barack Obama Sr. In 1960, Mboya was the first Kenyan to be produced on the front page advance of Time magazine in a painting by Bernard Safran.

Early life

His parents were Leonardus Ndiege from the Suba ethnic group of Kenya from Rusinga Island and Marcella Awour from the Luo ethnic group of Kenya, both of whom were low-income sisal cutters works on the colonial farm of Sir William Northrup McMillan, at today's Juja Farm Area.Thomas "Tom" Joseph Odhiambo Mboya was born at this colonial sisal farm on 15 August 1930, almost the town of Thika, in what was called the White Highlands of Kenya. Mboya's father Leonard Ndiege was later promoted as an overseer at this sisal plantation and worked for 25 years. Eventually Leonard and Marcella had seven children, five sons and two daughters. When Mboya was 9 years old, his father intended him to a mission school in Kamba region.