One of Kenya’s best known government administrators, Mohamed Yusuf Haji, died recently aged 88, still actively engaged in public service as both senator and chairman of a constitution revision team.
Born in Garissa in 1940, Haji was a beneficiary of the pre-independence colonial initiative to identify young talents to fill the shoes of departing British colonial administrators. He joined the administrative service as a District Officer in 1960.
In that year, Britain called the first Lancaster House Conference to determine Kenya’s future. It decreed that ‘natives’ would rule. Officials then intensified recruitment of potential African administrators and bureaucrats.
Simeon Nyachae, another long serving administrator wrote in his autobiography that new recruits were trained to take over Kenya’s administration at independence.