May he RIP.

Though he oversaw a lot of violence, he tried to stabilise the country in a region under turmoil and opened up a lot of places infrastructurewise in the 80's.

I don't wholly blame him for the economic mismanagement, as I see a lot of foreign hands after collapse of cold war politics and it did happen all over africa during the 90's.

Although Daniel arap Moi, the Kenyan president who has died at the age of 95, lacked the aura that surrounded Africa’s founding presidents, he belonged in their ranks.

He was an autocratic paternalist who ensured his own survival by dispensing patronage in the name of the state, the government and the ruling party.

For Moi, like so many of the continent’s postcolonial leaders, these were one and the same thing.

As a result, he leaves behind a country sapped by mismanagement and corruption and with lingering ethnic tensions.

When he took office in 1978 Kenya was still regarded as an African success story, although its reputation was becoming tarnished.

Well before his departure from the scene, however, this judgment was being reversed, although some defend the Kenya that has since emerged as a successful African economy with a vibrant private sector and an innovative technological base.

Moi’s time in power spanned Africa’s transition from the cold war period, when most of its leaders played the role of protégés of the superpowers, to the subsequent rapprochement between Washington and Moscow, and the era of structural adjustment programmes and attempted democratisation of African politics.

Economic and political reforms, however, were painful exercises for most African governments, long used to running state-dominated economies and suppressing dissent.

Kenya under Moi provided the most striking illustration of why in much of the continent the two processes were incompatible.