Uhuru Kenyatta Uhuru is the son of Jomo Kenyatta, Kenya's founding father and the first president of the republic of Kenya (in office 1964–1978), with his fourth wife, Mama Ngina Kenyatta. His family hails from the Kikuyu, a Bantu ethnic group. His given name "Uhuru" is from the Swahili term for "freedom", and was given to him in anticipation of Kenya's upcoming independence. Uhuru attended St Mary's School in Nairobi. Between 1979 and 1980, he also briefly worked as a teller at the Kenya Commercial Bank. After St. Mary's school, Uhuru went on to study economics, political science and government at Amherst
Jomo Kenyatta Phonetic and Tonal Structure of Kikuyu". The book was published under Armstrong's name, although Kenyatta claimed he should have been listed as co-author. He enrolled at UCL as a student, studying an English course between January and July 1935 and then a phonetics course from October 1935 to June 1936. Enabled by a grant from the International African Institute, he also took a social anthropology course under Bronisław Malinowski at the London School of Economics (LSE). Kenyatta lacked the qualifications normally required to join the course, but Malinowski was keen to support the participation of indigenous peoples in anthropological research.