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 own wishes". Kenyatta expressed this in his statement that "I have stood always for the purposes of human dignity in freedom, and for the values of tolerance and peace." This approach was similar to the Zambian President Kenneth Kaunda's ideology of "African humanism". Murray-Brown noted that "Kenyatta had always kept himself free from ideological commitments", while the historian William R. Ochieng observed that "Kenyatta articulated no particular social philosophy". Similarly, Assensoh noted that Kenyatta was "not interested in social philosophies and slogans". Various commentators and biographers described him as being politically conservative, an ideological viewpoint likely bolstered by his training