By Mohammed Hersi

Edwin Sifuna is 44. In 2026, that apparently makes him too young to lead Kenya. In 1963, it would have made him one of the older men in the room.

That is the uncomfortable truth our political elders would rather we forget. The Kenya that won independence was not built by grey-haired patriarchs waiting patiently for their turn. It was built by young men and women in their twenties and thirties who were handed the keys to a nation and told to make it work.

Today, the beneficiaries of that faith in youth are telling a 44-year-old senator to sit down and wait. Either we are very poor in history or we suffer from a serious case of selective amnesia.

The latest round began when COTU Secretary-General Francis Atwoli suggested that Sifuna was too young to run for the presidency and should wait his turn. The Constitution sets the minimum age for a presidential candidate at 35. Sifuna clears that bar by nine years. The objection, therefore, is not legal. It is cultural and, measured against our own past, it is nonsense.

The boy wonder who helped build a nation

Start with Tom Mboya. He was in his early twenties when he took charge of the Kenya Federation of Labour. He was elected to the Legislative Council at 27. At 28, he chaired the All-African Peoples’ Conference in Accra and stood before the leaders of an entire continent.

That same year, still only 28, he stood beside Martin Luther King Jr. before 20,000 people at the Washington Monument, demanding an end to segregated schools in America. Weeks later, King personally went to Atlanta airport to welcome his plane, hosted a dinner in his honour and introduced him as a symbol of the world’s hunger for freedom and human dignity. Let that sink in.

One of the most celebrated moral voices of the twentieth century treated a 28-year-old Kenyan as a peer.

In March 1960, at 29, Mboya appeared on the cover of *TIME* magazine, becoming the first Kenyan to do so. At around 30, he was KANU’s founding secretary-general and a leading negotiator at Lancaster House, sitting across the table from the British Empire and bargaining for our independence. He became a Cabinet minister in his early thirties and helped shape Sessional Paper No. 10 of 1965 at 35. He was assassinated at 38.

Everything we honour Tom Mboya for, he achieved before reaching Sifuna’s current age.

The greatest proof of what a young man can do is the Airlift. In 1959, a 29-year-old Mboya looked at a colony on the eve of freedom and saw a nation with almost no university graduates to run it. He did not wait for permission. Nor did he wait for the colonial government, which was openly hostile to the idea.

He flew to America, knocked on doors, raised money from ordinary Americans, persuaded colleges to open their gates and won the backing of Jackie Robinson, Harry Belafonte, Martin Luther King Jr. and a young senator named John F. Kennedy. Between 1959 and 1963, hundreds of young Kenyans and other East Africans crossed the Atlantic to study at American universities.

Look at who emerged from that dream. Wangari Maathai went on to become the first African woman to win the Nobel Peace Prize. Barack Obama Sr., a young economist from Siaya, received an American education through the same broader wave of scholarship opportunities, and his son would one day sit in the White House. The programme also helped educate doctors, engineers, economists, diplomats and professors who would staff ministries, hospitals and universities across a newly independent Kenya.

Pause on that. A man under 30 helped conceive, fund and execute one of the most consequential human capital projects in African history. He helped shape the future of a nation before his 30th birthday. Today, we tell a 44-year-old senator that he lacks the maturity to lead.

Then there is Mwai Kibaki. At 29, he walked away from a secure lecturing post at Makerere University to become the executive officer of a five-month-old political party called KANU, recruited by none other than the 30-year-old Mboya. His friends thought he was foolish to abandon an academic career for party politics. Instead, he helped lay the foundations of independent Kenya’s political and constitutional order.

Kibaki entered Parliament in 1963 at 32 and was serving in the Treasury that same year. He became Minister for Commerce and Industry in his mid-thirties and Minister for Finance at 38. Think about that. Two young men, one recruiting the other, helped lay the legal and political foundations of this Republic before either had turned 35. The man who would later lead Kenya as President was managing the national purse before he turned 40.

Young hands on every lever of the State

It was not only politicians. Every pillar of the new State was placed in young hands.

The civil service went to Duncan Ndegwa, appointed Head of the Public Service and Secretary to the Cabinet in 1963 at just 38. Days before independence, Kenyatta entrusted him with choosing the first African permanent secretaries, the officials who would run every ministry in the new nation. At 42, Ndegwa became the first African Governor of the Central Bank of Kenya, a position he held for 15 years. A man younger than Sifuna was trusted to help build the machinery of government from the ruins of the colonial bureaucracy.

The Judiciary went to Kitili Mwendwa. In 1968, at 38, he was sworn in as Kenya’s first African Chief Justice and the youngest in the country’s history. He moved from Solicitor-General to the head of the Judiciary without ever having sat as a judge. Nobody in State House told him to wait his turn.

The provinces went to men like Simeon Nyachae. He was a District Commissioner at independence at 31 and became a Provincial Commissioner at about 33, commanding the full weight of State power across entire regions. That was among the most powerful and feared offices in the land, held by a man more than a decade younger than Sifuna is today.

Add Kenneth Matiba, a permanent secretary at around 31, and John Michuki, a Treasury permanent secretary in his early thirties. Add Pio Gama Pinto, gunned down for his politics at 38. Add Daniel arap Moi, a minister at 37 and Vice-President at 43, a full year younger than Sifuna.

So let us be clear. Our first African Head of the Civil Service, our first African Chief Justice, our first African Central Bank governor, our finance ministers, our provincial commissioners and our chief negotiators at Lancaster House were all younger than the man we now call too young.

The Executive, the Judiciary, the Treasury and the provincial administration of this Republic were built by people in their thirties. Nobody told them to wait. Had anyone tried, Mboya would probably have been on the next plane to New York anyway.

Even our recent history contradicts the critics

The amnesia does not stop at 1963. In 2002, the ruling party fielded Uhuru Kenyatta as its presidential candidate at 41. Musalia Mudavadi was Minister for Finance at 33 and Vice-President at 42. William Ruto was an assistant minister in his early thirties and a full Cabinet minister at 36.

The very establishment now lecturing Sifuna about patience was itself entrusted with power far younger than he is today.

Beyond our borders, Julius Nyerere led Tanganyika to independence at 39. Thomas Sankara led Burkina Faso at 33. Kennedy, the same man who helped fund Mboya’s Airlift, became President of the United States at 43. Barack Obama, the son of an Airlift-era Kenyan student, was elected at 47. Sifuna has spent longer in the Senate than Obama had in elected national office before reaching the White House. Emmanuel Macron became French President at 39.

None of these countries collapsed for want of grey hair at the top.

What does ‘too young’ really mean?

Let us be honest about the age argument. It is not about experience. It is about gatekeeping. In Kenyan politics, ‘wait your turn’ has often meant ‘wait until we are finished’. The queue never seems to move.

It is a strange sight when a man who has occupied the same office for a quarter of a century lectures a 44-year-old about patience. Those who demand that the young wait have sat in the same seats for decades, collecting titles while the country they inherited from young founders grows older, poorer and angrier.

There is a bitter irony here. A generation that was entrusted with national responsibility in its twenties and thirties, and whose members were literally flown across the world on the strength of a young man’s vision, has grown old in power and now refuses to extend the same trust to those who came after them.

They were the beneficiaries of Mboya’s faith in youth. They have become its enemies.

Meanwhile, Kenya’s median age is about 20. Most Kenyans were not born when Moi left office. The generation that filled the streets in June 2024 did not march because its members lacked opinions about how they were governed.

In a country this young, a 44-year-old is not a youth candidate. He is a middle-aged lawyer and legislator with a family, a legal practice and years of national politics behind him. To a 20-year-old voter, Sifuna is not the young man in the race. He is their father’s age.

Judge the man, not the birth certificate

This is not an endorsement of any candidate. Sifuna, like anyone seeking the highest office, must be judged on substance. Does he have a credible economic plan? Can he build a national coalition? Will he confront corruption or simply rebrand it? Can he unite a divided country? Those are fair questions, and his critics should press him hard on every one.

But ‘he is too young’ is not a question. It is a dismissal. It asks Kenyans to ignore everything they know about their own history and accept a rule that never applied to Mboya, Kibaki, Ndegwa, Mwendwa or Nyachae. It did not apply to Uhuru, Mudavadi or Ruto, either.

Memory or convenience?

Kenya does not suffer from a shortage of history. It suffers from a shortage of honesty about it. We name streets after Mboya, celebrate Wangari Maathai as a global icon, associate Kibaki with some of our proudest economic years and boast that a son of Kenya became President of the United States. Yet we rarely stop to ask how any of it began.

It began with young people who refused to wait.

If Mboya could stand shoulder to shoulder with Martin Luther King Jr. at 28 and help change the destiny of a nation before turning 30, if Kibaki could help shape its constitutional order in his twenties, if Ndegwa could help build its civil service at 38, if Mwendwa could lead its Judiciary at 38, and if Moi could become Vice-President at 43, then the case against Sifuna’s age collapses under the weight of our own record.

In 1963, Edwin Sifuna would have been one of the elders at the table. In 2026, we are told he is a boy. The man has not changed. Our memory has.

Let him win or lose on his ideas. Anything else is selective amnesia dressed up as wisdom.

As always, I choose to remain an optimist.

-Mohammed Hersi writes from Mombasa. He first published this article on social media