The Starehe Boys’ Centre and School in Nairobi is an undoubted success story of charitable aid and development. It was founded in 1959 by Geoffrey Griffin, a former soldier with the King’s African Rifles who declined to renew his commission so disillusioned was he with the abuses perpetrated by the British forces during the Mau Mau Emergency. It has gone on to become one of Kenya’s most successful schools. Its pupils, who might otherwise have failed to receive anything but the most rudimentary education, have assumed leading positions in business, politics, medicine and higher education. Yet the purpose of charitable humanitarianism was to provide assistance to ultimately self-sustaining initiatives. At Starehe, charity was the ends as well as the means of humanitarian intervention. British charities continued to back it until the 1990s when it set up its own charity to ensure donations kept flowing. Starehe therefore serves as a case study for the more general phenomenon of how charity obtained an unintended permanent presence in development work in Africa.