In Power and the Presidency in Kenya, Anaïs Angelo explores the rise of Jomo Kenyatta to become Kenya's founding president and how his political career shaped the Kenyan presidency. With a wealth of original archival research, Angelo injects a fresh perspective into the historiography of post-colonial political development in Kenya. The book is an important instalment in the study of Kenyan politics, and challenges several established assumptions about the nature of executive power under Kenyatta. Characterising his leadership style as ‘secluded’ (179) and reliant on ‘charismatic indecisiveness’ (87), Angelo shows how Kenyatta tactfully leveraged his own political weaknesses to emerge as Kenya's indispensable post-colonial leader.

The book begins by exploring Kenyatta's political thought. With evidence from his writings, speeches and secondary sources, Angelo argues that Kenyatta lacked a fixed political ideology. Instead, he was a malleable pragmatist, albeit with a deep belief that the family was the primary political unit in line with established Kikuyu moral economy. Building on this foundation, Kenyatta viewed the state as having a limited role in the everyday lives of citizens, beyond establishing order and protecting property rights. The book also grapples with Kenyatta's ambiguous approach to political ethnicity. Although his political thought matured within a Kikuyu cultural milieu, Angelo argues that Kenyatta was not necessarily a tribalist, partly on account of his overriding elevation of the family.

These observations largely jibe with the historical record. Kenyatta opposed the redistribution of alienated land (under colonial rule) ‘for free’, instead championing a ‘willing buyer willing seller’ approach that disproportionately benefitted well-connected politicians and bureaucrats at the expense of the landless poor (many of whom were his Kikuyu co-ethnics). And while he appointed Kikuyus to key government positions, Kenyatta did not engage in ethnic mass political mobilisation. His ‘kitchen cabinet’ was limited to Kiambu Kikuyu, at the exclusion of Kikuyus from other districts. Furthermore, he built enduring alliances with leading non-Kikuyu politicians as a means of cementing his authority and balancing fellow Kikuyu elites.

The rest of the book examines how Kenyatta's precarious political position before independence and the question of land redistribution shaped the institution of the Kenyan presidency. To this end, Angelo relies on both Kenyan and British archives. The former paint a picture of Kenyatta's administrative style. The latter document Kenyatta's imprisonment, unexpected political resuscitation right before independence, and British perceptions of the post-independence administration.

More than previous works, Angelo documents the unexpectedness of Kenyatta's political revival. Much of Kenya's political development in the decade leading up to independence happened while he was in prison. And even after he became Prime Minister, Kenya's political class still believed that his leadership was temporary. Angelo argues, convincingly, that the precarity of Kenyatta's political power, his personal predilection against organised politics, and the Kenya African National Union's (KANU) organisational weakness and factional squabbles led him to adopt a strategy of intentional seclusion. Instead of involving himself with everyday party politics, Kenyatta relied on his charisma as the founding leader of the nation, tactfully managed KANU's factions, and projected power through a bureaucracy. Stated differently, Kenyatta chose to be above politics as a matter of necessity. The same strategy of seclusion informed his approach to the question of land resettlement. After centralising control over land policy, he retreated, leaving bureaucrats and politicians squabbling over policy specifics and actual pieces of land. Overall, Kenyatta's approach to land redistribution stunted the development of mass politics within KANU and precipitated the schism in 1966. Ultimately, these dynamics yielded the presidency that emerged under Kenyatta: at once powerful but also secluded from everyday politics and governance.

Power and The Presidency in Kenya is likely to fuel enriching academic debates well into the future. More broadly, it is a timely reminder of the need to take seriously African leaders’ political thought and agency in structuring post-colonial institutional trajectories in the region.