Media & Journalism
Landmark
Hilary Ng'weno
1938 – 2021
Kenya's first African newspaper editor, and the founder of the Weekly Review
Landmark is level 2 of 4 in the Kenya Hall of Fame: a first that opened a door, or the pre-eminent figure of their generation in this country. See how the levels work.
Why they are here
He became editor-in-chief of the Daily Nation at twenty-six, the first African to edit a Kenyan national newspaper, and then built the Weekly Review into the most serious political magazine the country has had.
Hilary Boniface Ng'weno studied nuclear physics at Harvard and came home to journalism. In 1964, a year after independence, he was made editor-in-chief of the Daily Nation at twenty-six — the first African to edit a national newspaper in Kenya.
He left to found his own titles, and in 1975 started the Weekly Review, which for two decades was the closest thing Kenya had to a paper of record on its own politics: careful, sourced, and published through the years of detention without trial when very little else was. He also founded the Nairobi Times, the children's magazine Rainbow, and Stellagraphics.
In later life he turned to television and made The Making of a Nation, a long documentary history of Kenya assembled from archive film and interviews with the people who had been in the room, which is now the standard visual record of the country's first half century. He died in 2021.
He left to found his own titles, and in 1975 started the Weekly Review, which for two decades was the closest thing Kenya had to a paper of record on its own politics: careful, sourced, and published through the years of detention without trial when very little else was. He also founded the Nairobi Times, the children's magazine Rainbow, and Stellagraphics.
In later life he turned to television and made The Making of a Nation, a long documentary history of Kenya assembled from archive film and interviews with the people who had been in the room, which is now the standard visual record of the country's first half century. He died in 2021.
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