African Quest and Struggle for High Schools in Colonial Kenya: The Case of the Abortive Kiambu Local Native Council Central High School at Githunguri, 1926—34

By 1925, 30 years after Kenya became a British colony, there were no high schools for Africans in the colony. In 1926, the Africans decided to build their own high schools through their Local Native Councils (LNCs) but the Government refused to sanction the building of the schools and this led to a protracted struggle. The Kiambu LNC's abortive high school at Githunguri is used as a case study to examine not only why the Government vetoed the building of the schools, but also to show how this greatly undermined the expansion of African higher education in subsequent years.