Hilary Ng’weno

Hilary Boniface Ng'weno (1938-2021) was a Kenyan historian and journalist. The Harvard-educated scientist was born in Nairobi in 1938, to the late Morris Onyango. After graduating from Harvard with a degree in nuclear physics, Ng'weno worked as a reporter for the Daily Nation for nine months before his appointment as the newspaper’s first Kenyan editor-in-chief. He resigned in 1965 and established a successful career as a journalist for more than forty years. In 1973, together with journalist Terry Hirst, he founded Joe, a political satire comic magazine that circulated in many parts of Africa until the late seventies when its publication ceased. He is best known as the editor-in-chief of the Weekly Review, a weekly newsmagazine than ran from 1975 to 1999. He is also the founder of The Nairobi Times and the first independent TV news station in Kenya, STV. He was the producer of documentary videos on Kenyan history, including the Making of a Nation and Kenya's Darkest Hour. Career in journalism In 1975, Ng'weno founded The Weekly Review, a journal of political news, commentary and analysis followed in 1977 by The Nairobi Times, a Sunday newspaper that later became a daily. At the beginning, The Weekly Review and The Nairobi Times being locally owned enterprises, fared well in a field dominated by the (then) foreign owned Daily Nation and The Standard but like other local papers, they faced stiff competition from the established papers for little or lack of advertising from the mostly foreign companies in Kenya. Because the advertising community was still controlled by foreigners, it tended to favour the foreign owned publications. Advertisers were also not too keen to deal with publications that were likely to stir the wrath of the government with inflammatory political reports. Ng'weno's publications lasted an impressive length of time. His publications continued to gain popularity, and The Weekly Review went on to dominate the weekly news scene for more than 20 years, becoming one of Africa’s best news magazines. Due to diminishing revenue from advertising sales, Ng'weno however, sold The Nairobi Times in 1983 to KANU, Kenya's then ruling party. The paper was renamed The Kenya Times, but its popularity suffered, as it was seen to be the mouthpiece of an oppressive government in a political era likened to dictatorship.