Uhuru Kenyatta, son of Kenya's founding president, takes up his father's mantle to become head of state despite facing charges of crimes against humanity over election violence five years ago.

Uhuru, meaning "freedom", and Kenyatta, the "light of Kenya" in Swahili, carries his country's aspirations in his name, but brings with him controversy.

He was born in 1961 shortly after the release of his father Jomo Kenyatta from nearly 10 years of incarceration by British colonial forces and two years before Kenya's independence.

Fifty years on, the outgoing deputy prime minister and former finance minister is one of Kenya's richest and most powerful men, with the Kenyatta family owning vast swathes of some of the country's richest lands.

Educated in the United States at the elite Amherst College, where he studied political science and economics, he is viewed as the top political leader of the Kikuyu people, Kenya's largest tribe, making up some 17 percent of the population.

AFP

(China Daily 04/01/2013 page10)