| EAST AFRICAN ROTARY (Also see 75 years in Nairobi, "Touching
a Nation")
The first club in East Africa, the countries formerly known as
Kenya, Uganda and Tanganyika, was the Rotary Club of Nairobi,
founded in 1930. It was then a further 14 years before the formation
of the next club, in Mombasa in 1944. Eight years later the second
Kenyan club followed, at Nauru in 1952. Meanwhile, the Dar-as-Salaam
Club in Tanganyika had been chartered in 1944.
Uganda remained without a club until 1957 despite the considerable
efforts of the Nairobi Club to spread Rotary elsewhere in East
Africa. The RI Directory entry showing a club in Jinja founded in
1934 is incorrect, as archive records in both Evanston and Africa
make it clear that the correct date for this club should be 1964.
The first RC in Uganda was some time coming.' Indeed, it took the
Rotary Club of Nairobi more than 7 years to achieve the aim of
forming a Club in Kampala, which was finally chartered on 20th May
1957. The records of the Nairobi Club include several references to
this:-
"Under Ernest Vase's Presidency in 1950-51 efforts
continued to charter a club in Kampala, but the time was
still not right. In fact the Kampala-Club-idea had to lay
dormant for yet another 7 years before this dream of another
offspring of the RC Nairobi would finally come true."
"President Wilfred was determined to get a Rotary Club in
Kampala started during his year as President of the Rotary
Club of Nairobi. He formed a special committee for this
purpose, which was later asked to start a club in Kyushu as
well. Unfortunately, both these projects had to be postponed
because of the Mau Mau Emergency."
"The initial struggle Nairobi Rotarians endured to put down
Rotary's roots in Uganda was, in no way, indicative for the
future. Once the seedling was planted, which took another 5
years of intensive work, Uganda would become one of Rotary's
stronghold in East Africa".
Finally, during the Presidency of Sydney Pegrume in 1956-57, all
those years of work to establish a Rotary Club in Kampala finally
came to fruition with the first Club in Uganda being admitted on
20th May.
Nevertheless, the idea of forming another Club in Nairobi had to be
dropped and was not to become reality until 1963.
The above account has been edited by Basil Lewis from material
supplied by John Savage and Friedel Liebe-Savage of the Nairobi
Rotary club.
Posted by Historian
Basil Lewis 5 November 2005 |
