National Archives Moi Avenue

This guide to the National Archives on Moi Avenue in Nairobi follows Joseph Murumbi, Kenya's second vice president, who spent the mid-1970s quietly amassing one of the country's great private collections of books, documents, art and stamps while foreign buyers circled with offers to ship it abroad. It traces how a 1976 government notice, drawn up by archives director Maina Kagombe, blocked such sales and forced Murumbi into an uneasy deal with the state. Along the way it follows the building itself, raised in the early 1930s as a colonial bank and passed between owners before the archives moved in. Listen for how a vault built to guard money ended up guarding something else entirely.