Martha Wangari Karua
3 Courses • 3 StudentsBiography
Martha Wangari Karua (/wænˈɡɑːri kəˈraʊ/; born 22 September 1957) is a Kenyan politician. She is a former long-standing member of parliament for Gichugu Constituency and an Advocate of the High Court of Kenya. She was Minister for Justice until resigning from that position in April 2009. She has consistently fought for the protection of women's rights and improvements to the democratic process.[2]
Karua ran for presidency in 2013 under the Narc-Kenya ticket making her the third woman to run for the highest office, after Charity Ngilu and Wangari Maathai in the 1997 elections. She emerged sixth in the race. She was picked to run for deputy president after being nominated as the running mate of presidential candidate Raila Odinga in the 2022 Kenyan general election.
Early life and education
The daughter of Jackson Karua and his wife Josephine Wanjiru, Martha Karua was born on 22 September 1957 in Kirinyaga District in the Central Province of Kenya. Brought up in the village of Kimunye in Gichugu Constituency,[4] she is the second child in a family of eight, four girls and four boys.
She attended Mugumo primary school, Kabare Girls Boarding School, St Michael's boarding school Keroguya. She later attended Kiburia Girls Secondary School, Ngiriambu Girl's secondary school, and Karoti Girl's secondary schools where she passed her East African School Certificate at Karoti Girls High School in Kirinyaga County. She then attended Nairobi Girl's secondary school for A levels.[7] She studied law at the University of Nairobi from 1977 to 1980. Between 1980 and 1981 she was enrolled at the Kenya School of Law for the statutory postgraduate law course that is a prerequisite to admission to the Kenyan roll of advocates and licensing to practice law in Kenya.
