Filemona F. Indire
Filemona F. Indire was a Kenyan politician who served as a nominated Member of the Parliament of Kenya between 1983 and 1988. He was also Kenya's ambassador to the Soviet Union in the 1960s, during Kenya's first president Jomo Kenyatta's tenure. After that, he served as a lecturer at the University of Nairobi.
Indire was also an influential Quaker, having served as Chairman of the Friend's World Committee for Consultation Africa Section, a Quaker organization that worked to communicate between all parts of Quakerism in the 1970s. He was also the Chairman of the National Council for Science and Technology in Nairobi, Kenya.
Background
Indire was born in Vihiga, Colony and Protectorate of Kenya on 3 March 1930. He married Abigail Indire, one of the first of 10 African-Kenyan girls to attend high school in Kenya's history.Filemona F. Indire died in Nairobi on 15 March 2025, at the age of 95.
Works
Professor Indire wrote several books including A Comprehensive High School Curriculum Proposal for Reviewing and Revising the Program of Chavakali Secondary School, Maragoli, Kenya This study centred on the development of a curriculum which would assist in adequately meeting the needs of high-school students in Western Kenya. Another study that Indire wrote was a series of 15 books in collaboration with John W. Hanson, Secondary Level Teachers: Supply and Demand in Kenya.The study, published in 1971, was a report on the supply of secondary-level teachers in Kenya. It focused on the problem of forecasting the likely demand for non-Kenyan personnel for staffing secondary-level institutions up to the year 1975, and it attempted to analyze the very real problem of teacher supply within the context of the social and economic conditions of Kenya during the period leading up to the mid-1970s.
Other topics examined included the projected expansion of other types of secondary-level education, programmes for the preparation of teachers, major factors in teacher recruitment and retention, projected gaps in the teaching force, priorities in the provision and use of expatriate teachers, and recommendations of primary concern to Kenyan authorities of the day.