Fred Mbiyu Koinange is the late father of renowned journalist Jeff Koinange.
In his early days, Mbiyu Koinange made his mark in the country’s business history. He ventured into the motor trade in the late colonial period and is widely credited as the first Kenyan to establish a car dealership and later the first indigenous Kenyan to own and operate a petrol station.
The story places him among a small group of African entrepreneurs who entered sectors that were largely controlled by European and multinational businesses before and shortly after independence.
Fred Koinange’s Entry into the Car Business
According to Jeff Koinange’s 2014 autobiography, Through My African Eyes, Fred established a car dealership in Nairobi in 1948. He is the first African Kenyan to enter the car dealership business, at a time when Africans faced economic and institutional barriers to commercial enterprise.
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The year was also significant for the wider motor industry. Mr Allen and Mr Cooper incorporated Cooper Motor Corporation as a private limited company in July 1948 after coming to East Africa to sell Land Rovers.
CMC’s early trading operations were conducted from borrowed offices in a wooden hut along the then Jackson Road before the company moved to Connaught House in 1952.
Jackson Road itself was later renamed as part of the post-independence changes to Nairobi’s street names.
According to the City Planning Institute of Japan, Jackson Road was among the streets whose names were changed in the post-independence period.
Fred and the founders of CMC entered the motor business in the same year, with Fred representing an early African-owned presence in a sector dominated by established foreign firms.
The Koinange Petrol Station in 1966
Fred’s most notable business venture came in 1966, when he opened Koinange Petrol Station in Nairobi. the station was Kenya’s first indigenous petrol station, located in the Kariokor area.
At the time, Kenya’s petroleum retail business was dominated by international companies, including Esso, BP, and Mobil.
Fred’s decision to establish an African-owned station marked a significant step into a sector where indigenous participation was limited.
In his autobiography, Jeff Koinange revealed that his father was 43 when he opened the station. The business was named Koinange Petrol Station and retained the Koinange name even after it was sold.
The Koinange Family and Fred’s Final Year
Fred was a son of Senior Chief Koinange wa Mbiyu, a prominent figure in Kenya’s colonial-era history.
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Nairobi’s Koinange Street was formerly known as Sadler Street and was renamed Koinange Street during the post-independence wave of Africanising Nairobi’s street names.
According to a 1964 Kenya Gazette, Koinange Street was known as “Sadler Street”. Academic Research by Melissa W. Wanjiru and Kosuke Matsubara, titled Street toponymy and the decolonization of the urban landscape in post-colonial Nairobi,” published in the Journal of Cultural Geography in 2017, records the renaming as part of the transformation of Nairobi’s urban landscape after independence.
Fred’s business career ended the same year he opened the petrol station. According to Jeff’s account, Fred arrived at the station on the morning of March 7, 1966, collapsed after getting out of his vehicle, and was rushed by employees to Aga Khan Hospital, where he died. Jeff had been born only two months earlier, on January 7, 1966.
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