GenerationKenya 45.

GenerationKenya 45 is an innovative project to celebrate the achievements of Kenyans born in the 45 years since independence from Britain in 1963. Forty-five people active in the fields of arts and entertainment, the environment and conservation, business, information technology, media and communication, science, sports and social justice will be profiled in an exibition of portraits by award-winning Canadian photographer Jerry Riley and accompanying texts. The exhibition will travel the country during the course of the year before being placed in the Kenya National Archives for posterity. In addition the photographs and biographies of the selected Kenyans will be posted on the GenerationKenya 45 website and 45 trees will be planted in their honour. Participants will be selected by a panel of judges via a process of nominations through the media, which is to begin shortly.

The brainchild of Wambui Mwangi, a Kenyan academic and assistant professor of social science at Toronto unversity, the project comes at a particularly important time for Kenya as it tries to move beyond the divisions triggered by the disputed presidential elections of December 2007.