Eating in Africa

John Githongo is an unlikely hero. The son of a patrician Kikuyu family — his father was accountant to Kenya's first President, Jomo Kenyatta — Githongo grew up in Nairobi's leafy suburbs, went to the best schools and studied abroad. He enjoyed privileges that 95% of Kenyans can only dream of. In 2003, on the strength of that background, Githongo was appointed his country's anti-corruption czar.

In the past, a man like him might have been happy to settle into his seat at the high table of Kenyan politics. Instead, the former journalist uncovered a far-reaching scam extending to the highest levels of his party and then publicized it, thus becoming the first senior official in Africa to blow the whistle on his own government. The story of his struggle to do so, told in Michela Wrong's new book It's Our Turn to Eat, provides a rare insider's look at corruption in a developing society. It also shines an unflattering light on the complacency of some major Western aid donors, whose preference for pumping money into the continent may, the author argues, be perpetuating the problem.

Wrong has covered Africa for the Financial Times and other news organizations since the 1990s. As with her 2001 book, In the Footsteps of Mr. Kurtz, a well-received account of the calamitous rule of Zaire's Mobutu Sese Seko, It's Our Turn to Eat — the title refers to the assumption in Kenya that winning elections confers a license to steal — is richly reported and reads, at times, like a thriller. Wrong's sketches of Githongo's sleuthing — when a hidden recording device starts playing back while he is still in the company of two top officials, he has to slip from the room coughing loudly — and the story of her own role in helping him when he is forced to flee Kenya for London are particularly satisfying.

And her topic could not be more timely. Wrong was already writing when, in January 2008, Kenya descended into its worst bout of intertribal violence since independence — a jarring episode that left at least 1,000 dead and that Wrong attributes to the kind of tribally based corruption that Githongo seeks to end. Ultimately, he was not successful. But the real surprise of Wrong's book is that someone like him was willing to try.