Hannah Wangeci Kinoti

Hannah Wangeci Kìnoti (1 August 1941 – 30 April 2001) was a Kenyan feminist theologian and a member of the Circle of Concerned African Women Theologians. Kìnoti was an African Ethicist and Religious Studies Scholar with over fifty publications. She was a founding member of Wajibu Journal, created in 1985, focusing on religion, African values, morality, politics and culture. Kìnoti was the first female chairperson in the Department of Philosophy and Religious Studies at the University of Nairobi. She grew up in the Scottish Presbyterian Church, which later became the Presbyterian Church of East Africa. She became a Christian at the age of 15 and was shaped by her church's evangelism. She later became a lay preacher in the Methodist Church in Kenya.

Career After graduating as a teacher, Kìnoti taught Bible knowledge, English, divinity, and literature at Kenya High School for five years. She became a tutorial fellow in 1974, an assistant Lecturer in 1982 at the University of Nairobi, where she earned her doctorate in the Department of Philosophy and Religious Studies with the dissertation "Aspects of Gikuyu Traditional Morality" in 1983 and was hired as a lecturer in 1984. She was also an adjunct lecturer at the Jesuit School of Theology at Hekima College and Kenyatta University. Kinoti served as an Associate Professor in the Department of Philosophy and Religious Studies until her sudden death in April 2001.

Kìnoti was an ethicist, theologian, and administrator. She served as the Chairperson of the Department of Philosophy and Religious Studies at the University of Nairobi for six years. In addition to her university duties, she served on numerous theological and educational boards: as a member of the Board of Governors of Limuru (now Jumuia) Conference Centre; a member of the Board of Governors, St. Andrew's School, Turi; a member of the Board of Governors of St. Pauls Theological College Limuru (now St Paul's University); a member of the Board of Directors of the Christian Organizations Research Advisory Trust (CORAT,) and she was chairman, of the Joint Urban Community Improvement Program/Scholarship Committee, a department of the National Christian Council of Kenya. She was also a member of the editorial board and a consultant editor of Wajibu.

Kìnoti was a member of several professional organizations, such as the Eastern Africa Ecumenical Symposium, the Ecumenical Association of Third World Theologians Kenyan Chapter, the Circle of Concerned African Women Theologians, the Association of Theological Institutions in Eastern Africa, and the World Conference of Associations of Theological Institutions.

African Communitarian feminist ethics Primarily, Kìnoti sought to construct an African feminist ethic of liberation that extolled indigenous knowledge systems and unique African ways of being. Lastly, the centrality of the immaterial world and the recognition, veneration, and reverence of the spiritual realm and ancestral beings are critical to understanding communal life and shaping the moral fabric of African communities. With this, Kìnoti critiqued Western colonial and imperial epistemologies of gender and the interaction between men and women. Her methodology advanced the decolonization and indigenization of morals and suggested the possibility of generating a localized liberative epistemology that ensures the full flourishing of African women and their communities. Kìnoti, H. W. (1993). The Challenge of the New Age Movement and Oriental Mysticism. Mission in African Christianity, Uzima-Press. Kìnoti, H.W. (1992). African Morality: Past and Present. in J. N. Mugambi, & N. Wasike, Moral and Ethical issues in African Christianity. Nairobi: Initiatives, 73–82. Kìnoti, H. W. (1988). "Some principles of man-woman relationships in traditional Gĩkũyũ society." Wajibu 2(3): 2–4.