Kinyanjui Kombani

Kinyanjui Kombani, popularly known as "The Banker who Writes", is a Kenyan novelist, playwright, scriptwriter, and literature critic/activist. His novels, The Last Villains of Molo and Den of Inequities have been used for undergraduate and postgraduate education by universities in Kenya and abroad. Kombani is also a recipient of the Kenyatta University Outstanding Young Alumni Award 2014 and was recognized as a Business Daily Top 40 under 40 in 2015.

Early life Kinyanjui Kombani was born in Molo in the then Nakuru District of Rift Valley Province in Kenya. He was the last born in a family of five children. His mother single-handedly catered for the family in a single-roomed mabati house after separating from his father before he was born. The play was widely performed by Kenyatta University travelling theatre. In Kenya alone, more than 60,000 rural people viewed the play's performance. It was also staged elsewhere in Africa, Europe, and the United States. In 2004, Kombani also wrote the script for Mizoga, the film adaptation of the play which was shot by Born Free Foundation yet again.

In the same year (2004), his first novel The Last Villains of Molo, was published by Acacia Stantex Publishers, two years after finishing the manuscript and signing a contract. The author stated in interviews that he did not earn royalties from the book for ten years. It was not until Longhorn Publishers released a second imprint in 2012 that the book, and its author, received widespread publicity.

In 2007, the writer moved to Longhorn publishers and published two children's stories; Wangari Maathai: Mother of Trees, and We Can be Friends, the latter of which was reproduced for the Rwandan market a year later in 2008. The text has also been used as a study text in Kenya and Rwanda universities.