From CBK to Treasury: This man Ndung'u

President William Ruto appointed the former Central Bank of Kenya (CBK) Governor as the new Treasury cabinet Secretary last September.

Prof Ndung'u, a professor of economics who worked as CBK boss between 2007 and 2015, walks a tightrope this morning as Kenyans bank on his policy measures to alleviate their suffering.

He has had a long illustrious career in public and academic sectors marked by hits and misses.

Prof Ndung'u, who became CBK boss in 2007, weathered a political storm in 2012 when Parliament tried to oust him over currency turmoil in 2011. The shilling had weakened sharply and inflation soared.

He, however, restored his reputation as a central banker in the following years, keeping inflation contained after raising interest rates before gradually stabilising them.

The National Treasury. [Denish Ochieng, Standard]

But he has dismissed such criticism and publicly spoken against what he terms "overregulation" which he has argued can "stifle" the banking sector.

His successor Dr Patrick Njoroge also publicly vouched to focus his mandate on the enforcement of compliance guidelines by the country's lenders putting Ndung'u on the spot.

Separately, a parliamentary committee in 2012 asked Ndung'u to step aside from his CBK post, proposing a probe into how he handled the Shilling's plunge to a historic low a year before. The local unit had at the time hit a record low of Sh107 per dollar on October 11, but later strengthened more than 20 per cent after CBK raised its key lending rate.

Prof Ndung'u, who holds a doctorate in economics from the University of Gothenburg, Sweden, was a director of training at the think-tank, African Economic Research Consortium. His research and teaching work spanned macroeconomics, microeconomics, econometrics and poverty reduction.