The Kikuyu Association

In association with Abdalla Tairara, Thuku helped found the Young Kikuyu Association, the first organisation to defend African interests in colonial Kenya. The Young Kikuyu Association was a non-militant group that pursued a peaceful and structured liberation struggle with the government and missions. Its main concern was for the preservation of African-owned land. Thuku argued that land was an important factor of production and that the livelihood of the Kikuyu people, who are primarily farmers, risked being lost. His message reverberated strongly not only within his immediate Kikuyu tribe but also with other farming communities in Kenya and Africa. From 1920 to 1921 Thuku served as the secretary to the Kikuyu Association. However, he was more interested in action-oriented measures to address the rising economic challenges facing Kenyan Africans, realizing that the organisation was becoming heavily political and thus ill-equipped to achieve the association's original objectives of economic emancipation. In 1921, he stepped down from his position at the Kikuyu Association. Kenyan Africans were suffering economic difficulties, and the Europeans who were now in control of vast swathes of the local economy wanted to further cut Native African wages on the pretext of reviving the colony's economic position. Thuku's political and economic vision for the native African is widely credited as an important underlying common theme that was adopted and greatly characterised the greater African struggle for economic and political independence.

Robert I. Rotberg describes Thuku as the "first Kikuyu nationalist."^[1]

East African Association

In July 1921 Thuku founded the East African Association, the first multi-ethnic political organization in East Africa.^[2] Based in Nairobi, the East African Association drew its members from many tribal groups, though most members were Kikuyu. Unusually for the time, the East African Association also involved a number of women. It campaigned against the kipande system of pass controls, and the forced labour of women and girls.^[3]

Kikuyu Central Association

Thuku was given permission to return to Kiambu in January 1931.^[10] By that time, the colonial government allowed formation of tribal based political parties restricted to some tribal 'homelands' only. This was done to avoid national uprising against the colonial authorities.^[11] In 1932 Thuku became president of the Kikuyu Central Association, then Kenya's foremost African political group. Although dissension arose among the loyalists and the co-opted leaders of the association, which was fomented by the colonial powers of the day. The power struggles split the organisation into factions.

Kikuyu Provincial Association

Harry Thuku went on to re-assemble the loyal remnants of the East African Association, which was renamed the Kikuyu Provincial Association in 1935, devoted to legal, non-militant protest. In 1944 he founded the Kenya African Study Union, the precursor of the Kenya African Union.