With his trademark rimless glasses and a sweater loosely draped over his shoulders, Robert Donald Munro straddled Kenyan football like a colossus.
According to his family, the final whistle to the life of the Canadian-born administrator—who was synonymous with local football more than most —went on January 19, 2025, at his Nairobi residence.
Perhaps fittingly, it came just over a month when he was bestowed with the Elder of Burning Spear- a national honour by President William Ruto - as Kenya finally acknowledged his immense contribution to promoting sports and environmental conservation.
Bob Munro: The man who changed Kenyan football through Mathare Youth Sports Association
Munro was famous for his wit and keen eye for detail. His lengthy emails and updates on the Mathare Youth and Sports Association (MYSA) and its flagship Mathare United FC were legendary. His office was neatly stacked with rows and rows of documents on his two favourite subjects.
A citizen of the world, Munro lived in six cities on four continents, but adopted Kenya as his permanent home, going on to devote almost 40 years of his life to uplifting local youth through football.
Bob Munro (right) receives Arsenal legend Robert Pires at MYSA head office on December 5, 2015.
Photo credit: File | Nation
A reticent man who barely gave interviews, Munro was a larger-than-life personality who steadfastly refused credit for the successes that MYSA and Mathare United enjoyed.
“I've rarely given interviews and that's because I don't need to. I learned early on that if I was in a video or up front talking about MYSA then others would say it works because there's that foreigner there and that as you know is not true because MYSA is owned and run by the youth.
“They're doing the doing and I'm helping, supporting, encouraging,” he told this writer in his last ever interview last year.
He added: “MYSA still exists nearly 40 years later because it's not me making the decisions, it's not me taking the credit for their work, it's them who do the work and who make the decisions.”
Born in 1942 in St Catherine’s- a small town located between Vancouver and Niagara Falls-only half an hour from the US border in Canada, Munro’s childhood would go on to shape his life with his mother’s insistence on humility playing a big part.
“Whenever my mother thought I needed a bit of ground-truthing, which was fairly frequent as a teenager, she would say; Bob, I want you always to remember that you can do a lot more good in this world as long as you don't care who takes the credit.”
An environmentalist at heart, Munro’s upbringing right after the end of the Second World War shaped his character. As a teenager, he did odd jobs to earn an extra buck which included delivering newspapers.
Football Kenya chairman Sam Nyamweya (right) chats with Mathare United chairman Bob Munro (left) during the unveiling of the state-of-the-art Supersport and M-Net studios in Nairobi on August 30, 2013.
Photo credit: File | Nation
Having always harboured the dream of working for the United Nations, little did Munro know that the global body would shape the rest of his life as it was here where he met his future wife Ingrid Munro in 1975.
It came three years after the 1972 Stockholm Conference on Environment, where he had first met Kenya Wildlife officials as a UN Rapporteur.
He married Ingrid in 1980 and moved to Nairobi five years later, with the couple raising five children.
“The oldest daughter, Mia, is Korean and is adopted. The second daughter is a homemade Swedish daughter. And we adopted Waithaka and his two brothers.”
Unfortunately, he lost Waithaka to cancer at age 30.
“When Kenyans ask me for the secret of our long marriage, I tell them how we met at this UN negotiating group in New York in January 1975. And the secret to our marriage? We're still negotiating,” he explained.
It was MYSA, that Munro founded in 1987, that would make him a household name.
What started as a small youth organissation based in the sprawling Mathare slums on the outskirts of the Kenyan capital would grow into a behemoth that shaped Kenyan football.
The early nineties had MYSA competing in international youth tournaments as well as setting the agenda for sports and environmental conservation through garbage clean-ups in the slums.
MYSA has since bagged a slew of international awards including the Sports for Good Award at the Laureus World Sports Awards.
Bob Munro during the Urban Refugees Rights Based and Inclusive tournament at Mathare Youth Sports Association Headquarters along Kangundo Road on April 05, 2023.
Photo credit: File | Nation
To date, it remains the only Kenyan organisation to be nominated twice for the Nobel Peace Prize and has a special place in Munro’s heart.
“I was doing a lot of strategic planning policy reports but you wouldn't see the impact sometimes for weeks but more often months, and too often years.
“I was increasingly investing time in MYSA and what became irresistible is that the impact and results were immediate and all the results had names and faces and so when it increasingly came to do I put more time in MYSA or do I put more time in my consulting?”
President William Ruto decorates Bob Munro with the Elder of Burning Spear on December 12, 2024.
Photo credit: Pool
“I increasingly was drawn more and more to MYSA because it was just so exciting and exhilarating to see these young people grow and achieve things.”
This was inspired by the resilience he found among the residents of Mathare—- a collection of slums that houses over 500,000 people.
“There are no problems in Mathare, only challenges because if you take it as a problem? You can die. You don’t have a choice. You take that challenge on and I have been privileged to be part of that journey and being able to see that first hand has changed me.
With the success of MYSA, Munro founded Mathare United in 1994 and the team quickly shook the established club football order and thrust the Canadian into the murky world of domestic football politics.
In 1998, the then second division team stunned giants Eldoret KCC to win the domestic cup title (then known as Moi Golden Cup) before reclaiming the trophy in 2000 after earning promotion.
Mathare then lifted the 2008 Kenyan Premier League title to qualify for the CAF Champions League the following season.
The professional and detailed running of the ‘Slum Boys’ earned him friends and foes in equal measure.
Munro’s well-documented showdowns with football chiefs such as the late Football Kenya Limited chairman Mohamed Hatimy, his secretary Hussein Swaleh, Titus Kasuve, and former Football Kenya Federation boss Sam Nyamweya are the stuff of local legend.
Sports ministry officials such as the late chairman of the Kenya Sports Council, Joshua Okuthe, and a string of ministers were not spared by the man who would always stand his ground.
It all came to a head in mid-2000s when former Minister for Sports, Maina Kamanda threatened to deport him for ‘interfering in Kenyan football.’
As the world prepares to say its final farewell, Munro sensed that MYSA needed to take a different direction in order to survive after his demise.
“We have to make sure that MYSA will celebrate its 100th birthday in 2087. The answer to that happening is mobilising 150,000 alumni and their membership fee will help sustain the programme without donor funding.
“The MYSA board also has alumni so that MYSA is wholly owned, run, and sustained by the youth and alumni.”
By Kenyan standards, Munro would have died a dollar millionaire given the lucrative jobs he did for the United Nations but looking back? He was immensely proud of what he had achieved in Kenya.
“When you get to 70, you start thinking, what have I done? Did I make a difference? At the day of day? I have a very poor bank account, but that’s not what I am counting on, I sit back and take a look, and say, not bad, I did make a difference in the environment, sustainable development, and in the lives of at least 150,000 MYSA alumni.
“And if you add the influence I have had on improving Kenyan football, you are looking at millions of players so yes, I am quietly happy with how I have spent my life, and if I had a chance to do it all over again? I would do the same thing.”
Munro however, labelled his family as his proudest achievement.
“I hope that my first legacy will be as a son, as a husband, as a father and grandfather, we have seven grandchildren so that has to be first.”
In 2022, after years of heavy smoking, Munro first developed health complications that saw him admitted to a hospital where he underwent multiple surgeries.
After that, he would be in and out of hospital till he passed away on Sunday. He was 82.
