A chapter in the recorded music business in East Africa has closed with the death of Mike Andrews, popularly known by his radio moniker, Mahanjam Mike. Andrews, founder of the iconic AI Records, the label that released some of the best-selling records in the history of music in the region, passed away in Nairobi on January 5, 2026, at the age of 87.
Andrews was born on September 15, 1938, in London and moved with his parents to Kenya when he was six. He attended Kilimani Primary School and Duke of York School (now Lenana School) in Nairobi.
His first radio gig was as a 19-year-old with the British company Cable and Wireless, which was running broadcasting services in Kenya. “It was the rock and roll era, and the radio station here in Kenya had not caught on to the wave that was sweeping the world at the time,” he told this writer in a 2013 interview.
“I explained to the radio bosses that the youngsters of the era were listening to the Beatles, Buddy Holly and Elvis Presley, but there was nothing like that being played over the airwaves here in Kenya,” he said.
Andrews added: “I remember one of them saying, ‘I would like you to go into the studio and explain to me, through the microphone there, what you have been telling us about the background of some of this music.’ So, I went in there and introduced an Elvis Presley song, and when I came out, he said, ‘Fine! You are on.’”
They agreed on a three-month trial period for a show called Music of the Moment, and that started Andrews on a 30-year broadcasting career. “I had a pop programme each week and with me playing this new music to the Kenyan audience came demand for the records in the shops,” he recalled. “In those days, there were only a handful of shops selling gramophone records in East Africa.”
As music dealers prodded him to help them get their hands on the records that he was playing on his show, Andrews began to take a deeper interest in the music business. He discovered some burgeoning businesses in Nairobi’s River Road owned by Asian businessmen, who were recording music and distributing phonograph records by popular artists of the time such as Isaya Mwinamo, John Mwale and George Agade.
Acquired East African Records
Andrews was then working in his father’s company, P.W. Andrews & Co, which dealt with the importation and sale of general merchandise. They seized the opportunity and acquired East African Records in 1961 as a joint venture with international partners, and started the local manufacture of shellac records. The pressing plant was renovated to establish the manufacture of 45rpm (revolutions per minute, which refers to the speed at which a record plays) vinyl records for the first time in East Africa in the mid-1960s. In 1966, the Dutch multinational Philips Group bought East African Records and later renamed it Polygram Records.
In 1970, RCA Records approached the Andrews company to form a joint venture to manufacture international music in Kenya under licence, leading to the creation of Andrews International Records (AI Records).
“We were also encouraged by RCA to start doing local recordings. So, not only did I start to think about manufacturing records by Elvis Presley, Otis Redding and Wilson Pickett, but also to start recording local groups. As a result, benga, which was a new sound that had not been recorded much at the time, exploded in a big way,” he said in a previous interview.
Music producer Mike Andrews at his studio in Nairobi.
Photo credit: File | Nation Media Group
They registered various labels under AI Records to cater to specific genres of music. Sungura Records, a partnership with legendary producer Phares Oluoch Kanindo, became the home of benga stars – D.O. Misiani and Shirati Jazz took the market by storm. They sold a huge number of records not just in Kenya but as far as Southern Africa, where fans who bought the records baptised the style of music as “sungura” – a genre still played by Zimbabwean musicians to date.
The music of Tanzanian bands such as Western Jazz Band, Vijana Jazz Band and Dar International was released on Moto Moto and Africa labels, while AIT was the imprint for Zairean (Congolese) musicians, notably Orchestra Super Mazembe and Orchestra Makassy, as well as West African groups such as Osibisa and Prince Nico Mbarga.
Super Mazembe was phenomenally successful, and their live shows around the country enhanced their fan base. In 1977, the group released the hit single Kassongo, which, four and a half decades later, has been introduced to a whole new generation thanks to its popularity on TikTok and its use as the soundtrack to the Gen-Z protests of 2024.
“We were still selling country music – Jim Reeves, Charley Pride, Dolly Parton – and pop records by the likes of Boney M,” said Andrews.
“Radio was the essential marketing tool for any record, really. If there was a hit song on the Voice of Kenya, it would be picked up in Uganda, filter into Tanzania and even as far as Zaire (DRC). Through radio, the general public was influenced as to what they wanted to buy in the way of records.”
In the mid-1970s, soft drinks manufacturer Pepsi approached Andrews with a concept for a new weekly radio music show that would air on the Voice of Kenya. Andrews proposed legendary broadcaster Elizabeth Omolo, who frequently popped into his company offices to enquire about new music, as his co-presenter. Sounds -Like Hits became the go-to programme every Sunday morning for all the fresh music that was available on the Kenyan market.
Andrews explained how he acquired what became a household name for the next decade and a half that he presented the show. “The producer at Andrew Crawford Studios, where we recorded the programme, a young fellow from the back streets of Nairobi, George ‘Yahooz’ Fombe, was probably the first person I ever knew who spoke Sheng. Every record that we played, he would tell us, ‘weka mahanjam kidogo ndani, iko uzuri sana’ (add some flavour to spice things up). Liz Omolo thought this was the funniest thing ever. So, the name Mahanjam stuck, and I would say that we are playing the best numbers ‘mpaka Makadara, mpaka Mombasa, Muthurwa, kila kitu’.”
The on-air chemistry between the wise-cracking Mahanjam Mike Makadara and the affable Easy Lizzy made for a show that will long live in the memory of generations of radio listeners, he said.
There were changes in the technology of music formats to include long-playing (LP) vinyl records alongside singles, and compact cassettes, which, as Andrews explained, had a devastating effect on music sales. “We recorded quite seriously until the early 1980s, when, regrettably, piracy arrived in a big way through the advent of music cassettes. So, returns from music were ruined by what was stolen, which marked our demise in the recording of local music. However, we continued to reproduce the international music for which we had licences.”
In recent years, AI Records began remastering and reproducing its older catalogue from artists such as D.O. Misiani and Shirati Jazz, Victoria Jazz Band, Joseph Kamaru, Eagles Lupopo 77, D.K. Kamau, Francis Rugwiti, Nashil Pichen Kazembe, Super Mazembe, Issa Juma, Super Wanyika and Les Mangelepa. In 2018, the company entered into a partnership with global giant Universal Music, which has brought some of the vintage catalogue owned by AI Records onto streaming platforms.
Besides his love for music, Mike Andrews’s other big passion was rugby, which he played for his school team and for which he captained Impala Club, the Kenya 15s-a-side and East Africa Tuskers teams against many local and international sides throughout the 1960s and 1970s. As the years wore on, he often played a round of golf with his old rugby mates and loved driving his vintage 1964 Mercedes 220S.
Mike “Mahanjam Mike” Andrews is survived by his wife Jean, sons Graham and John Andrews, and daughter Carol.
