Setting aside his tribal and class loyalties, he exposed Kenya's Watergate. It is an example that other young Africans can now follow. John Githongo profiled

When British papers last month splashed news of a vast alleged corruption scandal in Kenya involving top ministers, civil servants and businessmen, many observers reacted with a shrug: "Yet another African sleaze story. How depressing." This may be a mistake. However paradoxical it sounds, I believe that this furore represents a good news story for the continent, indicating that far from offering more of the same, Africa is changing in dramatic, potentially positive ways.

That encouraging message is encapsulated in the figure at the centre of the affair - the former Kenyan anti-corruption chief John Githongo - and the impulses that transformed him from loyal permanent secretary to angry whistle-blower.

Appointed within days of the opposition's election victory in the 2002 polls, Githongo spent two years as permanent secretary for ethics and governance. When he fled to London last year, it was clear he had stumbled on something toxic.

His 36-page dossier, leaked to the press, reveals what that was. In compelling detail - Githongo was always fastidious about keeping a diary - he records what he alleges were his conversations with Kenya's vice-president and three ministers, who confess their roles in concealing a series of bogus contracts designed to leach hundreds of millions of dollars from the exchequer. Those named are now loudly protesting their innocence, while the Kenya Anti-Corruption Commission, which sat on the dossier for months, promises summonses left, right and centre.

So far, this is all too predictable, for Kenya has seen multi- million-dollar scandals come and go before. Any Kenyan voter can name the VIPs responsible for the Goldenberg scam of the 1990s, yet the government of the day did not fall, ministers were not sacked and most of the funds were never recouped.

As a friend of the whistle-blower in question, I am not neutral. Yet I am convinced that the Githongo story is one of those flares history periodically sends up, alerting us to an important change taking place on the continent: a generation of well-educated, self-confident and frustrated young Africans is preparing to call time on its fathers' ways of doing business.

Whereas Goldenberg came to light because of the misgivings of a lowly clerk, this scandal, arguably Kenya's equivalent of Watergate, was made public by the most trusted, high-profile of insiders. Reading the dossier I was struck by the way ministers are alleged to have blurted out highly self-incriminating statements in front of the man assigned to clean up graft. They simply assumed Githongo would keep their secrets. Those assumptions were based on ethnicity and class.

Githongo is a member of the Kikuyu tribe, to which President Mwai Kibaki also belongs. Jomo Kenyatta, Kenya's founding father, was a Kikuyu, but after his death this large, prosperous group was marginalised as Kenyatta's successor, Daniel arap Moi, pulled together a coalition of smaller groups resentful of Kikuyu success. The election of Kibaki represented a Kikuyu comeback, and soon voters were complaining that the government had been hijacked by a group of presidential golfing buddies from Central Province and the neighbouring Embu and Meru districts, who were called "the Mount Kenya Mafia". The mafia believed that it had an ally in Githongo.

Of course they knew he had led the Kenyan chapter of the anti-corruption body Transparency International, but he still belonged to the elite. Raised in the plush suburb of Karen and sent to one of Nairobi's best private schools, he grew up with the children of the Kikuyu aristocracy. When Kikuyus exclaimed, "It's our turn to eat," he would surely understand. If you won't help your fellow tribesman, who will?

Another issue was respect. From birth, African children are lectured on the importance of deferring to elders. A young female official once told me how hard she found it contradicting grey-haired colleagues: "That childhood taboo stops me, even when they're talking rubbish." The 40-year-old Githongo regarded Kibaki as a father figure, addressing him with the respectful Mzee (old man). The president, now 74, called him kijana (little one). If the younger man needed reining in, it would be sufficient to invoke the president's white hairs.

Finally, there was a strong financial incentive to keep quiet. For decades in post-colonial Kenya, where so much of the economy was state-controlled, open defiance could mean ruin. As a permanent secretary attached to the office of the president, Githongo enjoyed an enviable salary and official car. Little wonder that no previous permanent secretary had ever willingly resigned.

Yet, in the end, none of these considerations won out. Hence my belief that the times are changing.

With 44 per cent of the population under the age of 15, Kenya is a youthful, restless nation. Living standards are lower than at independence; the divide between rich and poor widens each year. Graduates who thought education was the key to success roast corn cobs on street corners or sell newspapers at traffic lights. Among these youngsters there is growing resentment of a squabbling generation of politicians who have monopolised power since the 1970s. When I worked in Kenya, one columnist bitterly suggested that the most helpful thing would be for the country's entire political class to take off in the same plane and crash.

Kenya is also increasingly urban, and in city schools, slums, universities and churches the tribes mix and intermarry, their sense of ethnic particularity blurring into a broader feeling of national identity. Twenty years ago Nairobi was a place where various tribes collected to work, and if you asked people about their identity they mentioned their home regions. Ask a young resident where he comes from today and you'll get a defiant: "Actually, I'm a Kenyan."

The Githongo family typified that trend. The children befriended and dated members of other tribes. As a student, registering how tribalism was used to divide and rule, Githongo became determined to fight the stereotyping that poisoned political debate. At State House he refused to speak Kikuyu, insisting that all conversations be conducted in Swahili or English so that non-Kikuyus felt included. When they counted on this man for uncritical solidarity, the Mount Kenya Mafia miscalculated.

As for financial pressures, Githongo, who had been a freelance journalist and thrived in the world of western-sponsored non-governmental organisations, always knew he could survive outside the state sector. Born in Britain, he could easily move abroad. The roll-back of the state that came with structural adjustment in Kenya has also opened up all sorts of new opportunities. Unmarried, highly qualified, on warm terms with foreign ambassadors, academics and western institutions, and with no family to support, Githongo was superbly free to obey his conscience.

Githongo is not, it has to be said, by any means a typical Kenyan. And he is not so vainglorious as to believe he can cleanse a system single-handed. "I'd like to throw a small spanner in the works," he told me. "I'll do my little bit and the next time it'll be someone else, and someone else, and someone else." It may be that the ministers he has named will survive and the Kibaki regime will coast smoothly to scheduled elections in 2007, though I'd be amazed.

But his story tells us something about Africa, where thousands of men and women with just his independence are waiting in the wings, tracking their elders' sleazy performances with growing exasperation. Some will be watching recent events in Kenya: everyone needs role models to point the way ahead. One remarkable African had the nerve to turn to his former colleagues and give them a two-finger salute. Maybe, soon, he won't be alone.

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