Leonard Beecher

Leonard James Beecher CMG, ARCS, FRAI (21 May 1906 – 16 December 1987) was an English-born Anglican archbishop. He was the first archbishop of the Province of East Africa, comprising Kenya and Tanzania, from 1960 to 1970.

He was educated at St. Olave's Grammar School and Imperial College London, ordained deacon in 1929 and priest in 1931. He became an Associate of the Royal College of Science (ARCS) in 1926 and made a Fellow of the Royal Anthropological Institute (FRAI) in 1928.

He was a missionary of the Church Mission Society in the Diocese of Mombasa from 1930, working in the Highlands. He was appointed Archdeacon of Mombasa and a Canon (both 1945–1953). As archdeacon, Beecher played a prominent role as head of a government education committee that produced a ten-year education plan for Kenya Colony. The "Beecher Report" of 1949 pushed for gender equality in education but was also criticised due to frequency of high-stakes testing, prohibitive school fees, and allowing continued church management of many schools.

Beecher was consecrated a bishop on St. James's Day 1950 (25 July) by Geoffrey Fisher, Archbishop of Canterbury, at St Paul's Cathedral in London. Beecher then became Assistant Bishop of Mombasa before later being appointed bishop diocesan of Mombasa in 1953. He additionally served as Archbishop of the Anglican Province of East Africa, from 1960 to 1970: he was elected (by the House of Bishops of the province-to-be) to serve as the first archbishop in April 1960 and installed by Geoffrey Fisher, Archbishop of Canterbury, at the new province's inauguration service on 3 August 1960 at Dar-es-Salaam.

A prominent member of the Royal African Society, he retired in 1970 and died on 16 December 1987. He is buried in the cemetery at All Saints, Limuru.