The newspaper was established as the African Standard in 1902 as a weekly by Alibhai Mulla Jeevanjee, an immigrant businessman from British India.
In 1905 Jeevanjee sold the paper to Maia Anderson and Rudolf Franz Mayer, who changed the name to the East African Standard.
In late February 2006 The Standard ran a story claiming that president Mwai Kibaki and senior opposition figure Kalonzo Musyoka had been holding secret meetings.
At 1:00 am local time (2200 UTC), on 2 March, masked gunmen carrying AK-47s raided the editorial office of The Standard, and of its television station KTN.
They kicked and beat staff members, forcibly took computers and transmission equipment, burned all the copies of the 2 March edition of the newspaper, and damaged the presses.