Kenya, officially the Republic of Kenya, is a country located in East Africa. The country is famed for its scenic landscapes and vast wildlife preserves, and its Indian Ocean coast has historically important ports, such as Mombasa, by which goods from Arabian and Asian traders have entered the continent for many centuries.
Kenya is named after Mount Kenya- the second tallest Mountain in Africa. The Kikuyu people who lived around present day Mt Kenya referred to it as Kirinyaga or Kerenyaga, meaning mountain of whiteness because of its snow capped peak. Mt Kirinyaga which was the main landmark became synonymous with the territory the British later claimed as their colony.
With an estimated population of more than 52.4 million as of mid-2024, Kenya is the 27th-most-populous country in the world and the 7th most populous in Africa. Kenya's capital and largest city is Nairobi. The second-largest and oldest city is Mombasa, a major port city located on Mombasa Island. Other major cities within the country include Kisumu, Nakuru and Eldoret. Kenya's geography, climate and population vary widely.
Early History of Kenya
It is known that human history in Kenya dates back millions of years, because it is there that some of the earliest fossilized remains of hominids have been discovered. East Africa, including Kenya, is one of the earliest regions where modern humans (Homo sapiens) are believed to have lived. In 1984, during excavations at Lake Turkana palaeoanthropologist Richard Leakey, assisted by Kamoya Kimeu, had discovered the Turkana Boy, a 1.6-million-year-old Homo erectus fossil.
The first inhabitants of present-day Kenya were hunter-gatherer groups, akin to the modern Khoisan speakers. These people were later largely replaced by agropastoralist Cushitic (ancestral to Kenya's Cushitic speakers), who originated from the Horn of Africa.
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By the 1st century CE, many of the area's city-states, such as Mombasa, Malindi, and Zanzibar, began to establish trading relations with the Arabs. The coastline of Kenya was home to communities of ironworkers and Bantu subsistence farmers, hunters, and fishers who supported the region's economy with agriculture, fishing, metal production, and trade with foreign countries.
The 18th and 19th Centuries
The Maasai moved into what is now central Kenya from an area north of Lake Turkana sometime in the mid-18th century.
The Kikuyu, who were far more numerous than the Maasai, also looked to the mountains and forests for protection against Maasai war parties. The Kikuyu had expanded northward, westward, and southward from their territory in the Fort Hall area (present-day Murang’a, in south-central Kenya), where they cleared the forests to provide themselves with agricultural land.
Trading relations had existed for centuries between southern Arabia and the coastline of what is now Kenya; some of the Arab traders remained in the area and contributed to the language that came to be known as Swahili. During the 19th century Arab and Swahili caravans in search of ivory penetrated the interior.
The first Europeans to penetrate the interior were two German agents of the Church Missionary Society, Johann Ludwig Krapf and Johannes Rebmann. They established a mission station at Rabai, a short distance inland from Mombasa. In 1848 Rebmann became the first European to see Kilimanjaro, and in 1849 Krapf ventured still farther inland and saw Mount Kenya.
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As Germany, Britain, and France were carving up East Africa in the mid-1880s, they recognized the authority of the sultan of Zanzibar over a coastal strip 10 miles (16 km) wide between the Tana (in Kenya) and Ruvuma (in Tanzania) rivers. The hinterland, however, was divided between Britain and Germany: the British took the area north of a line running from the mouth of the Umba River, opposite Pemba Island, and skirting north of Kilimanjaro to a point where latitude 1° S cut the eastern shore of Lake Victoria; the German sphere, Tanganyika (present-day Tanzania), lay to the south of that line.
In 1887 the sultan’s territory on the mainland was conceded to the British East Africa Association (later Company) for a 50-year period; this was later made a permanent grant. Because the British government was reluctant to become involved in the administration of East Africa, in 1888 it granted the company a royal charter that authorized it to accept existing and future grants and concessions relevant to the administration and development of the British sphere in that part of the world.
The financial resources of the company, however, were inadequate for any large-scale development of the region. This financial problem was finally resolved in 1895 when the British government made Buganda a protectorate and paid the company £250,000 to surrender its charter to the area that is now Kenya. The East Africa Protectorate was then proclaimed, with Sir Arthur Hardinge as the first commissioner.
During the early years, the new administration largely focused on asserting authority over the territory. The Maasai were one of the few groups who offered no resistance to British authority, and they even served in the military during the British campaigns against the Kikuyu. The extension of British administration into the more remote areas of the protectorate was slowed by the lack of communication infrastructure and the limited financial resources available.
The East Africa Protectorate was valued by Europeans as a corridor to the fertile land around Lake Victoria, but the government’s offer to lease the land to British settlers was initially not popular. Two factors, however, changed this negative attitude: a railway was constructed from the coast to Lake Victoria, and the western highlands were transferred from Uganda (where regulations made it impossible to lease land to Europeans) to the East Africa Protectorate in 1902.
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Work on the railway began at Mombasa in December 1895, and the first locomotive reached Kisumu on Lake Victoria in December 1901; the entire line was completed by 1903. The protectorate was responsible for making the railway profitable, and the export of cash crops seemed to provide the perfect solution for generating revenue.
As more Africans were separated from their land and as more European settlers entered the region, the Europeans became concerned with maintaining an adequate supply of African labor. Because few Africans voluntarily chose whether to work for Europeans, the settlers wanted the government to institute a system that would compel Africans to offer their services to European farmers.
Thousands of Indian laborers were brought into the protectorate to construct the railway. Although most of these laborers returned to India after their contracts were completed, some remained. The opening of the railway encouraged Indian traders who had been living nearer the coast to penetrate farther into the interior, even ahead of the administration.
Prior to the outbreak of World War I in 1914, European participation in political affairs was limited mainly to creating pressure groups. An Executive Council was appointed in 1905, and the first Legislative Council convened in 1907.
World War I and Its Aftermath
Germany had hoped that no battles with Britain would be fought on African soil during World War I (1914-18), but Britain was concerned with its communications with India and with the safety of the Ugandan railway. Britain initiated hostilities, to which Germany responded, with Britain ultimately prevailing in East Africa.
The conflict caused great hardships for the African population. Thousands of Africans were forced to serve as porters and soldiers, often with disastrous results, and a large number of Africans died, mostly from disease. The entire East African economic structure was affected, as food production became geared solely to supplying the troops.
An attempt was made immediately after the war to revive the settler sector by introducing a “soldier settler” scheme, but the hopes of prosperity encouraged by the postwar demand for agricultural produce received a severe setback in the early 1920s when a worldwide economic recession brought bankruptcy to many of those who had started out with inadequate capital or had relied on credit from the banks.
Rail communications had been improved when branch lines were opened to Thika and to the soda deposits at Lake Magadi in 1913; during the war a link was made between the main line and the German railway system to the south. The most important postwar project was the building of a new extension of the main line across the Uasin Gishu Plateau to tap the agricultural wealth of the highlands and then to Uganda in order to provide an outlet for the cotton crops of that protectorate.
Kenya Colony
In 1920 the East Africa Protectorate was turned into a colony and renamed Kenya, for its highest mountain. The colonial government began to concern itself with the plight of African peoples; in 1923 the colonial secretary issued a White Paper in which he indicated that African interests in the colony had to be paramount, although his declaration did not immediately result in any great improvement in conditions.
From October 1952 to December 1959, Kenya was in a state of emergency arising from the Mau Mau rebellion against British rule. The Mau Mau, also known as the Kenya Land and Freedom Army, were primarily Kikuyu, Embu and Meru people.
Before Kenya got its independence, Somali ethnic people in present-day Kenya in the areas of Northern Frontier Districts petitioned Her Majesty's Government not to be included in Kenya. Despite British hopes of handing power to "moderate" local rivals, it was the Kenya African National Union (KANU) of Jomo Kenyatta that formed a government.
The Colony of Kenya and the Protectorate of Kenya each came to an end on 12 December 1963, with independence conferred on all of Kenya. The U.K. ceded sovereignty over the Colony of Kenya. The Sultan of Zanzibar agreed that simultaneous with independence for the colony, he would cease to have sovereignty over the Protectorate of Kenya so that all of Kenya would become one sovereign state.
On 12 December 1964, the Republic of Kenya was proclaimed, and Jomo Kenyatta became Kenya's first president.
Geography and Climate
Kenya is spatially situated at the Horn of Africa, in the far eastern end of Africa, flanked by Tanzania in the south, by Uganda in the west, by Sudan and Ethiopia in the north and by Somalia in the east. It fronts two major world water bodies, Indian Ocean to the south east and Lake Victoria to the west with a total surface area of about 582,646 km2 of which 11,230 km2 is water. Other notable water bodies include Lake Turkana, north of the Rift Valley, and a number of notable smaller lakes along the Rift Valley.
Kenya’s climate ranges from balmy tropical at the coast to temperate and arid in the interior, based on altitude. Mount Kenya, Africa’s second highest, is the highest point, at 5,199 m. Kenya’s total population (as at 2018) is estimated at almost 52 million, the bulk of whom live in three areas of Kenya: nearby Lake Victoria in the west and south-west, in Central Kenya, and in an area of fairly dense population along the Coast Region of Kenya, specially between Malindi and Tanzania border.
About 80% of Kenya’s terrestrial land is listed as arid to semi-arid, where life is essentially a continual search of water and the little vegetation to be found here: The rainfall here ranging from 150 to 750 mm annually. That is to also say, the rainfall here is erratic and poorly distributed, spatially and temporally, making agricultural production in the ASALs a cosmic challenge.
Low plains form Kenya’s north and extend southeast to the coast. In the center, south and southwest of the country the plains rise into fertile highlands. The Great Rift Valley, which travels north to south, bisects the western half of the country.
Administrative Divisions
The original 40 boundaries of Kenya, marking districts and provinces, were first defined in the 1963 Independence Constitution and they were largely based on ethnic boundaries, affirmed by political positions taken at the Lancaster House Conferences. During the British Era, the Royal Boundaries Commission believed that it was prudent to keep rival tribes within their own administrative and political boundaries for the object of peace. And thus the defunct 40 Districts [under 9 Provinces] were drawn and created.
In 2010, the 47 Districts were replaced by the 47 Counties of Kenya in accordance to the August 05, referendum adopted by 67% of Kenyans, in time promulgated on August 27, 2010.
Coastal Assets
Kenya’s national boundary of 3500 kilometers includes 536 kilometers of coral-fringed coastline, with the country offering four marine parks and five marine reserves. The coastal assets include: 830 km2 of lush coastal forests, floodplain wetlands; 51 km2 of mangrove forest ecosystems, abundant in Lamu; 12 species of seagrass; and 50 km2 of coral reef protected under two marine parks and two national marine reserves.
Mombasa City, a place and situation that is unique to Eastern Africa, is the largest coastal town and the main hub. Its situation at the coastal terminus of the railway from Uganda and as the primary port of East Africa has provided it momentum to grow exponentially. The 536 kilometers coastline divides conveniently into six area. These are: South Coast, Mombasa Island, North Coast, Kilifi, Watamu/Malindi and Lamu.
Today, Diani (in South Coast) is Kenya’s finest beach and has been voted as Africa’s best beach destination for six years consecutively. It has a wide range of accommodation varying from middle-market beach resorts to the last word in sophistication and comfort in private beach cottages.
Wildlife and Conservation
Away from the ocean, there is plenty to interest the traveller to the Coast Region of Kenya. Protected areas are comprised of National Parks, Reserves and Sanctuaries, administered by the Kenya Wildlife Service (KWS), as well as gazetted Forest Reserves, which are managed by the Kenya Forest Service (KFS).
There are no less than 50 Reserves / Parks that cover approximately 11% of her land surface area. Kenya is avowedly a grand arena to experience the wilder places in whichever direction you take.
For conservation, the country has set aside some 47,674 square kilometers in 29 National parks, 27 Game Reserves, 4 Wildlife Sanctuaries, and 100+ Wildlife Conservancies. Kenya is one of the world’s best destinations for bird watchers, and it has the famous annual wildebeest migration. The area is endowed with tremendous biodiversity.
The country has approximately 25,000 species of animals; including 1,133 birds, 315 mammals, 191 reptiles, 180 freshwater fish, 692 marine and brackish fish, and 88 amphibians, as well as 7,000 species of vascular plants and more than 2,000 fungi and bacteria. 1,100 species of the vascular plants, 14 mammalian species, and eight bird species are endemic to the country. 103 bird species, 51 mammals, 8 amphibian and reptile species, and 26 fish species are endangered or threatened.
Resources
Of the area of 582,646 km2 which Kenya covers, 2008 km2 are covered by natural and exotic plantation forests; so the forest cover is 3.4% of the total land surface and 15% of the high potential land. The potential mineral wealth of Kenya is still not fully known.
The chief economic minerals of Kenya going by the 1968 Geological Survey of Kenya were, and still are, soda, salt, gold, fluorspar, raw materials for cement manufacture, limestone and carbon dioxide; but numerous other products are envisaged. These minerals include soda ash, fluorspar, titanium, niobium and rare earth elements, gold, coal, iron ore, limestone, manganese, diatomite, gemstone, gypsum and carbon.
Culture
Kenya has a interesting mix of cultural history. Kenya has a mosaic of 44 ethnic groups, each with its own culture and language, existing side by side, as the result of waves of in-migration (going back 4000 years) of Turkanas from Ethiopia; Kikuyu, Akamba, and Meru from West Africa; and the Maasai, Luo and the Samburu from southern Sudan. By the eighth century, Arabic, Indian, Persian, and even Chinese traders reached the Kenyan coast. They helped set up a string of coastal cities (for example, Mombasa and Lamu) and eventually the part-African, part-Arabic civilization infamous as the Swahili.
Kenya’s cultural diversity forms an essential core of Kenya‘s tourism. Kenya offers mountains and deserts, rainforest, rolling grassland, colorful tribal cultures, beaches and coral reefs, islands, the Great Rift Valley and, of course, outstanding wildlife displays.
Economy
The economy of Kenya is market-based with a few state enterprises. Kenya has an emerging market and is an averagely industrialised nation ahead of its East African peers. Currently a lower middle income nation, Kenya plans to be a newly industrialised nation by 2030. The major industries driving the Kenyan economy include financial services, agriculture, real estate, manufacturing, logistics, tourism, retail and energy.
As of 2020, Kenya had the third largest economy in Sub-Saharan Africa, behind Nigeria and South Africa. The government of Kenya is generally investment-friendly and has enacted several regulatory reforms to simplify foreign and local investment, including the creation of an export processing zone.
Kenya gained its independence in 1963. Under President Jomo Kenyatta, the Kenyan government promoted africanisation of the Kenyan economy, generating rapid economic growth through public investment, encouragement of smallholder agricultural production, and incentives for private, often foreign, industrial investments.
From 1963 to 1973, GDP grew at an annual average rate of 6.6%; during the 1970s, it grew at an average rate of 7.2%. Agricultural production grew by 4.7% annually in the same period, stimulated by redistributing estates, distributing new crop strains, and opening new areas to cultivation.
In 1993, the Kenyan government began a major programme of economic reform and liberalisation. A new minister of finance and a new governor of the central bank undertook a series of economic measures with the assistance of the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund (IMF). The government eliminated price controls and import licensing, removed foreign exchange controls, privatised a number of publicly owned companies, reduced the number of civil servants, and introduced conservative fiscal and monetary policies.
Economic growth improved between 2003 and 2008, under the Mwai Kibaki administration. When Kibaki took power in 2003, he immediately established the National Debt Management Department at the treasury, reformed the Kenya Revenue Authority (KRA) to increase government revenue, reformed financial laws on banking, wrote off the debts of strategic public enterprises, and ensured that 30% of government tax revenue was invested in economic development projects.
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