Source: MAPS IN MINUTES™ © RH Publications (1997)

An equatorial country in east Africa, bounded inland by Somalia on the east, Ethiopia and Sudan on the north, Uganda on the west, and Tanzania on the south.

Physical

In the south-east of Kenya is a hot, damp coast on the Indian Ocean, into which run two long rivers, the Tana and the Galana. They rise in the central highlands, a region containing Mount Kenya and cool slopes and plateaux suitable for farming of various kinds, particularly the cultivation of tea and coffee. The highlands are split by part of the Great Rift Valley, a region of lakes, and to the west fall away to the eastern shore of Lake Victoria. Northward is a rift-valley lake, Turkana, and to its east is a vast, hot, dry region with thorny scrub. In the south there is a smaller lake, Magadi, with major deposits of soda.

Economy

Kenya has an agricultural economy with a developing industrial sector. The main exports are tea, coffee, horticultural products, and petroleum products (from imported crude oil). Agriculture employs three-quarters of the workforce and produces tea, coffee, cereals, sugar cane, fruit, and vegetables. Consumer goods, agricultural products, horticulture, and oil refining are the principal industries; tourism is also important. There are mineral deposits of soda ash, fluorspar, salt, and gold.

History

In areas of the Great Rift Valley, such as Lake Turkana, palaeontologists have discovered some of the earliest fossil hominid remains. Arabs settled on the coast during the 7th century. During the 16th and 17th centuries, Portuguese traders operated in the region. The Maasai pastoral people came into the area in the 18th century from the north, but during the 19th century they were largely displaced by the agricultural Kikuyu, who steadily advanced from the south. British coastal trade began in the 1840s, and in 1887 the British East African Association (a trading company) secured a lease of coastal strip from the Sultan of Zanzibar. The British East Africa Protectorate was established in 1896, when thousands of Indians were brought in to build railways. The British crown colony of Kenya was created in 1920. By then a great area of the ‘White Highlands’ had been reserved for white settlement, while ‘Native Reserves’ were established to separate the two communities. During the 1920s there was considerable immigration from Britain, and a development of African political movements, demanding a greater share in the government of the country. Kikuyu nationalism developed steadily, led by Jomo Kenyatta. From this tension grew the Kenya Africa Union, and the militant Mau Mau movement (1952–57). An election in 1961 led to the two African political parties, the Kenya African National Union (KANU) and the Kenya African Democratic Union (KADU), joining the government. Independence was achieved in 1963, and in the following year Kenya became a republic with Kenyatta as President. Under him, Kenya remained generally stable, but after his death in 1978 opposition to his successor, Daniel arap Moi, mounted, culminating in a bloody attempted coup in 1982. Elections in 1983 saw the return of comparative stability with Moi still President, but of an increasingly corrupt and autocratic regime. In December 1991 Moi reluctantly agreed to end single-party politics. Multiparty elections, held in 1992 and 1997, were won by Moi amid allegations of electoral fraud. He did not stand for re-election in 2002, and the election was won by the opposition leader, Mwai Kibaki, who promised to end Kenya’s by now endemic corruption. However, he failed to do so. The result of the 2007 election was disputed between Kibaki and Raila Odinga of the opposition Orange Democratic Movement. Kibaki was declared the winner by a narrow margin, but violence between their supporters, who in general divided along ethnic lines, resulted in over a thousand deaths. A power-sharing agreement was reached in 2008, but in 2012 the International Criminal Court indicted four prominent politicians – including Uhuru Kenyatta, son of Jomo Kenyatta – for instigating the violence; charges were dropped in 2014. The next presidential elections, in 2013, were peaceful and resulted in victory for Kenyatta, who defeated Odinga. Since 2013 there have been a number of terrorist attacks in Kenya by the Islamist group, al-Shabab, based in neighbouring Somalia, with significant loss of life.

Kenyatta won the Presidential election in August 2017, but the Supreme Court ruled that the election was flawed and should be re-run. Odinga withdrew from the election, and persuaded many of his followers to boycott the vote. Kenyatta duly won, with the support of just under 40 per cent of the electorate, and this result was approved by the Supreme Court.