history

Kenya is south of Ethiopia, west of Somalia, and north of Tanzania, and is twice the size of Nevada. It has Africa’s second highest mountain, Mount Kenya north of the capital Nairobi, and more than thirty million people. Kenyans mostly speak Swahili and English, and they grow a lot of very good coffee, which you can see sometimes on sale in the United States in supermarkets and coffee shops.

Kenya is where humanity first evolved. Scientists have found over 230 skeletons of early human beings near Lake Rudolf in northern Kenya, going back millions of years. This is why Kenya, and particularly a great five-thousand-mile slash in the Earth’s crust called the “Rift Valley”, is sometimes called “the cradle of humanity”. As ages passed, human beings migrated out of Africa into Asia and Europe, and then, about 15,000 years ago, into the Americas.

During the first millennium A.D., Arab traders settled on the coast. African people, like the Luo and Kikuyu peoples, migrated to the inland areas, trading ivory, gold and slaves with the Arabs. The Swahili language, with Arabic and African roots, grew up as a way for them all to talk to one another. There are over 70 ethnic groups in Kenya, and they use Swahili and sometimes English to talk to one another.

The British conquered Kenya in the 1890s, but in 1963 Kenya won its independence from Britain. The independence movement was led by Jomo Kenyatta, who became the first president of an independent Kenya. His slogan was “Harambee”, Swahili for “All Pull Together”. Between 1969 and 1991, only one political party was allowed, but now there are many parties. As of 2008, the president is Mwai Kibaki of the National Rainbow Coalition.

Next >> The Kenyan Flag