Portal:Kenya

Introduction

Kenya, officially the Republic of Kenya, is a country located in East Africa. 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. Going clockwise Kenya is bordered by South Sudan to the northwest (though much of that border includes the disputed Ilemi Triangle), Ethiopia to the north, Somalia to the east, the Indian Ocean to the southeast, Tanzania to the southwest, and Lake Victoria and Uganda to the west.

Kenya's geography, climate and population vary widely. In western rift valley counties, the landscape includes cold, snow-capped mountaintops (such as Batian, Nelion, and Point Lenana on Mount Kenya) with vast surrounding forests, wildlife, and fertile agricultural regions in temperate climates. In other areas, there are dry, arid, and semi-arid climates, as well as absolute deserts (such as Chalbi Desert and Nyiri Desert).

Kenya's earliest inhabitants included some of the first humans to evolve from ancestral members of the genus Homo. Ample fossil evidence for this evolutionary history has been found at Koobi Fora. Later, Kenya was inhabited by hunter-gatherers similar to the present-day Hadza people. According to archaeological dating of associated artifacts and skeletal material, Cushitic speakers first settled in the region's lowlands between 3,200 and 1,300 BC, a phase known as the Lowland Savanna Pastoral Neolithic. Nilotic-speaking pastoralists (ancestral to Kenya's Nilotic speakers) began migrating from present-day South Sudan into Kenya around 500 BC. Bantu people settled at the coast and the interior between 250 BC and 500 AD.

European contact began in 1500 AD with the Portuguese Empire, and effective colonisation of Kenya began in the 19th century during the European exploration of Africa. Modern-day Kenya emerged from a protectorate, established by the British Empire in 1895 and the subsequent Kenya Colony, which began in 1920. Mombasa was the capital of the British East Africa Protectorate, which included most of what is now Kenya and southwestern Somalia, from 1889 to 1907. Numerous disputes between the UK and the colony led to the Mau Mau revolution, which began in 1952, and the declaration of Kenya's independence in 1963. After independence, Kenya remained a member of the Commonwealth of Nations. The country's current constitution was adopted in 2010, replacing the previous 1963 constitution. (Full article...)

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Rail transport in Kenya consists of a metre-gauge network and a new standard-gauge railway (SGR). Both railways connect Kenya's main port city of Mombasa to the interior, running through the national capital of Nairobi. The metre-gauge network runs to the Ugandan border, and the Mombasa–Nairobi Standard Gauge Railway, financed by a Chinese loan, reaches Suswa. (Full article...)

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Lion cub, Masai Mara, Narok County, Kenya.

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Machakos is a town in Kenya, 64 kilometres southeast of Nairobi. It is the capital of the Machakos County, Kenya. Machakos Town is a major urban centre, and also a satellite town due to its proximity to Nairobi. Its population is rapidly growing and is 150,041 as of 2009. People who live here are mostly the Akambas though it is a cosmopolitan town. Machakos is surrounded by hilly terrain, with a high number of family farms. (Read more...)

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This is a Good article, an article that meets a core set of high editorial standards.

Mount Kenya (Meru: Kĩrĩmaara, Kikuyu: Kĩrĩnyaga, Kamba: Ki nyaa, Embu: Kĩ nyaga) is an extinct volcano in Kenya and the second-highest peak in Africa, after Kilimanjaro. The highest peaks of the mountain are Batian (5,199 metres (17,057 feet)), Nelion (5,188 m (17,021 ft)) and Point Lenana (4,985 m (16,355 ft)). Mount Kenya is located in the former Eastern and Central provinces of Kenya; its peak is now the intersection of Meru, Embu, Kirinyaga, Nyeri and Tharaka Nithi counties, about 16.5 kilometres (10.3 miles) south of the equator, around 150 km (90 mi) north-northeast of the capital Nairobi. Mount Kenya is the source of the name of the Republic of Kenya.

Mount Kenya is a volcano created approximately 3 million years after the opening of the East African Rift. Before glaciation, it was 7,000 m (23,000 ft) high. It was covered by an ice cap for thousands of years. This has resulted in very eroded slopes and numerous valleys radiating from the peak. There are currently 11 small glaciers, which are shrinking rapidly, and may disappear by 2050. The forested slopes are an important source of water for much of Kenya. (Full article...)

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Kenya Airways Nairobi National Park Ruins of Gedi Msambweni Lamu Fort Kenya at the 2006 Winter Olympics 2013 CECAFA Cup

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Kenyatta in 1966

Jomo Kenyatta CGH (c. 1897 – 22 August 1978) was a Kenyan anti-colonial activist and politician who governed Kenya as its Prime Minister from 1963 to 1964 and then as its first President from 1964 to his death in 1978. He played a significant role in the transformation of Kenya from a colony of the British Empire into an independent republic. Ideologically an African nationalist and a conservative, he led the Kenya African National Union (KANU) party from 1961 until his death.

Kenyatta was born to Kikuyu farmers in Kiambu, British East Africa. He was educated at a mission school and later on worked in various jobs before becoming politically engaged through the Kikuyu Central Association. In 1929, he travelled to London to lobby for Kikuyu land affairs. During the 1930s, he studied at Moscow's Communist University of the Toilers of the East, University College London, and the London School of Economics. In 1938, he published an anthropological study of Kikuyu life before working as a farm labourer in Sussex during the Second World War. Influenced by his friend George Padmore, he embraced anti-colonialist and Pan-African ideas, co-organising the 1945 Pan-African Congress in Manchester. He returned to Kenya in 1946 and became a school principal. In 1947, he was elected President of the Kenya African Union, through which he lobbied for independence from British colonial rule, attracting widespread indigenous support but animosity from white settlers. In 1952, he was among the Kapenguria Six arrested and charged with masterminding the anti-colonial Mau Mau Uprising. Although protesting his innocence—a view shared by later historians—he was convicted. He remained imprisoned at Lokitaung until 1959 and was then exiled to Lodwar until 1961. (Full article...)

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Related portals

Did you know (auto-generated) -

... that Kenyan coffee farmer "Pinkie" Jackson amassed Africa's largest collection of native butterflies?
... that British outrage at the sentencing of a white Kenyan settler to just two years' imprisonment for the 1923 killing of a black employee eventually led to the replacement of the colony's legal code?
... that a European settler in Kenya who tortured a black employee to death in 1920 was sentenced to just two years' imprisonment?
... that Anthony Vaz was the first flag bearer and team captain for Kenya at the Olympics?
... that Gloria Orwoba raised awareness about period poverty by appearing in the Senate of Kenya in apparently blood-stained trousers?
... that squatters were one of the groups that started the Mau Mau rebellion?

In the news

Wikinews Kenya portal

12 August 2025 –: In an effort to save the Maasai Mara reserve in Kenya, an activist files a lawsuit against the Ritz-Carlton, which plans to open a 20-suite safari camp there. (Reuters)
8 August 2025 –: A bus carrying mourners back home from a funeral in Kisumu, Kenya, overturns and plunges into a ditch, killing at least 21 people. (MSN)
7 August 2025 –: At least eight people are killed and several others are injured when a train and a Kenya Pipeline-owned bus collide on a level crossing in Naivasha, Nakuru County, Kenya. (Daily Nation); At least six people are killed and two others are injured when an air ambulance crashes into a residential area in Mwihoko, Kiambu County, Kenya. (AP) (Al Jazeera)
16 July 2025 – Spillover of the Somali civil war: Al-Shabaab militants claim to have killed three Kenyan soldiers patrolling a road in the east of the country near the Somali border. (Reuters)
9 July 2025 – Somali Civil War: At least seven Kenyan police officers are injured after an al-Shabaab roadside bomb strikes their patrol truck on a highway east of Mandera in Kenya, near the border with Somalia. (Hiiraan Online)

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Panorama overlooking Tsavo East National Park.

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The following are images from various Kenya-related articles on Wikipedia.

Image 1Former Prime Minister Raila Odinga speaking to the Kenyan media. (from Culture of Kenya)
Image 2Maasai woman in traditional headdress and attire. (from Culture of Kenya)
Image 3A traditional Kenyan drum, similar to the Djembe of West Africa. (from Culture of Kenya)
Image 4Fried tilapia fish and athola (beef stew) served with cooked kunde/mboga (cowpea leaves), managu/osuga (African nightshade), chapati, and ugali (from Culture of Kenya)
Image 5Traditional dancers in Nairobi (from Culture of Kenya)
Image 6Ugali, served here with beef and sauce, is a mainstay of the cuisine throughout the African Great Lakes region. (from Culture of Kenya)
Image 7Kenyan dancers performing a traditional dance (from Culture of Kenya)
Image 8Traditional Kenyan decorative calabashes (from Culture of Kenya)
Image 9Mahamri/mandazi (Swahili doughnuts) served with roasted groundnuts (peanuts), tubers, white bread, and chai (from Culture of Kenya)
Image 10Filmmaker Nathan Collett (with camera) shooting feature film Togetherness Supreme in collaboration with Kibera youth trainees. (from Culture of Kenya)
Image 11Mahamri/mandazi (Swahili doughnuts) served with miagna (cassava), cooked chickpeas and lentils, and chai (from Culture of Kenya)
Image 12Kenya demography (1961–2003) (from History of Kenya)
Image 13Mwai Kibaki and (the late) Mrs. Lucy Kibaki with US President George W. Bush and Mrs. Laura Bush at the White House during a state visit in 2003. (from History of Kenya)
Image 14Orange Democratic Movement leader Prime Minister Omolo Odinga speaking with the Kenyan media. (from History of Kenya)
Image 15BMJ, A US-based award-winning Kenyan actor. His role in South African Post Apartheid play 'Sizwe Bansi is Dead' by Arthol Fugard earned him the best actor award in Oslo, Norway. (from Culture of Kenya)
Image 16The Diocese of Mombasa (from Culture of Kenya)
Image 171911 map (from History of Kenya)
Image 18President Daniel arap Moi in 1979 (from History of Kenya)