At 5,199 m, Mount Kenya is the second highest peak in Africa (second only to Tanzania’s Mount Kilimanjaro) and is an ancient extinct volcano.
There are 12 remnant glaciers on the mountain, all receding rapidly, and four secondary peaks that sit at the head of the U-shaped glacial valleys.
Kenya is named after Mountain Kenya.
The Kikuyu tribe refer to it as Kirinyaga meaning “Mountain of Whiteness” .
The mountain peak was always filled with snow which made the indigens call it so. In an attempt to pronounce Kirinyaga, British colonialists called it Kenya.
But Who are The Kikuyu ?
The Kikuyu (also known as Agikuyu) are a central Bantu community.
They share common ancestry with the Embu, Kamba, Tharaka, Meru and Mbeere.
Traditionally they inhabited the area around Mount Kenya, including the following counties: Murang’a, Nyeri, Kiambuu, Nyandarua, Kirinyaga and Nakuru.
The Kikuyu arrived during a series of migrations from northwestern and western Africa.
These groups of people called the Thagicu gradually moved farther south and settled in the central part of the nation in what is referred to as Kikuyuland, just north of modern-day Nairobi in the Central Highlands and in the foothills of Mount Kenya.
They blended with local populations in the area of Mount Kenya.
The early Kikuyu people were agriculturalists, kept domestic cattle, and were skilled metallurgists.
They traded with other tribes but were warlike and did not form any strong alliances or friendships with people outside of their tribe.
In fact, they often raided traders traveling through their territory, as well as other groups living nearby.
Colonization of the region by the British Empire began in earnest in 1895, and by 1920, the land the Kikuyu tribe lived on was a part of the newly founded colony of Kenya.
Just four years after Kenya became a colony of Great Britain, the Kikuyu founded the Kikuyu Central Association (KCA) to push back against colonialism.
The British colonists, at the time, had monopolized natural resources in the highland, displacing the Kikuyu tribe.
The British, fearing the association’s influence, outlawed the organization.
Kikuyu people are the most populous ethnic group in Kenya accounting for about 17.1% of the total population of the country — with a population of 8,148 668 as of 2019.
They are considered the most economically and politically powerful ethnic group in the country.
During the 17th — 19th century, each extended family in the Kikuyu tribe lived in homesteads and their men were allowed as many wives as they please but the wives lived in separate Huts and would only come together for sexual intercourse.
The Kikuyu people are a monotheistic tribe as they worship a supreme God Called Mwene-Ngai, whom they believe reside on Mount Kenya.
According to Kikuyu legend, Ngai (the Creator) settled in Mount Kenya after creating the universe.
He created the first man named Gikuyu and the first woman Mumbi and gave them the land at southwest of Mount Kenya.
He then built them a homestead at a place called Mukure wa Nyagathanga near Murungu — a place filled with fig trees and is now considered a Holy ground and place of worship for the Kikuyu people to date.
Ngai blessed Gikuyu and Mumbi with nine daughters and when the girls came of age, they had the responsibility to expand the family but since there were no men on earth (besides their father) at the time, they pleaded with their father to pray to Ngai to give them husbands.
Gikuyu then prayed and offered several sacrifices to Ngai on behalf of his nine daughters.
The next day, nine men mysteriously appeared from the mugumo tree (fig tree) and married the nine daughters — They became the ancestors of the nine clans of the Kikuyu tribe.
Today the Kikuyu descendants spread across Mount Kenya.
Over the years, the Kikuyu people have managed to maintain a good relationship with their neighboring tribe The Massai.(will talk about them in a special post)
They exchanged their gourds for Massai’s containers, and iron weapons for leather, and by the 18th century when the Massai tribe expanded, the Kikuyu tribe adopted their fighting strategies as well as their arsenal, making them a formidable force in the Kenya Highlands.
From 1898 to 1963, the Kikuyu tribe endured oppression by the British colonists.
They were displaced from their land to make room for European settlers.
In an attempt to regain freedom, in 1924, the Kikuyu Central Association was established.
The association launched a nationalist agenda putting the Kikuyu tribe at the forefront of African Nationalism in Kenya but was later banned by the British, in 1944.
The same year, the Kenyan African Union was created.
In 1947 under the leadership of Jomo Kenyatta — a man from the Kikuyu tribe, the KAU organized several peaceful protests requesting independence but their approach seemed ineffective to their cause.
Then, in 1952, they employed a more aggressive approach which led to the arrest of several of their leaders — including Jomo Kenyatta.
In reaction to the incident, the Mau Mau Rebellion was formed.
The ancestry of Kenya’s modern population began over 1,000 years ago with the migration of tribes into the country’s fertile heartland.
Of the people who migrated into the region, four distinct language groups were established, the Bantu, Cushitic, and Paranilotic, Nilotic who still exist in Kenya today.
The indigenous peoples in Kenya include hunter-gatherers such as the Ogiek, Sengwer, Yaaku Waata and Sanya, while pastoralists include the Endorois, Turkana, Maasai, Samburu and others.
According to archeological evidence and oral tradition, around 2000 BC, Cushitic-speaking people from northern Africa settled in the part of East Africa that is now Kenya.
By the 1st Century AD, the Kenyan coast (the indian ocean) was frequented by Arab traders, who due to Kenya’s proximity to the Arabian Peninsula, established Arab and Persian colonies there.
The Nilotic and Bantu people also moved into the region during the first millennium AD. and settled inland.
Evolving from a mixture of Bantu and Arabic, the Swahili language then developed as a lingua franca for trade between the different peoples.
When the Portuguese arrived in 1498, the Arab dominance on the coast was clipped, as the Port of Mombasa became an important resupply stop for ships bound for the Far East.
The Portuguese gave way in turn to Islamic control under the Imam of Oman in the 1600s until another European influence came along, this time from the United Kingdom during the 19th century.
The roots of the colonial history of Kenya dates back to the Berlin Conference in 1885, when East Africa was first divided into territories of influence by the European powers.
The British Government founded the East African Protectorate in 1895 and soon after, opened the fertile highlands to white settlers.
Even before it was officially declared a British colony in 1920, these settlers were allowed a voice in government, while the Africans and the Asians were banned from direct political participation until 1944.
During this period thousands of Indians were brought into Kenya to work on building the Kenya Uganda Railway Line and subsequently settled there, whilst inviting many of their kith and kin who were mainly traders from India to join them.
In 1942, members of the Kikuyu, Embu, Meru and Kamba tribes took an oath of unity and secrecy to fight for freedom from British rule.
The famous Mau Mau Movement began with that oath and Kenya embarked on its long hard road to National Sovereignty.
In 1953, Jomo Kenyatta was charged with directing the Mau Mau and sentenced to 7 years imprisonment (like Nelson Mandela of Apartheid South Africa).
Another freedom fighter Dedan Kimathi was arrested in 1956 for his role in the Mau Mau uprising as one of the leaders of the struggle for independence and was subsequently hanged by the colonialists. Kenya was put under a state of emergency from October 1952 to December 1959, due to the Mau Mau rebellion against British colonial rule and thousands of Kenyans were incarcerated in detention camps.
During this period, African participation in the political process increased rapidly and in 1954 all three races (European, Asian and African) were admitted into the Kenya Legislative Council on a representative basis.
1957, the first direct elections for Africans to the Legislative Council took place and those elected increased the people’s agitation for Jomo Kenyatta’s release from detention.
In 1962 Kenyatta was released to become Kenya’s first Prime Minister, when Kenya finally gained independence on December 12, 1963.
The following year, Kenya became a Republic with Kenyatta as its first President.
In the same year Kenya joined the British Commonwealth.
In 1966, a small but significant leftist opposition party, the Kenya People’s Union (KPU), was formed by Jaramogi Oginga Odinga, a former Vice President and Luo elder.
KPU was banned shortly thereafter and its leader arrested in 1969 and Kenya became a “de facto” single party state (like Kwame Nkrumah’s Ghana).
Following Kenyatta’s death in August 1978, Vice President Daniel Arap Moi succeeded him as Kenya’s second President.
In June 1982, Kenya was officially declared a one party state by the National Assembly and the constitution was amended accordingly.
Parliamentary elections were held in September 1983 under a single party for the first time and the 1988 elections reinforced the one party system.
However, in December 1991, Parliament annulled the one party section of the constitution.
A diversity of new parties were formed in early 1992 and in December of that year, multiparty democracy was restored and elections were held with several parties participating.
Because of divisions in the opposition, Moi was re-elected for another 5-year term, and his KANU party retained a majority in the legislature.
Due to parliamentary reforms in November 1997, political rights were expanded, which led to an explosion in the number of political parties.
Again, Moi won re-election as President in the December 1997 elections, because of a divided opposition.
KANU won 113 out of 222 parliamentary seats, but, because of defections, had to depend on the support of minor parties to forge a working majority.
October 2002, the National Rainbow Coalition (NARC) was formed, emerging from a unification of opposition parties together with a faction, which broke away from KANU.
Mwai Kibaki, the NARC candidate, was elected as the country’s third President in December 2002.
President Kibaki received 62 percent of the vote, and NARC garnered 130 out of 222 parliamentary seats (59 percent of seats).
During Kibaki’s first time in office, democratic space was opened up even more and coalition politics took root.
Kenya held its Tenth General Election on the 27th of December 2007.
A dispute that followed the announcement of the result by the Electoral Commission of Kenya (ECK) unfortunately degenerated into an unprecedented seven-week long spate of violence in some parts of the country, leading to loss of lives, dislocation of some citizens, destruction of property and general disruption of social and economic life.
The former Secretary General of the United Nations His Excellency Mr. Koffi Annan (from Dr. Kwame Nkrumah’s Ghana) with the assistance of eminent persons from across the African continent including H.E. President Jakaya Kikwete, Chairman of the African Union and President of Tanzania, H.E. Mrs. Graca Machel, His Excellency Mr. Benjamin Mkapa and His Excellency Mr. Joachim Chisano, helped broker a reconciliation between H.E. President Mwai Kibaki and his main contender Hon. Raila Odinga leading to the signing of the National Accord and Reconciliation Agreement, thus paving the way for the restoration of peace and security in the country and a return to normalcy in the affected regions.
The Agreement, included a fundamental change in the Government structure to introduce the post of Prime Minister, with two Deputy Premiers and the formation of a Grand Coalition between the President’s party of National Unity and Hon.Odinga’s Orange Democratic Movement Party.
Following the agreement, H.E. the President and the Prime Minister Designate appointed a National Accord Implementation Committee to prepare a program of action for the Grand Coalition Government (GCG), synchronize the manifestos of the coalition parties and identify short, medium and long term policies for implementation by the GCG.
The Committee established a reconciliation and building program covering the entire country with activities cascaded down to all districts and constituencies and involved the Private Sector, Civil Society, Media, Community Based Organizations, Sports Personalities and Faith Based Organizations in the National Emergency Recovery Strategy.
parallel to this, three important Bodies were established: The Truth Justice and Reconciliation Commission, The Commission of Enquiry on Post-Election Violence and Independent Review Committee on the 2007 Elections.
Through these Bodies truth, reconciliation and healing will be brought to Kenya and its people.
The parties also agreed on a process and roadmap for comprehensive constitutional reform, which will strengthen the institutions of Governance and address the long term differences that contributed to the violence.
Through implementation of the National Accord and Reconciliation Agreement, the Grand Coalition Government embarked on the reconstruction of the economy and settlement of the affected people.
At that time, putting the economy back on its growth path and settlement of people affected by the crisis was top on agenda of the Grand Coalition Government.
President Mwai Kibaki served his second term in the Grand Coalition Government with Hon. Raila Odinga as the Prime Minister until March 2013 when Hon. Uhuru Muigai Kenyatta was elected as the fourth President of the Republic of Kenya with Hon. William Samoei Ruto as His Deputy. H.E President Uhuru Kenyatta and H.E Deputy President, William Samoei Ruto were re-elected on 26th October 2017 for their second term in office.
Why Foreigners Love KenyaÂ
Kenya is the most sought-after destination for the worlds best Safari experiences.
Kenya is famed for its scenic landscapes and vast wildlife preserves. Its Indian Ocean coast provided historically important ports by which goods from Arabian and Asian traders have entered the continent for many centuries.
Along that coast, which holds some of the finest beaches in Africa, are predominantly Muslim Swahili cities such as Mombasa, a historic centre that has contributed much to the musical and culinary heritage of the country.
Inland are populous highlands famed for both their tea plantations, an economic staple during the British colonial era, and their variety of animal species, including lions, elephants, cheetahs, rhinoceroses, and hippopotamuses.
Kenya’s western provinces, marked by lakes and rivers, are forested, while a small portion of the north is desert and semidesert.
The country’s diverse wildlife and panoramic geography draw large numbers of European and North American visitors making tourism an important contributor to Kenya’s economy.
