Kenya – from the cradle of humankind to an independent republic
The region of present-day Kenya is among the places where humanity's earliest ancestors lived; fossil finds around Lake Turkana are among the most important in the study of human origins. Over thousands of years, Cushitic, Nilotic and Bantu-speaking peoples settled the land and developed farming and herding societies.
From the first millennium AD, trading towns grew up along the coast, where contact with Arab, Persian and Indian merchants helped to create the Swahili culture, with cities such as Mombasa, Malindi and Lamu. The Portuguese arrived around 1500 and controlled parts of the coast for about two centuries before being driven out by Omani Arabs.
In the late nineteenth century Britain declared a protectorate, which later became the Colony of Kenya. The Uganda Railway opened up the interior, and European settlers took over fertile land in the highlands, displacing many Africans. Resistance culminated in the Mau Mau uprising of the 1950s, which the colonial authorities suppressed with great brutality, including mass detention camps. Kenya gained independence in 1963 and became a republic the following year, with Jomo Kenyatta as its first president. A long period of one-party rule was followed by the return of multi-party politics in the early 1990s. The violence after the 2007 elections was a deep shock, and a new constitution was adopted in 2010.
Today Kenya is shaped by its great ethnic diversity, its famous wildlife and landscapes, and a dynamic, innovative economy centred on Nairobi.
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