Kenya

Kenya is an East African country on the Indian Ocean, bordered by Tanzania, Uganda, South Sudan, Ethiopia and Somalia. It takes its name from Mount Kenya, its highest peak at 5,199 m (17,057 ft).

Nairobi is the capital, and English and Swahili are the two official languages. Fossils from Koobi Fora and Lake Turkana, among them the Turkana Boy found in 1984, record some of the earliest humans. Cushitic herders settled the lowlands between 3,200 and 1,300 BC, Nilotic peoples came from about 500 BC and Bantu farmers between 250 BC and 500 AD. Coastal towns such as Mombasa and Malindi traded with Arabia, Persia and India, and Swahili spread as a shared language of commerce. Portuguese ships reached the coast in 1500.

Britain declared a protectorate in 1895, with Mombasa as its capital until 1907, and in 1920 the interior became the Kenya Colony. Kenya gained independence on 12 December 1963 and became a republic exactly a year later, with Jomo Kenyatta as its first president. Voters approved a new constitution in a referendum in August 2010. It made Kenya a presidential republic, with the president leading the state as well as the government, and handed many powers to 47 counties led by governors. The land rises from the coastal plains to central highlands cut by the Great Rift Valley, and the country covers 580,367 km2 (224,081 sq mi).

Farming is the largest sector: tea and coffee are the traditional cash crops, and cut flowers are a newer export. Tourism rests on photo safaris in parks such as Tsavo and the Masai Mara, where wildebeest migrate between June and September. Geothermal plants, including Olkaria near Nairobi, produce the biggest share of electricity, and Safaricom and Vodafone launched the mobile money service M-Pesa in 2007. Kipchoge Keino started a long line of Olympic distance champions in the 1970s, later followed by Eliud Kipchoge in the marathon. Ngũgĩ wa Thiong'o is among its writers, and benga music has been played around Lake Victoria since the late 1960s.