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Portal:Kenya

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Kenya portal
Kenya portal

Introduction

Location of Kenya
The flag of Kenya

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...)


Geographic-administrative extent of Swahili. Dark: native range (the Swahili coast). Medium green: Spoken by a majority alongside indigenous languages. Light green: Spoken by a minority.

Swahili, also known as Kiswahili, is a Bantu language originally spoken by the Swahili people, who are found primarily in Tanzania, Kenya, and Mozambique (along the East African coast and adjacent littoral islands). Estimates of the number of Swahili speakers, including both native and second-language speakers, vary widely. They generally range from 150 million to 200 million; with most of its native speakers residing in Tanzania and Kenya.

Swahili has a significant number of loanwords from other languages, mainly Arabic, as well as from Portuguese, English and German. Around 40% of Swahili vocabulary consists of Arabic loanwords, including the name of the language (سَوَاحِلي sawāḥilī, a plural adjectival form of an Arabic word meaning 'of the coasts'). The loanwords date from the era of contact between Arab traders and the Bantu inhabitants of the east coast of Africa, which was also the time period when Swahili emerged as a lingua franca in the region. (Full article...)

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Boats in Malindi
Boats in Malindi
Sunset with boats in Malindi, Kilifi County, Kenya.

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Boats in Malindi

Malindi is currently the 15th largest town in Kenya and the 2nd largest town in Kenya's coastal region. It is located in Kilifi County. (Read more...)

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

Kenya Airways Ltd., more commonly known as Kenya Airways, is the flag carrier airline of Kenya. The company was founded in 1977, after the dissolution of East African Airways. Its head office is located in Embakasi, Nairobi, with its hub at Jomo Kenyatta International Airport.

The airline was owned by the Government of Kenya until April 1995, and was privatised in 1996, becoming the first African flag carrier to successfully do so. Kenya Airways is currently a public-private partnership. The largest shareholder is the Government of Kenya (48.9%), with 38.1% being owned by KQ Lenders Company 2017 Ltd (in turn owned by a consortium of banks), followed by KLM, which has a 7.8% stake in the company. Private owners hold the rest of the shares; shares are traded on the Nairobi Stock Exchange, the Dar es Salaam Stock Exchange, and the Uganda Securities Exchange. (Full article...)

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Dedan Kìmathi Waciūri (born Kìmathi Waciūri) 31 October 1920 – 18 February 1957) was the leader of the Kenya Land and Freedom Army during the Mau Mau Uprising (1952–1960) against the British colonial rule in Kenya in the 1950s. He was captured by the British in 1956 and executed in 1957. Kenya gained independence in 1963. Kìmathi, is credited with leading efforts to create formal military structures within the Mau Mau, and convening a war council in 1953. He, along with Baimungi M'marete, Musa Mwariama, Kubu Kubu, General China and Mūthoni Kīrīma, was one of the Field Marshals.

Kenyan nationalists view him as a freedom fighter in the Kenyan struggle for independence, while the British colonial authorities labeled Kìmathi as a terrorist, and according to historian David Anderson "did all they could to besmirch his reputation." Despite being viewed negatively by Kenya's first two presidents, Jomo Kenyatta and Daniel arap Moi, Kìmathi and his fellow Mau Mau rebels were officially recognised as heroes in the struggle for Kenyan independence under the Mwai Kibaki administration, culminating in the unveiling of a Kìmathi statue in 2007. This was reinforced by the passage of a new Constitution in 2010 calling for recognition of national heroes. (Full article...)

Did you know (auto-generated) - load new batch

  • ... that squatters were one of the groups that started the Mau Mau rebellion?
  • ... that Kenya Grace shot her first music video after becoming a finalist in a competition?
  • ... that Gloria Orwoba raised awareness about period poverty by appearing in the Senate of Kenya in apparently blood-stained trousers?
  • ... that Anthony Vaz was the first flag bearer and team captain for Kenya at the Olympics?
  • ... that KOKO Networks has used more than $100 million in carbon financing to subsidise cooking fuels in Kenya?
  • ... 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?

In the news

Wikinews Kenya portal
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28 October 2025 – Mombasa Air Safari Flight 203
A Mombasa Air Safari-operated Cessna 208 Caravan aircraft carrying foreign tourists from Hungary and Germany crashes near Kwale, Kenya, killing all 11 people on board. (AP)
16 October 2025 – Death and state funeral of Raila Odinga
Four people are killed when police open fire to crowd control tens of thousands of people mourning opposition leader and former prime minister Raila Odinga, as his body arrives at Jomo Kenyatta International Airport in Nairobi, Kenya. (DW) (Reuters)
16 September 2025 – Murder of Agnes Wanjiru
Kenya's Magistrates' Court issues an arrest warrant and seeks the extradition of a British citizen over the 2012 murder of Kenyan woman Agnes Wanjiru near a British army training camp in Nanyuki, Laikipia County. (Reuters)
31 August 2025 –
Two people are killed and eight Kenyan police officers are injured in an accident involving two armored vehicles in the Port-au-Prince Arrondissement, Haiti. (AP)
21 August 2025 – Shakahola Forest incident
Five bodies and ten body parts are recovered and 27 suspected mass graves are discovered at the site of the Good News International Ministries religious cult mass-murder suicide at the Shakahola Forest in Kenya, where over 400 bodies were recovered two years ago. (CTV News)
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)

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