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Economy
For many centuries Kenya traded with merchants from Arabia and parts of Asia. Today Kenya exports to its neighbouring countries (Tanzania, Uganda, Sudan, Ethiopia, Somalia) which are linked by air, road and rail.
Other trading partners include the United Kingdom in specific and the EU in general, Egypt, Pakistan and the United States.
The agricultural sector provides a livelihood for seventy-five percent of the population earning 16.3% of the Gross Domestic Product (GDP). Agricultural products include sugarcane, tea, coffee, wheat, maize, fruit and vegetables. Livestock is kept.
The industrial sector earns 18.8% of the GDP. Industries are oil refining, aluminum, lead, steel, cement, commercial ship repair, plastics, furniture, textiles, soap, cigarettes and food processing.
The abundance of wildlife has fuelled the tourist industry making tourism Kenya's largest foreign currency earner.
History
The first of many human footprints to be stamped on Kenyan soil were left way back in 2000 BC by nomadic Cushitic tribes from Ethiopia. A second group followed around 1000 BC and occupied much of central Kenya. The rest of the ancestors of the country's medley of tribes arrived from all over the continent between 500 BC and AD 500. The Bantu-speaking people (such as the Gusii, Kikuyu, Akamba and Meru) arrived from West Africa while the Nilotic speakers (Maasai, Luo, Samburu and Turkana) came from the Nile Valley in southern Sudan. As tribes migrated throughout the interior, Muslims from the Arabian Peninsula and Shirazis from Persia (now Iran) settled along the East African coast from the 8th century AD onwards. Many fossils have been found around Olorgasailie and Lake Turkana.
The East African coast has been a centre of trade since early times. Exports included ivory, tortoiseshell and slaves. Over the centuries Arab merchants had a strong influence on the coastal towns and some architecture in Lamu and Mombasa are a present reminder of this fact.
At the end of fifteenth century, the Portuguese explorer, Vasco da Gama, landed in Kenya. The Portuguese tried to gain control of the Kenyan coast but were eventually driven off by the Swahili and Omani Arab states in 1720.
In the 1880s Africa was divided between European countries. The British East African Protectorate was established in 1895; a railway system between Mombasa and Uganda was built opening up the country for colonisation. The halfway point of this railway is roughly where Nairobi stands today.
Four years before the First World War (1914-18) coffee growing began on a large scale. After the War, the Soldier Settlement scheme gave land in the highlands to British ex-soldiers fuelling further resentment among Kenyans. This resentment increased as Kenya became a British Colony in 1920.
The Great Depression of the 1930s (starting with the 1929 Wall Street Crash in the USA) caused economic problems in Kenya. At the end of the 1930s the Second World War began and Abbysinia (Italian-occupied Ethiopia) declared war on Kenya. Kenyans fought with the King's African Rifles contributing towards the success of the Allied army in Africa.
In 1952 the rise of Kenyan nationalism including the activities of the Mau Mau (an underground military movement opposed to British rule) led to a State of Emergency. Many Kenyans were imprisoned; political leaders arrested and Dedan Kimathi, a Kenyan army commander, was executed.
Kenya finally achieved independence in 1963 and liberation struggle icon Jomo Kenyatta became the Republic's first President. By the end of the 1960s the new government's ‘Africanisation’ policy led to many of the Asian population leaving Kenya. Jomo Kenyatta led Kenya from independence until his death in 1978, when President Daniel Toroitich arap Moi took power in a constitutional succession.
The country was a de facto one-party state from 1969 until 1982 when the ruling Kenya African National Union (KANU) made itself the sole legal party in Kenya.
Moi acceded to internal and external pressure for political liberalization in late 1991. The ethnically fractured opposition failed to dislodge KANU from power in elections in 1992 and 1997, which were marred by violence and fraud, but are viewed as having generally reflected the will of the Kenyan people.
President Moi stepped down in December of 2002 following fair and peaceful elections. Mwai Kibaki, running as the candidate of the multiethnic, united opposition group, the National Rainbow Coalition, defeated KANU candidate Uhuru Kenyatta and assumed the presidency following a campaign centered on an anticorruption platform.
 Natural Environment
People & Culture
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