Timeline On This Day All Stories

The story of Kenya,
told as it deserves to be

From the first stone tools in the Rift Valley 3.3 million years ago to the Gen Z protests of 2024. 150 stories. One nation. Centuries of memory.

150 stories across 6 eras of Kenyan history

Visual Timeline

Scroll through Kenyan history. Click any event to read the full story.

c. 3.3 Million Years Ago The First Hands in the Rift Valley People
Pre-Colonial
The First Hands in the Rift Valley
Long before Kenya was a name, before borders, before language as we know it, hands were shaping stone in the Rift Valley. At a site that would one day be...
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c. 1.5 Million Years Ago Turkana Boy: A Child Who Shook the World People
Pre-Colonial
Turkana Boy: A Child Who Shook the World
In 1984, on the western shores of Lake Turkana, a team led by Richard Leakey made the most complete early human skeleton ever found. They called him Turkana...
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c. 2000 BC The Cushites Arrive from the North People
Pre-Colonial
The Cushites Arrive from the North
They came from the highlands of what is now Ethiopia, moving south in search of grazing land and water. The Cushitic-speaking people were the first farming and...
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c. 1000 BC - 500 AD The Bantu Come with Iron and Seed People
Pre-Colonial
The Bantu Come with Iron and Seed
They walked from West and Central Africa in one of the great human migrations of all time. The Bantu-speaking peoples crossed forests, rivers and mountains,...
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c. 1st Century AD The Coast Opens for Business Economy
Pre-Colonial
The Coast Opens for Business
Arab and Persian sailors had known about the East African coast for centuries. The monsoon winds made the journey almost effortless. By the first century AD,...
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c. 800-1400 AD The Golden Age of the Swahili Coast Economy
Pre-Colonial
The Golden Age of the Swahili Coast
For six hundred years, the Swahili city-states of the East African coast enjoyed a golden age that the world has largely forgotten. Cities like Gedi, Malindi,...
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c. 1400 AD The Nilotes Shape the Interior People
Pre-Colonial
The Nilotes Shape the Interior
While the coast traded with the world, the interior of Kenya was being shaped by another great migration. The Nilotic peoples, moving south from the Nile...
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1498 Christianity Arrives with Vasco da Gama Religion
Coastal Trade
Christianity Arrives with Vasco da Gama
When Vasco da Gama sailed into Malindi in 1498, he carried more than a flag and cannons. He carried Christianity, and the Portuguese were determined to spread...
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c. 1498 Vasco da Gama Arrives and the Coast Will Never Be the Same War
Pre-Colonial
Vasco da Gama Arrives and the Coast Will Never Be the Same
In April 1498, three Portuguese ships appeared on the horizon off Malindi. Their captain was Vasco da Gama. He was the first European to sail to India around...
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1500 The Portuguese Sack Mombasa War
Coastal Trade
The Portuguese Sack Mombasa
The Portuguese did not ask for trade partnerships. They came with warships and demanded submission. In 1500, they attacked and sacked Mombasa, burning parts of...
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c. 1500 AD The Wanga Kingdom: Kenya's Most Powerful Pre-Colonial State Politics
Pre-Colonial
The Wanga Kingdom: Kenya's Most Powerful Pre-Colonial State
In the western highlands near what would become Mumias, a kingdom was taking shape. The Wanga Kingdom, led by rulers called Nabongo, was unlike most Kenyan...
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1593 Fort Jesus: Built to Dominate, Destined to Change Hands Culture
Coastal Trade
Fort Jesus: Built to Dominate, Destined to Change Hands
The Portuguese needed a permanent base on the East African coast, something that would make their presence impossible to ignore or remove. In 1593, they began...
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1698 The Omanis Take Fort Jesus and End Portuguese Rule War
Coastal Trade
The Omanis Take Fort Jesus and End Portuguese Rule
For thirty-three months, a small Portuguese garrison held Fort Jesus against an Omani siege. They were surrounded by land and sea. Disease killed them faster...
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1700s The Slave Trade Tightens Its Grip on the Coast Economy
Coastal Trade
The Slave Trade Tightens Its Grip on the Coast
The East African coast had known slavery for centuries. But under Omani rule, the trade expanded to industrial scale. Enslaved people were captured in the...
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1824 The Mazrui Clan Asks Britain for Protection Politics
Coastal Trade
The Mazrui Clan Asks Britain for Protection
The Mazrui Arab clan that governed Mombasa on behalf of the Omani Sultan had grown tired of submitting to Oman. In 1824, they made a desperate and ultimately...
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1840s-1880s The Ivory Caravans: When Tusks Were More Valuable Than Lives People
Coastal Trade
The Ivory Caravans: When Tusks Were More Valuable Than Lives
From the 1840s onwards, long-distance trade caravans began pushing deep into the interior of what would become Kenya. Led by Swahili and Arab traders, the...
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1844 Johann Ludwig Krapf and the First Christian Mission in Kenya Religion
Colonial
Johann Ludwig Krapf and the First Christian Mission in Kenya
In 1844, Johann Ludwig Krapf, a German missionary working for the Church Missionary Society, established the first Christian mission station in what would...
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1846 The Rebmann Expedition: Europeans First See Mount Kenya People
Colonial
The Rebmann Expedition: Europeans First See Mount Kenya
In 1849, Johann Rebmann, a colleague of Krapf at the Rabai mission, became the first European to see Mount Kilimanjaro. The following year, Krapf became the...
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1885 The Berlin Conference: Africa Divided Without African Consent Politics
Colonial
The Berlin Conference: Africa Divided Without African Consent
In the winter of 1884-85, the major European powers gathered in Berlin to divide Africa among themselves. Not a single African was in the room. Kenya, which...
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1888 The Imperial British East Africa Company Takes Charge Politics
Colonial
The Imperial British East Africa Company Takes Charge
In 1888, the British government granted a royal charter to the Imperial British East Africa Company, a private commercial enterprise, to administer the...
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1890 Nabongo Mumia and the Fateful Alliance Politics
Colonial
Nabongo Mumia and the Fateful Alliance
When British Captain Frederick Lugard arrived in western Kenya in 1890, Nabongo Mumia of the Wanga Kingdom made a calculation. The British had guns. The Wanga...
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1890-1906 Koitalel Arap Samoei: The Nandi Prophet Who Would Not Bow War
Colonial
Koitalel Arap Samoei: The Nandi Prophet Who Would Not Bow
For sixteen years, the Nandi people of the western highlands resisted British colonial rule under the leadership of their spiritual and military leader,...
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1895-1901 The Lunatic Express: Building a Railway Through the Wild Economy
Colonial
The Lunatic Express: Building a Railway Through the Wild
They called it the Lunatic Express. A railway from Mombasa to Kisumu on Lake Victoria, 900 kilometres through desert, lion country, the Rift Valley and Maasai...
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1895 The British East Africa Protectorate is Declared Politics
Colonial
The British East Africa Protectorate is Declared
On 1 July 1895, the British government formally declared the East Africa Protectorate, taking over from the bankrupt Imperial British East Africa Company. A...
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1896 The Tsavo Man-Eaters: Terror on the Railway War
Colonial
The Tsavo Man-Eaters: Terror on the Railway
Between March and December 1898, two maneless male lions killed an unknown number of workers on the Uganda Railway construction site at Tsavo. The lions...
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1899 Nairobi: A City Born from a Railway Camp Economy
Colonial
Nairobi: A City Born from a Railway Camp
In 1899, a railway camp was set up in the middle of a swampy plain that the Maasai called Enkare Nyirobi, cool water. There was nothing there. No strategic...
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1901 The Uganda Railway Reaches Kisumu Economy
Colonial
The Uganda Railway Reaches Kisumu
On 19 December 1901, the last spike was driven into the Uganda Railway at Port Florence, later renamed Kisumu, on the shores of Lake Victoria. The railway had...
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1902-1940s The White Highlands: When Kenya's Best Land Was Stolen Politics
Colonial
The White Highlands: When Kenya's Best Land Was Stolen
The fertile highlands of central Kenya were among the most productive agricultural land in the world. They were also home to the Kikuyu, Kipsigis, Nandi and...
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1904 The Maasai Agreements: How a People Lost Half Their Land War
Colonial
The Maasai Agreements: How a People Lost Half Their Land
In 1904 and again in 1911, the British colonial government forced the Maasai people into two agreements that remain among the most controversial acts of...
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1907 Nairobi Becomes the Capital Politics
Colonial
Nairobi Becomes the Capital
In 1907, the British colonial administration moved its headquarters from Mombasa to Nairobi. It was a practical decision: Nairobi was more centrally located...
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1914-1918 World War One Comes to Kenya War
Colonial
World War One Comes to Kenya
When war broke out in Europe in 1914, it spilled immediately into Africa. German East Africa (now Tanzania) bordered British East Africa (Kenya), and the two...
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1915 The Crown Lands Ordinance: All Land Belongs to the Crown Politics
Colonial
The Crown Lands Ordinance: All Land Belongs to the Crown
In 1915, the British colonial government passed the Crown Lands Ordinance, declaring that all land in Kenya, including land occupied by Africans, was the...
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1920 Kenya Becomes a Crown Colony Politics
Colonial
Kenya Becomes a Crown Colony
In 1920, the East Africa Protectorate was formally renamed the Kenya Colony and Protectorate. It was more than a name change. It was a declaration of...
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1921 Harry Thuku and the First Mass Protest War
Colonial
Harry Thuku and the First Mass Protest
Harry Thuku was a young telephone operator in Nairobi who had read enough to understand what was being done to his people. In 1921 he founded the Young Kikuyu...
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1923 The Devonshire Declaration: Africans First Politics
Colonial
The Devonshire Declaration: Africans First
In 1923, the British government issued the Devonshire Declaration, a policy paper that declared that African interests in Kenya must be paramount over those of...
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1929 Jomo Kenyatta Goes to London to Fight for Kenya People
Colonial
Jomo Kenyatta Goes to London to Fight for Kenya
In 1929, a young Kikuyu man named Johnstone Kamau, who would later call himself Jomo Kenyatta, boarded a ship to London. He went to present the grievances of...
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1939-1945 Kenyan Soldiers Fight Britain's War War
Colonial
Kenyan Soldiers Fight Britain's War
When the Second World War began, tens of thousands of Kenyans were conscripted or volunteered to fight for Britain. They fought in Ethiopia, Somalia, Burma and...
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1944 The Kenya African Union: The First National Independence Movement Politics
Colonial
The Kenya African Union: The First National Independence Movement
In 1944, the Kenya African Union was founded, the first organisation that tried to represent Africans from all communities across Kenya in the struggle against...
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1945 Waruhiu Itote Becomes General China Politics
Colonial
Waruhiu Itote Becomes General China
Waruhiu Itote was a Kenya Army veteran of World War Two who had fought in Burma, Ethiopia and Ceylon for the British Empire. When he returned to Kenya, he...
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1952-1960 The Mau Mau: Kenya's Land and Freedom Army War
Colonial
The Mau Mau: Kenya's Land and Freedom Army
They called themselves the Kenya Land and Freedom Army. The British called them Mau Mau. They were primarily Kikuyu fighters, men and women who had watched...
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1952 The Oath of Unity: What Bound the Mau Mau People
Colonial
The Oath of Unity: What Bound the Mau Mau
The Mau Mau movement was not held together by an army command structure. It was held together by oaths. Administered in secret ceremonies, the oaths of the...
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October 1952 The State of Emergency: Britain Declares War on Its Own Colony War
Colonial
The State of Emergency: Britain Declares War on Its Own Colony
On 20 October 1952, the British colonial government declared a State of Emergency in Kenya. It was a response to the growing Mau Mau insurgency, an armed...
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1953 Jomo Kenyatta Sentenced to Seven Years Hard Labour Politics
Colonial
Jomo Kenyatta Sentenced to Seven Years Hard Labour
In April 1953, Jomo Kenyatta was convicted of managing the Mau Mau at a trial that many legal scholars have since condemned as a travesty of justice. The...
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1954 Operation Anvil: Nairobi Locked Down War
Colonial
Operation Anvil: Nairobi Locked Down
In April 1954, the British colonial government launched Operation Anvil, the largest security operation in the history of colonial Kenya. 25,000 soldiers and...
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1955 The Pipeline: Kenya's Network of Detention Camps War
Colonial
The Pipeline: Kenya's Network of Detention Camps
At the height of the Mau Mau crackdown, the British colonial government constructed what they called the Pipeline, a network of detention camps across Kenya...
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October 1956 Dedan Kimathi is Captured War
Colonial
Dedan Kimathi is Captured
He was the commander of the Mau Mau forces in the forests of the Aberdares, the most feared guerrilla fighter in Kenya. On 21 October 1956, Dedan Kimathi was...
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February 1957 The First African Elections in Kenya Politics
Colonial
The First African Elections in Kenya
In February 1957, Africans in Kenya were allowed to vote in elections for the first time. Eight seats in the Legislative Council were set aside for Africans,...
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1960 The Lancaster House Conference: Kenya Negotiates Its Future Politics
Independence
The Lancaster House Conference: Kenya Negotiates Its Future
In January 1960, representatives of Kenya's African, European and Asian communities gathered at Lancaster House in London to begin negotiating the framework...
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1960 KANU is Born: The Party That Would Win Freedom Politics
Independence
KANU is Born: The Party That Would Win Freedom
In May 1960, the Kenya African National Union was formed from a merger of several African political organisations. Its founding brought together Jomo Kenyatta,...
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1961 Kenyatta Released: The Man Who Would Not Be Broken Politics
Independence
Kenyatta Released: The Man Who Would Not Be Broken
In August 1961, Jomo Kenyatta was released from detention after nine years. He was 72 years old. The British had hoped that years of isolation on the northern...
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1963 The National Anthem: Words Written for a New Nation Culture
Independence
The National Anthem: Words Written for a New Nation
When Kenya needed a national anthem for independence, it turned to a prayer. Ee Mungu Nguvu Yetu, Oh God of All Creation, was written specifically for...
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1963 The Kenyan Flag: The Meaning Behind the Colours Culture
Independence
The Kenyan Flag: The Meaning Behind the Colours
When Kenya's flag was designed for independence in 1963, every colour carried weight. Black for the Kenyan people. Red for the blood shed in the struggle for...
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1963 Kenya at the Olympics for the First Time Sport
Independence
Kenya at the Olympics for the First Time
At the 1956 Melbourne Olympics, Kenya competed under the British flag. In 1964, at the Tokyo Olympics, Kenya competed for the first time as an independent...
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12 December 1963 Uhuru: The Midnight That Changed Everything Politics
Independence
Uhuru: The Midnight That Changed Everything
At the stroke of midnight on 12 December 1963, the Union Jack was lowered and the black, red and green flag of Kenya rose for the first time over Uhuru Park in...
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12 December 1964 Kenya Becomes a Republic Politics
Republic
Kenya Becomes a Republic
Exactly one year after independence, Kenya took the next step. The country was declared a Republic, severing the final constitutional link with the British...
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1966 The Central Bank of Kenya Opens Its Doors Economy
Republic
The Central Bank of Kenya Opens Its Doors
In 1966, the Central Bank of Kenya was established, giving the country its own monetary authority for the first time. Kenya left the East African Currency...
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1966 Harambee: The Spirit That Built Schools with Bare Hands Culture
Republic
Harambee: The Spirit That Built Schools with Bare Hands
When Jomo Kenyatta stood at independence and said Harambee, pull together, he was invoking a tradition that already existed in Kenyan communities. Harambee...
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1966 Odinga Breaks with Kenyatta: The First Great Rupture Politics
Republic
Odinga Breaks with Kenyatta: The First Great Rupture
Oginga Odinga had been one of the architects of Kenyan independence. He was Kenyatta's Vice President. But by 1966, the two men had become irreconcilable....
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1968 Kip Keino Stuns the World in Mexico City Sport
Republic
Kip Keino Stuns the World in Mexico City
At the 1968 Mexico City Olympics, Kipchoge Keino was suffering from a gallbladder infection so severe that he collapsed during one race. He ran the 1,500...
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5 July 1969 Tom Mboya is Shot Dead in Nairobi People
Republic
Tom Mboya is Shot Dead in Nairobi
Tom Mboya was 38 years old, charismatic, brilliant, internationally connected and widely seen as a future president of Kenya. On a Saturday morning in Nairobi,...
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1973 The Nairobi Stock Exchange: Capital Finds a Home Culture
Republic
The Nairobi Stock Exchange: Capital Finds a Home
The Nairobi Stock Exchange, now the Nairobi Securities Exchange, was founded in 1954 during the colonial era but came into its own after independence. By the...
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1974 Kiswahili Becomes an Official Language Culture
Republic
Kiswahili Becomes an Official Language
In 1974, Kenya made Kiswahili a co-official language alongside English. It was more than a policy change. It was a statement of identity. Kiswahili, which had...
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1975 JM Kariuki: The MP Who Spoke for the Poor Politics
Republic
JM Kariuki: The MP Who Spoke for the Poor
Josiah Mwangi Kariuki was a Member of Parliament who had survived the Mau Mau detention camps and emerged with a burning conviction that independence had not...
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1977 Ngugi wa Thiong'o Is Detained Without Trial Culture
Republic
Ngugi wa Thiong'o Is Detained Without Trial
Ngugi wa Thiong'o was already one of Africa's most celebrated writers when he made the decision that would land him in prison. His play Ngaahika Ndeenda,...
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1978 The Voice of Kenya: Radio as the Nation's Heartbeat Culture
Republic
The Voice of Kenya: Radio as the Nation's Heartbeat
For decades, the Voice of Kenya radio service was how most Kenyans experienced national life. Before television was widespread, before the internet, before...
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22 August 1978 Kenyatta Dies and Moi Rises Politics
Republic
Kenyatta Dies and Moi Rises
Jomo Kenyatta, the father of the nation, died on 22 August 1978 after fifteen years as Kenya's first and only president. He was old, infirm and had been ill...
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1979 The Nyayo Era Begins with a Smile and a Promise Politics
Republic
The Nyayo Era Begins with a Smile and a Promise
When Daniel arap Moi succeeded Kenyatta in 1978, he adopted a political philosophy he called Nyayo, meaning footsteps in Swahili. He would follow in Kenyatta's...
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1980s-1990s Benga Music: The Sound of Independent Kenya Culture
Republic
Benga Music: The Sound of Independent Kenya
In the years after independence, a new sound emerged from western Kenya and spread across the country. Benga music, with its distinctive guitar style, fast...
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1982 Section 2A: Kenya Becomes a One-Party State by Law Politics
Republic
Section 2A: Kenya Becomes a One-Party State by Law
In June 1982, the Kenyan parliament passed a constitutional amendment, Section 2A, declaring KANU the only legal political party in Kenya. It was not a coup....
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1982 Ngugi Writes a Novel on Toilet Paper People
Republic
Ngugi Writes a Novel on Toilet Paper
When Ngugi wa Thiong'o was detained without trial in Kamiti Maximum Security Prison in 1977-78, he had no paper. He used toilet paper. Scratching with a...
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1 August 1982 The Coup That Failed and the Freedoms That Were Lost War
Republic
The Coup That Failed and the Freedoms That Were Lost
At dawn on 1 August 1982, junior officers of the Kenya Air Force seized the radio station in Nairobi and announced that the government had been overthrown. The...
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1984 The Drought That Killed and the Communities That Survived Nature
Republic
The Drought That Killed and the Communities That Survived
In 1984, one of the worst droughts in living memory struck northern Kenya. The semi-arid regions of Turkana, Marsabit and Mandera were devastated. Cattle, the...
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1984 Turkana Boy: Kenya Gives the World Its Oldest Story People
Republic
Turkana Boy: Kenya Gives the World Its Oldest Story
In 1984, paleoanthropologist Richard Leakey and his team working at Nariokotome near Lake Turkana in northern Kenya found the most complete skeleton of an...
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1985 Nairobi Hosts the UN Women's Conference Culture
Republic
Nairobi Hosts the UN Women's Conference
In 1985, Nairobi hosted the World Conference to Review and Appraise the Achievements of the United Nations Decade for Women. 15,000 women from around the world...
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1986 Wangari Maathai Arrested at the Tree Planting People
Republic
Wangari Maathai Arrested at the Tree Planting
Wangari Maathai had been planting trees since 1977. By the mid-1980s, the Green Belt Movement she founded had planted millions of trees and organised thousands...
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1988 Queue Voting: When Democracy Became a Spectacle Politics
Republic
Queue Voting: When Democracy Became a Spectacle
In 1988, Kenya held elections under a system so designed for manipulation that it became a global byword for electoral fraud. Voters chose their candidates by...
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1988 John Ngugi Runs Into History at the Olympics Sport
Republic
John Ngugi Runs Into History at the Olympics
When John Ngugi won the 5,000 metres at the 1988 Seoul Olympics, he was completing a tradition that Kenya had been building since 1968, when Kip Keino had...
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1989 Wangari Maathai and the Trees That Defied Power People
Republic
Wangari Maathai and the Trees That Defied Power
When the government of Daniel arap Moi announced plans to build a 60-storey skyscraper in Uhuru Park, Nairobi's most beloved green space, Wangari Maathai stood...
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1990 Robert Ouko: The Minister Who Knew Too Much People
Modern
Robert Ouko: The Minister Who Knew Too Much
Dr. Robert Ouko was Kenya's Foreign Minister, brilliant, respected internationally, and increasingly uncomfortable with what he knew about corruption in the...
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1990 Richard Leakey and the Ivory Bonfire That Shocked the World People
Modern
Richard Leakey and the Ivory Bonfire That Shocked the World
On 18 July 1989, in front of television cameras from around the world, Kenyan Wildlife Service director Richard Leakey set fire to 12 tonnes of ivory...
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1991 The Forum for the Restoration of Democracy: Civil Society Fights Back People
Modern
The Forum for the Restoration of Democracy: Civil Society Fights Back
In 1990, a group of former politicians, lawyers and activists formed FORD, the Forum for the Restoration of Democracy, to campaign for the return of multiparty...
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3 December 1991 Moi Blinks: Multiparty Democracy Returns to Kenya Politics
Republic
Moi Blinks: Multiparty Democracy Returns to Kenya
For years, domestic activists and international donors had been demanding the return of multiparty democracy to Kenya. Moi resisted, called it a foreign...
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1992 The Saba Saba Riots: Kenyans Die for Democracy Politics
Modern
The Saba Saba Riots: Kenyans Die for Democracy
On 7 July 1990, a date that gives the event its name, Saba Saba meaning seven seven in Swahili, Kenyans took to the streets of Nairobi demanding the return of...
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1992 The Rift Valley Clashes: Ethnicity as a Political Weapon War
Modern
The Rift Valley Clashes: Ethnicity as a Political Weapon
In the months before Kenya's first multiparty elections in 1992, violence erupted in the Rift Valley. Communities that had lived together for decades turned on...
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1993 The Goldenberg Scandal: How Kenya Was Robbed Economy
Modern
The Goldenberg Scandal: How Kenya Was Robbed
In the early 1990s, a company called Goldenberg International defrauded the Kenyan government of over $600 million through a gold export compensation scheme...
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1993 The Kiswahili Bible: A Language Sacred Enough for Scripture Culture
Modern
The Kiswahili Bible: A Language Sacred Enough for Scripture
The translation of the Bible into Kiswahili, completed in various versions over the 19th and 20th centuries, was one of the most consequential acts of...
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1994 Ngugi wa Thiong'o: Writing in the Language of the People Culture
Modern
Ngugi wa Thiong'o: Writing in the Language of the People
Kenya's greatest living writer, Ngugi wa Thiong'o, made one of the most radical decisions in African literary history in 1977. He abandoned English, the...
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1994 Mobile Phones Change Kenya Before Anyone Realises Economy
Modern
Mobile Phones Change Kenya Before Anyone Realises
In 1994, Safaricom and Airtel (then Kencell) launched mobile phone services in Kenya. The phones were expensive, the networks were limited and subscribers were...
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1996 Daniel Komen Runs the Fastest 3000 Metres in History Sport
Modern
Daniel Komen Runs the Fastest 3000 Metres in History
Daniel Komen was 20 years old and largely unknown outside athletics when he broke the world record for 3,000 metres in Rieti, Italy in 1996. He ran the...
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7 August 1998 The Nairobi Bomb: A City Torn Apart in Seconds War
Modern
The Nairobi Bomb: A City Torn Apart in Seconds
At 10:30 in the morning of 7 August 1998, a truck bomb exploded outside the US Embassy in the centre of Nairobi. The blast killed 213 people, most of them...
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1999 The Floods That Swallowed the Rift Valley Nature
Modern
The Floods That Swallowed the Rift Valley
El Nino came to Kenya in 1997-98 with devastating force. The rains that fell were not ordinary rains. Roads were swept away. Bridges collapsed. The Rift Valley...
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c. 900 AD Mombasa Rises from the Coral Culture
Pre-Colonial
Mombasa Rises from the Coral
On an island of coral rock at the edge of the Indian Ocean, a city was being born. Mombasa, which Kenyan school history books place as founded around 900 AD,...
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2000 The Oldest Fossil in the World is Found in Kenya People
Modern
The Oldest Fossil in the World is Found in Kenya
In 2000, a team led by paleoanthropologist Brigitte Senut discovered a fossil in the Tugen Hills of the Baringo district that they named Orrorin tugenensis....
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c. 700 AD Islam Comes to the Kenyan Coast Religion
Pre-Colonial
Islam Comes to the Kenyan Coast
Around the 7th and 8th centuries AD, as Arab merchants began settling along the East African coast, they brought with them the religion that had swept the...
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2002 Kenya at the World Cup: A Nation United Sport
Modern
Kenya at the World Cup: A Nation United
While Kenya has never qualified for the FIFA World Cup in football, the country's athletics dominance on the global stage has produced moments of extraordinary...
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November 2002 The Paradise Hotel Bombing: Terror Strikes the Coast War
Modern
The Paradise Hotel Bombing: Terror Strikes the Coast
On 28 November 2002, suicide bombers attacked the Paradise Hotel near Mombasa, a destination popular with Israeli tourists. Sixteen people died. Minutes...
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27 December 2002 The Day Kenya Finally Voted KANU Out Politics
Modern
The Day Kenya Finally Voted KANU Out
For 39 years, the Kenya African National Union had governed Kenya. It had won independence, built the nation and then gradually hollowed out its institutions....
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2003 Free Primary Education: A Million Children Return to School Economy
Modern
Free Primary Education: A Million Children Return to School
When Mwai Kibaki took office in January 2003, one of his first acts was to abolish school fees for primary education. The effect was immediate and...
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2003 The Narc Government and the Promise That Was Not Kept People
Modern
The Narc Government and the Promise That Was Not Kept
When Mwai Kibaki won the 2002 election, he signed a Memorandum of Understanding with Raila Odinga and the Liberal Democratic Party that promised to share power...
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2004 Wangari Maathai Wins the Nobel Peace Prize People
Modern
Wangari Maathai Wins the Nobel Peace Prize
On 8 October 2004, the Norwegian Nobel Committee announced that the Peace Prize was going to Wangari Maathai of Kenya. She was the first African woman to...
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2004 Kenyans Run Boston, New York, London: The Marathon Takeover People
Modern
Kenyans Run Boston, New York, London: The Marathon Takeover
By the mid-2000s, Kenyan athletes had done something that seemed statistically impossible. They were winning not just the world's major marathons, but...
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2005 The Rejected Constitution: When Kenyans Said No Politics
Modern
The Rejected Constitution: When Kenyans Said No
In November 2005, Kenyans voted on a new draft constitution. The government of Mwai Kibaki, which had come to power on a promise of constitutional reform,...
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March 2007 M-Pesa Launches and Changes Money Forever Economy
Modern
M-Pesa Launches and Changes Money Forever
In March 2007, Safaricom launched a mobile money service called M-Pesa. The idea was simple: let people send money using their phones without needing a bank...
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2007 Uchumi Supermarkets: Rise, Fall and Resurrection Economy
Modern
Uchumi Supermarkets: Rise, Fall and Resurrection
Uchumi Supermarkets was founded in 1975 as a government-supported retail chain designed to bring modern shopping to ordinary Kenyans. For decades it was a...
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2007 Vision 2030: Kenya Plans Its Future Economy
Modern
Vision 2030: Kenya Plans Its Future
In 2007, the Kibaki government launched Vision 2030, a long-term development blueprint intended to transform Kenya into a middle-income country by 2030. The...
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December 2007 - February 2008 The Crisis That Nearly Broke Kenya War
Modern
The Crisis That Nearly Broke Kenya
On 27 December 2007, Kenya held a presidential election. On 30 December, the Electoral Commission announced Mwai Kibaki the winner by a narrow margin. Raila...
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2008 Kofi Annan Saves Kenya From Itself Politics
Modern
Kofi Annan Saves Kenya From Itself
In February 2008, as post-election violence raged across Kenya and the death toll climbed past a thousand, former UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan arrived in...
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2008 Obama Wins: Kenya Celebrates a Son of Its Soil Culture
Modern
Obama Wins: Kenya Celebrates a Son of Its Soil
On 4 November 2008, Barack Obama was elected the 44th President of the United States and the first Black man to hold the office. His father, Barack Obama...
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2009 Equity Bank: Banking the Unbanked Economy
Modern
Equity Bank: Banking the Unbanked
In 2009, Equity Bank became the largest bank in Kenya by number of accounts, overtaking the long-established commercial banks that had served mainly the...
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2010 The Standard Gauge Railway Dream Begins Economy
Modern
The Standard Gauge Railway Dream Begins
When Kenya announced plans to build a new Standard Gauge Railway from Mombasa to Nairobi, connecting the port to the capital in four hours instead of twelve,...
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2010 The Kenyan Marathon Runners Who Trained the World People
Modern
The Kenyan Marathon Runners Who Trained the World
By 2010, Iten, a small town perched at 2,400 metres in the Rift Valley highlands, had become one of the most famous training venues in the world. Runners from...
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2010 The Kenyan Film Industry Finds Its Voice Culture
Modern
The Kenyan Film Industry Finds Its Voice
By 2010, a new generation of Kenyan filmmakers was making films that did not apologise for being Kenyan. Productions like Nairobi Half Life, which became the...
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27 August 2010 A New Constitution: Kenya Tries to Heal Itself Politics
Modern
A New Constitution: Kenya Tries to Heal Itself
On 27 August 2010, Kenyans approved a new constitution by 68 percent of the vote. It was the culmination of years of negotiation, false starts, a rejected...
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2011 Wangari Maathai Dies: Kenya Loses Its Green Heart People
Modern
Wangari Maathai Dies: Kenya Loses Its Green Heart
On 25 September 2011, Wangari Maathai died of ovarian cancer in Nairobi. She was 71 years old. She had lived long enough to see herself go from being called a...
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2012 Kenya Discovers Oil in Turkana Economy
Modern
Kenya Discovers Oil in Turkana
In 2012, Tullow Oil announced the discovery of commercially viable oil deposits in Turkana County in northern Kenya. The announcement triggered enormous...
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2013 Uhuru Kenyatta Elected While Facing ICC Charges Politics
Modern
Uhuru Kenyatta Elected While Facing ICC Charges
On 4 March 2013, Uhuru Kenyatta was elected President of Kenya by 50.07 percent of the vote, just enough to avoid a runoff. He was facing charges at the...
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2013 Nairobi Half Life: Kenya Tells Its Own Story Culture
Modern
Nairobi Half Life: Kenya Tells Its Own Story
When Nairobi Half Life was submitted as Kenya's entry for the Academy Award for Best Foreign Language Film in 2013, it marked a maturation of Kenya's film...
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2013 The ICC and the Cases That Were Dropped Politics
Modern
The ICC and the Cases That Were Dropped
After the 2007-08 post-election violence, the International Criminal Court indicted six Kenyans, including Uhuru Kenyatta and William Ruto. The cases attracted...
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21 September 2013 Westgate: Terror in a Shopping Mall War
Modern
Westgate: Terror in a Shopping Mall
On a Saturday afternoon in September 2013, gunmen from the Somali militant group Al-Shabaab stormed the Westgate Shopping Mall in Nairobi. The siege lasted...
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2014 Kenya Wins the Rugby Sevens World Series Sport
Modern
Kenya Wins the Rugby Sevens World Series
Kenyan rugby sevens has been one of the country's most joyful sporting stories of the 21st century. The Kenya Sevens team, nicknamed Shujaa, has competed at...
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2015 Silicon Savannah: Nairobi Becomes Africa's Tech Capital Economy
Modern
Silicon Savannah: Nairobi Becomes Africa's Tech Capital
By 2015, Nairobi had earned a new name: Silicon Savannah. The city had become home to more technology startups per capita than almost anywhere else in Africa....
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2015 Obama Visits Kenya: A Son Comes Home Politics
Modern
Obama Visits Kenya: A Son Comes Home
In July 2015, President Barack Obama made his first official visit to Kenya as President of the United States. He was received with a level of national...
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2015 Garissa University: 148 Students Killed War
Modern
Garissa University: 148 Students Killed
On 2 April 2015, four Al-Shabaab gunmen attacked Garissa University College in northeastern Kenya. They separated students by religion and executed those who...
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2016 Stanbic Bank Hits a Milestone but It Is Equity That Changed Banking Economy
Modern
Stanbic Bank Hits a Milestone but It Is Equity That Changed Banking
While Kenya's traditional commercial banks competed for corporate clients, Equity Bank continued its expansion into the previously unbanked. By 2016, Equity...
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2016 The Kenyan Diaspora: Building Kenya From Abroad People
Modern
The Kenyan Diaspora: Building Kenya From Abroad
By 2016, Kenyans living abroad were sending home over $1.5 billion annually in remittances, making the diaspora one of the largest contributors to Kenya's...
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26 July 2016 Eliud Kipchoge and the Marathon That Remade History Sport
Modern
Eliud Kipchoge and the Marathon That Remade History
When Eliud Kipchoge won gold in the marathon at the 2016 Rio Olympics, he did not just win a race. He began rewriting the history of what the human body can...
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1 June 2017 The Madaraka Express Makes Its First Journey Economy
Modern
The Madaraka Express Makes Its First Journey
On 1 June 2017, Kenya's national day, the first Standard Gauge Railway train departed from Mombasa and arrived in Nairobi four and a half hours later....
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2017 The Drought and the Crying Camels Nature
Modern
The Drought and the Crying Camels
In 2017, a severe drought struck northern Kenya. In Turkana, Marsabit and Mandera counties, pastoralists watched their livestock die. Camels that had survived...
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2017 The Election That Was Annulled: A Judicial First for Africa Politics
Modern
The Election That Was Annulled: A Judicial First for Africa
In August 2017, the Supreme Court of Kenya did something that no court in African history had done before. It annulled a presidential election. Chief Justice...
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2018 Kenya Hosts the World Cross Country Championships Sport
Modern
Kenya Hosts the World Cross Country Championships
When the World Cross Country Championships came to Aarhus, Denmark in 2019, Kenya's team arrived expecting to win. They did. Kenyan athletes won medals across...
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2018 Safaricom Launches M-Pesa in Ethiopia Economy
Modern
Safaricom Launches M-Pesa in Ethiopia
When Safaricom launched M-Pesa in Ethiopia in 2022, it was the latest expansion of the service that had changed the meaning of money in Kenya fifteen years...
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2019 Nairobi Expressway: A City Trying to Solve Itself Economy
Modern
Nairobi Expressway: A City Trying to Solve Itself
Nairobi's traffic problem had become legendary. A city of five million people served by road infrastructure designed for one million. In 2019, construction...
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2019 Sub Two Hours: Kipchoge Does the Impossible Sport
Modern
Sub Two Hours: Kipchoge Does the Impossible
On 12 October 2019, in the Prater park in Vienna, Austria, Eliud Kipchoge ran 42.195 kilometres in 1 hour 59 minutes and 40 seconds. He became the first human...
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2019 Konza Technopolis: Building a City from Scratch Economy
Modern
Konza Technopolis: Building a City from Scratch
Forty kilometres south of Nairobi, the government began constructing Konza Technopolis, an entirely new city designed to be Kenya's Silicon Valley. The...
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2019 Patricia Njeri: One of Kenya's First Female Pilots People
Modern
Patricia Njeri: One of Kenya's First Female Pilots
Kenya Airways, known as the Pride of Africa, has been the country's national carrier since 1977. Over the decades, its pilots have become symbols of Kenyan...
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2020 Kenyan Music Goes Global: Gengetone Finds Its Audience Culture
Modern
Kenyan Music Goes Global: Gengetone Finds Its Audience
Gengetone, a genre that emerged from Nairobi's housing estates in the late 2010s, was raw, urban, sexually explicit and unmistakably Kenyan. Groups like...
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2020 Al-Shabaab at the Boundary: A Decade of Attacks War
Modern
Al-Shabaab at the Boundary: A Decade of Attacks
Since Kenya sent troops into Somalia in October 2011 to fight Al-Shabaab, the militant group has responded with a sustained campaign of attacks on Kenyan soil....
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2020 COVID-19 Comes to Kenya People
Modern
COVID-19 Comes to Kenya
On 13 March 2020, Kenya confirmed its first case of COVID-19. The patient had returned from the United States. Within weeks, President Kenyatta had imposed a...
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2021 Faith Kipyegon: The Greatest Middle-Distance Runner Alive Sport
Modern
Faith Kipyegon: The Greatest Middle-Distance Runner Alive
Faith Chepngetich Kipyegon from Kerio Valley in the Rift Valley is the greatest 1,500-metre runner in history. She won Olympic gold in 2016, 2020 and 2024,...
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2021-2022 The Handshake and the Alliance That Surprised Everyone Politics
Modern
The Handshake and the Alliance That Surprised Everyone
In March 2018, in a moment that stunned Kenya, President Uhuru Kenyatta and opposition leader Raila Odinga shook hands in public and announced a new political...
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2021 Lupita Nyong'o: From Kisumu to the Academy Awards People
Modern
Lupita Nyong'o: From Kisumu to the Academy Awards
When Lupita Nyong'o walked onto the stage at the 2014 Academy Awards and accepted the Oscar for Best Supporting Actress for 12 Years a Slave, she became the...
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2021 Kenya Becomes a Middle-Income Country Economy
Modern
Kenya Becomes a Middle-Income Country
In 2021, the World Bank reclassified Kenya as a lower-middle-income country, reflecting decades of economic growth. Nairobi had grown into one of Africa's most...
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2021 Kenya Lights Up: The Rural Electrification Push Economy
Modern
Kenya Lights Up: The Rural Electrification Push
Kenya's rural electrification programme, which accelerated dramatically in the 2010s under the Last Mile Connectivity Project, transformed life in villages...
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2022 Timothy Cheruiyot and the Continuing Rift Valley Miracle Sport
Modern
Timothy Cheruiyot and the Continuing Rift Valley Miracle
When Timothy Cheruiyot won the 1,500 metres at the World Athletics Championships in 2019 and 2022, he extended a tradition of Kenyan middle-distance excellence...
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2022 Azimio vs Kenya Kwanza: The Election That Divided Kenya by Class Politics
Modern
Azimio vs Kenya Kwanza: The Election That Divided Kenya by Class
The 2022 Kenyan election between William Ruto's Kenya Kwanza coalition and Raila Odinga's Azimio la Umoja was unusual in Kenyan electoral history. Rather than...
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2022 The Housing Crisis: When Nairobi Cannot House Its Own Economy
Modern
The Housing Crisis: When Nairobi Cannot House Its Own
By 2022, Nairobi was home to an estimated 60 percent of its population living in informal settlements, areas without formal land tenure, reliable water,...
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9 August 2022 William Ruto: The Deputy Who Became President Politics
Modern
William Ruto: The Deputy Who Became President
On 9 August 2022, Kenyans went to the polls in what became one of the most closely watched elections in the country's history. William Samoei Ruto, the Deputy...
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2023 The Debt Crisis: Kenya Borrows Its Way Into Trouble Economy
Modern
The Debt Crisis: Kenya Borrows Its Way Into Trouble
By 2023, Kenya's public debt had reached approximately 10 trillion shillings, or about 70 percent of GDP. The country was spending more on debt servicing than...
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2024 The Broad-Based Government: When Rivals Became Partners Politics
Modern
The Broad-Based Government: When Rivals Became Partners
In the aftermath of the 2024 Gen Z protests that had brought down the finance bill and cost lives, President William Ruto made an unexpected move. He dissolved...
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June-July 2024 Gen Z Takes to the Streets: The Protests That Shook Ruto Politics
Modern
Gen Z Takes to the Streets: The Protests That Shook Ruto
In June 2024, a finance bill that proposed new taxes on cooking oil, bread and other basic goods triggered protests unlike anything Kenya had seen in decades....
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11
Pre-Colonial
7
Coastal Trade
31
Colonial
7
Independence
25
Republic
69
Modern