Kenya

Safari, marathon runners and the 'cradle of humankind'

Kenya is the safari country: lions, elephants, giraffes and millions of wildebeest live in the Maasai Mara. The equator runs through the middle of Kenya, yet Mount Kenya has snow! Kenyans are the world's fastest marathon runners, winning almost every race. 'Hakuna matata' from 'The Lion King' means 'no worries' in Swahili. The bones of humanity's oldest ancestors were found here.

Capital: Nairobi. Language: Swahili, English.

The Republic of Kenya covers 580,367 km² with 55 million people and over 40 ethnic groups (Kikuyu, Luo, Maasai); Swahili is East Africa's common language (200 million speakers). Nature: the Great Rift Valley (Lake Turkana — the Leakey family's finds, 'Turkana Boy' 1.6 million years old), Mount Kenya (5,199 m, a glacier on the equator), the Maasai Mara (the wildebeest migration), Amboseli (elephants against Kilimanjaro), Lake Victoria, the Indian Ocean coast (Mombasa, Swahili culture). History: Swahili city-states (Lamu, 14th century — Arab-African trade), the Portuguese, the Sultanate of Zanzibar, Britain (1895, the Uganda Railway — the 'Lunatic Express'), the Mau Mau uprising, independence in 1963 (Kenyatta). Economy: 1st in East Africa, tea (top exporter), flowers (40% of Europe's), tourism, M-Pesa (a mobile-money pioneer, 2007), the 'Silicon Savannah'. Sport: long-distance running (Kipchoge — a sub-2-hour marathon, 2019), the Kalenjin people. Wangari Maathai — Nobel Prize (2004, tree planting).

Fun facts

• Kenyan Eliud Kipchoge was the first person to run a marathon in under 2 hours (2019).
• 40% of the flowers sold in Europe are grown in Kenya.
• Mount Kenya, on the equator, has a glacier.