About the Name

The Kikuyu people, who lived near what is now known as Mt. Kenya, referred to the snow covered mountain as Kirinyaga, meaning "mountain of whiteness." The landmark became synonymous with the land the British later took as their colony. According to local lore, the name "Kenya" came as a result of the inability of the British to pronounce Kirinyaga correctly.

Post-Colonial Kenya

Jomo Kenyatta, liberation icon and Kenya's founding president, led Kenya from the country's independence in 1964 until his death in 1978, when President Daniel Totoitich arap Moi took power in a constitutional succession. The country operated as a one-party state from 1969 until 1982 when the ruling Kenya African National Union (KANU) officially made itself the sole legal party in Kenya. Late in 1991, Moi gave into internal and external pressure for political liberalization, but the ethnically fractured opposition failed in consecutive elections to dislodge KANU and President Moi from power.

2002 found Daniel arap Moi constitutionally barred from seeking reelection. Mwai Kibaki, running as the candidate of the multiethnic, united opposition group, the National Rainbow Coalition (NARC), defeated KANU candidate Uhuru Kenyatta to assume the presidency. Kibaki's NARC coalition splintered in 2005 over the constitutional review process, and government defectors joined with KANU to form a new opposition coalition, the Orange Democratic Movement, which defeated the government's draft constitution in a popular referendum in November of that year.

Mwai Kibaki's reelection in December 2007 brought charges of vote rigging from ODM candidate Raila Odinga and unleashed many months of violence in which as many as 1,500 people died, and tens of thousands were displaced. UN-sponsored talks led by former UN head, Kofi Anan, in late February, 2008, produced a power-sharing accord bringing Odinga into the government in the restored position of prime minister.