History of Kenya

(Kiswahili)

Historia ya Kenya inahusu eneo la Afrika Mashariki ambalo wakazi wake leo wanaunda Jamhuri ya Kenya.

Historia ya Kenya kama nchi inayokaliwa na binadamu, inaenea miaka laki kama si milioni kadhaa. Kumbe historia yake kama nchi huru ni fupi.

Jamhuri ya Kenya ni nchi iliyoko Afrika Mashariki katika ikweta, kando ya Bahari ya Hindi.

Kenya imepakana na Ethiopia (kaskazini), Somalia (kaskazini mashariki), Tanzania (kusini), Uganda na Ziwa Victoria (magharibi), kisha Sudan Kusini (kaskazini magharibi).

Kenya ni nchi mwanachama wa Jumuiya ya Afrika ya Mashariki na wa miundo mingine mbalimbali ya kimataifa.

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(English)

A part of Eastern Africa, the territory of what is known as Kenya has seen human habitation since the beginning of the Lower Paleolithic. The Bantu expansion from a West African centre of dispersal reached the area by the 1st millennium AD. With the borders of the modern state at the crossroads of the Bantu, Nilo-Saharan and Afro-Asiatic ethno-linguistic areas of Africa, Kenya is a truly multi-ethnic state.

The European and Arab presence in Mombasa dates to the Early Modern period, but European exploration of the interior began in the 19th century. The British Empire established the East Africa Protectorate in 1895, from 1920 known as the Kenya Colony.

The independent Republic of Kenya was formed in 1963. It was ruled as a de facto one-party state by the Kenya African National Union (KANU), led by Jomo Kenyatta from 1963 to 1978. Kenyatta was succeeded by Daniel arap Moi, who ruled until 2002. Moi attempted to transform the de facto one-party status of Kenya into a de jure status during the 1980s, but with the end of the Cold War, the practices of political repression and torture which had been "overlooked" by the Western powers as necessary evils in the effort to contain communism were no longer tolerated.