In the Kenya highlands, communities that produced their own food by farming and domestication of animals had taken up residence by the end of the second millennium bc. Because of the tools they used, these people—who probably came from the highlands of Ethiopia—are known as the Stone Bowl people. It was not until the last few centuries of the pre-Christian era that other food-producing and iron-working peoples began to take up residence in Kenya. These were the ancestors of the Bantu- and Nilotic-speaking groups of modern Kenya. Bantu-speaking peoples entered Kenya from the west and south, eventually settling east of Lake Victoria, where they occupied land on the coast and in the eastern highlands. The earliest Nilotic-speaking people, ancestors of today’s Highlands Nilotic speakers, entered Kenya from the northwest to take up residence in the highlands west of the Eastern Rift Valley. Later, ancestors of the Plains Nilotic speakers followed, moving into the Rift Valley and the plains to the east. Later still, ancestors of the River-Lake Nilotic speakers moved into the lower-lying regions around Lake Victoria. Eastern Cushitic speakers ancestral to the Oromo moved into northern Kenya from lands to the northeast and were followed by Cushitic-speaking Somali.

In 1886 and 1890 Britain reached agreements with Germany that delineated a boundary between British territory in Kenya and German territory in Tanganyika (part of present-day Tanzania) to the south. The Imperial British East Africa Company was chartered in 1888 to administer Kenya, but the company soon found itself losing large amounts of money through its vain attempts to extend control over the interior. In 1895 the British government formally took over the territory, which was renamed the East Africa Protectorate. Its western neighbor was Britain’s Uganda Protectorate, and the border between the two lay just west of the site that would become, in the late 1890s, the new city of Nairobi.

As an independent country, Kenya was initially a constitutional monarchy, with the British monarch as its nominal head of state and a prime minister as head of government. In December 1964, however, Kenya became a republic with a president as both head of state and head of government. Kenyatta was chosen as the country’s first president. By this time KADU had dissolved, and its members had joined KANU. The Kenyatta era, which lasted until 1978, was a period of considerable social change and economic growth for Kenya. Kenyatta appointed members of many different ethnic groups to government positions and encouraged the people of Kenya to come together as Kenyans, rather than focus on their different ethnic alignments. Many whites had left the country when Kenya became independent, and Kenyatta divided their land among blacks. These Kenyans were encouraged to grow export crops such as coffee and tea on their new land. Aided by a steady flow of foreign investment, largely from Britain, Kenya’s economy flourished. The standard of living rose for most Kenyans, and the nation’s economy became one of the fastest growing in post-colonial Africa.