Kenya is the 2nd largest country in East Africa
Kenya is a sovereign country in East Africa found at 0.0236° S, 37.9062° E. Kenya is officially referred to as THE REPUPLIC OF KENYA and a member of the EAST AFRICAN COMMUNITY. Nairobi is the Capital city of Kenya. There are 4 other major cities in Kenya namely; Mombasa, Kisumu, Eldoret and Nakuru. The word ‘KENYA” was a corrupted version of kirinyaga which the local kikuyu tribe used to refer to the current Mt. Kenya. The word Kenya was coined in 1920 when the white colonialists could not pronounce the word kirinyaga. The word kirinyaga means the White Mountain where God rested his feet.
Size: covering 580,367 square kilometers (224,081 sq. mi), Kenya is the 2nd largest country in East Africa informally compared to the size of Texas State in the USA. Kenya’s neighboring countries include Uganda to the West, Tanzania to the South, South Sudan to the North West, Ethiopia to the North and Somalia to the East.
Population: According to the records and results of 2019 Kenya Population and Housing Census, Kenya has an estimated population of 47,564,296 people with female gender leading with 50.05% of the entire population. Kenya’s census is carried out after every 10 years. The population growth is estimated at one million people per year
Communities of Kenya: Kenyan communities comprise of Bantus, Nilotes and cushites who form the multi ethnic community of Kenya. There are officially 43 tribes in Kenya including the latest recognized Makonde tribe. This means that there are 43 different ethnic dialects or languages spoken in Kenya however there are 6 major ethnic groups which form the majority of the Kenyan population and also influence the culture of the nation.
Kenya’s staple food is Ugali..made of corn/maize flour. Ugali can served with beef stew, fish stew, green vegetables and/or nyamachoma
Languages: Swahili or Kiswahili and English are two languages generally spoken in Kenya. Swahili is the national language of the Republic of Kenya and English is the official language. Of the 43 tribes in Kenya, Bantu speakers form the largest group of native speakers in Kenya. Kikuyu, Luhyia, kalenjin, Luo, kamba and Mijikenda are the leading in terms of population.
Kenyan Economy
Economy: Kenyan Economy is a market based economy with the government of Kenya owning a few state enterprises. Major Industries include Tourism, Agriculture, fishing, mining and manufacturing. In 2020, Kenya’s GDP per capita was 2,039.05 USD a slim increment compared to 2,004.42 in 2019.
Kenya’s tourism. The COVID-19 pandemic affected strongly the tourism sector in Kenya. From January to October 2020, the industry earned around 37 billion Kenyan shillings (KSh) (approximately 338 million U.S. dollars) in revenue. The value represented a loss of 110 billion KSh (one billion U.S. dollars), as the projected earnings for the same period were at 147 billion KSh (1.3 billion U.S. dollars). Moreover, the coronavirus crisis interrupted an upgoing trend registered in the last years in Kenya. Since 2015, the sector recorded growing revenue year-by-year, after a slow down started in 2011, as a consequence of an upsurge in violent terrorist attacks.
According to report published by Julia Faria in Aug. 2021
Impact of COVID-19 in the Tourism sector in Kenya: The sector contributed 24.3million (6.7%) of the total employment. Domestic spending accounted for 56% of the tourism economy while 44% for international tourism spending comprised 9.6% of the region’s total exports, worth $58.5bn(WTTC,2020). However, this impressive growth accounts for only 3% of the world share of international tourism receipts.
According the Ministry of Tourism & wildlife report,
Kenyan Perspective For Kenya, tourism is one of the major economic pillars and is currently the third largest tourism economy in Sub-Saharan Africa after South Africa and Nigeria (GoK, 2019). The sector is the second largest contributor to foreign exchange earnings of over US$1.57 billion and has created 1.1 million jobs (WTTC, 2020a). The movement of such a massive number of people and the associated expenditure has a profound impact on national, regional and local economies across the world, and more specifically in the country. Spending by visitors on facilities and activities such as sporting and cultural events, shopping, accommodation, restaurants, visitor attractions and as business visitors at conferences, provides a massive stimulus to local economies and employment (Deegan, 2020).
The country has shown an impressive performance in the tourism sector since 2015. More specifically, the country’s tourism arrivals grew by 3.9% from 2.02 million tourists in 2018 to 2.05 million tourists in 2019 (GoK, 2019) after a 37.33% increase from 1.47 million in 2017, as shown in Figure 1.4. Domestic tourism in Kenya grew from 3,645,144 in 2017 to 3,974,243 in 2018, recording a 9.03% growth (GoK, 2019).