Background:
Founding president and liberation struggle icon Jomo KENYATTA led
Kenya from independence in 1963 until his death in 1978, when
President Daniel Toroitich arap MOI took power in a constitutional
succession. The country was a de facto one-party state from 1969
until 1982 when the ruling Kenya African National Union (KANU) made
itself the sole legal party in Kenya. MOI acceded to internal and
external pressure for political liberalization in late 1991. The
ethnically fractured opposition failed to dislodge KANU from power
in elections in 1992 and 1997, which were marred by violence and
fraud, but were viewed as having generally reflected the will of the
Kenyan people. President MOI stepped down in December 2002 following
fair and peaceful elections. Mwai KIBAKI, running as the candidate
of the multiethnic, united opposition group, the National Rainbow
Coalition, defeated KANU candidate Uhuru KENYATTA and assumed the
presidency following a campaign centered on an anticorruption
platform.
Geography Kenya
Location:
Eastern Africa, bordering the Indian Ocean, between Somalia and
Tanzania
Geographic coordinates:
1 00 N, 38 00 E
Map references:
Africa
Area:
total: 582,650 sq km
land: 569,250 sq km
water: 13,400 sq km
Area - comparative:
slightly more than twice the size of Nevada
Land boundaries:
total: 3,477 km
border countries: Ethiopia 861 km, Somalia 682 km, Sudan 232 km,
Tanzania 769 km, Uganda 933 km
Coastline:
536 km
Maritime claims: territorial sea: 12 nm exclusive economic zone: 200 nm continental shelf: 200 m depth or to the depth of exploitation