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By 500 CE, the Bantu speaking peoples had migrated to the area of modern day Kenya. They migrated to Kenya in need of better watered areas as well as more land for cultivation. Today the Bantu speaking people form a majority of the tribes in Kenya and constitute around two-thirds of the total population.
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Arabs settle in coastal areas of Kenya, bringing with them the religion of Islam. This was Kenya's first contact with other civilizations and its first trading opportunity. Christian later became the main religion of Kenya. However, Islam still makes up 10% of Kenya's religion today.
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By the tenth century, Kenya's coastal region was a a very important trading center. One of their main trading partners was Southern Arabia, but they also traded with Swahili speaking traders. Some of the main commodities that both of these groups were looking for were ivory, rhino horn, gold and shells. They were also in search of slaves.
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Christianity was introduced to the ethnic group Kikuyu of Kenya in the late 1800's by the British. It has now become the major religion of Kenya.
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British and Germans arrived in Kenya towards the end of the 1800's and they colonized the area. The British eventually gained control of all of Kenya, and other East African territories, when they formed the East African Protectorate in 1895.
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Jomo Kenyatta was the first president of Kenya. He was elected in 1963. He was involved in the nationalist movement that started in 1944, which established independence for Kenya on December 12th of 1963.
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By the beginning of the Christian Era, most of the tribes living in Kenya had shifted from a nomadic lifesetyle to a sedentary lifestyle. They had begun to domesticate their animals and grow their own crops.
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There are many different ethnic groups living in Kenya and many of those groups are fighting amongst themselves. This has been going on for a long time. Violence arises between the different tribes when there are political disagreements, and because of the extreme poverty. Some of the most extreme cases occured in 1992 and January 2008.
