The claim that Kenya was once chosen as the future homeland for the Jewish people derives from what is commonly known as the “Uganda Scheme,” a proposal made in the early twentieth century. In 1903, Theodor Herzl, the visionary leader of modern Zionism, received an offer from Sir William Mackinnon’s East Africa Syndicate, under the auspices of British Colonial Secretary Joseph Chamberlain, to settle Jews on a tract of land in what was then British East Africa. The exact territory under consideration lay in the Uasin Gishu plateau, an area now within the boundaries of modern-day Kenya. Herzl and his colleagues brought this offer before the Sixth Zionist Congress in Basel, Switzerland, that same year. The Congress agreed to send a small exploratory commission to investigate the suitability of the highlands for agricultural settlement and to consider whether it could serve as a temporary refuge for Jews facing persecution in Eastern Europe (Laqueur, 2003).
Over the course of 1903 and 1904, Zionist emissaries traveled to the Uasin Gishu region, assessing its climate, water resources, and potential for supporting nascent Jewish farming communities. Their reports painted a nuanced picture. On one hand, the highlands’ elevation—rising above two thousand meters—offered temperate weather relatively free of the malaria that made lower valleys dangerous. On the other hand, the land lay at the edge of Maasai grazing country, and local resistance to foreign settlement was real. Moreover, many Zionist delegates remained philosophically committed to returning to the historic land of Israel. Even before the July meeting of 1905, at which the Seventh Zionist Congress formally rejected the East Africa proposal, a significant faction within the movement insisted that only Palestine could fulfill the national longing of the Jewish people (Penslar, 2007).
At the Seventh Zionist Congress in Basel, the delegates debated the Uganda Scheme at length. The majority argued that accepting the East African territory would undermine the original charter of the Zionist Organization, which explicitly sought a “home” in the land of Israel (Herzl, 1896/1959). Ultimately, on August 29, 1905, the Congress voted to reject the British offer. Zionist leaders agreed to abandon efforts to colonize any part of British East Africa and to focus exclusively on Palestine. Had the Uganda Scheme passed, it might have resulted in a large-scale Jewish settlement in what is now Kenya. In practice, however, the land was never formally transferred, and no permanent Jewish community of Zionist origin ever emerged there.
Historians emphasize that the “selection” of Kenya, if one may call it that, was never final. It was a temporary contingency plan proposed by Herzl out of desperation for Jews suffering pogroms in Eastern Europe. Although the Sixth Congress did authorize an exploratory mission, the Seventh Congress’s rejection demonstrates that Zionists never viewed East Africa as their true national home. Instead, the episode served to clarify and strengthen the movement’s commitment to Palestine. The modern State of Israel, established in 1948, thus had no direct legal or organizational link to any East African territory; its founding occurred nearly half a century later, in the land of historical Judea and Samaria, as recognized by the United Nations Partition Plan for Palestine.
In short, it is accurate to say that British East Africa (the region that now includes parts of Kenya) was briefly considered as a possible site for Jewish settlement. A Zionist commission evaluated the Uasin Gishu highlands in 1903–1904, and the Sixth Zionist Congress approved further exploration. Nevertheless, the Seventh Zionist Congress definitively rejected the plan in 1905. Thereafter, support for establishing a Jewish homeland shifted entirely back to Palestine, and thus the image’s implication that Kenya was “selected” as the State of Israel is misleading. It was only ever a contingency proposal, never a binding decision, and no formal Jewish state was ever created on African soil.
References
Herzl, T. (1959). The Jewish State: An Attempt at a Modern Solution of the Jewish Question (I. Mailer, Trans.). Boni & Liveright. (Original work published 1896)
Laqueur, W. (2003). A History of Zionism (D. M. Myers, Rev. ed.). Schocken Books.
Penslar, D. (2007). Zionism: An Emotional State. Yale University Press.