On 1 August 1982, junior officers of the Kenya Air Force seized the Voice of Kenya radio station and announced the end of the Moi government. For a few electric hours, the country’s fate hung in the balance. Forty years on, we revisit the causes, the chaos, and the long shadow it cast. Before the … Read more
Between roughly 1830 and 1880, a series of wars tore through the heart of the Maasai world. These were not raids on neighbouring peoples. They were internal — Maasai fighting Maasai, section against section, pastoral against agropastoral — and they were fought with a ferocity that astonished early European observers who arrived expecting to find … Read more
The Maasai at Their Peak — kenyanhistory.com kenyanhistory.com 19th Century Kenya · Pre-colonial Warfare For two centuries, the Maasai ruled the Rift Valley by fear alone. Every caravan detoured around them. Every neighbouring people built their villages on high ground. This is how they did it — and how it ended. Long Read 1650–1900 ~2,800 … Read more
The Luo — known to themselves as the Joluo or Jaluo, meaning “people of Luo” — are the second largest ethnic group in Kenya and one of the most significant in the history of East Africa. Numbering over six million in Kenya alone and extending into Tanzania, Uganda and beyond, they inhabit the shores of … Read more
A shocking scandal has been trending across African social media: a **Russian man identified as “Yaytseslav” secretly filmed intimate encounters with women in Kenya, Ghana, South Africa and beyond. Over the past few days, short video clips have circulated showing this man approaching young women in public – on city streets and in malls – … Read more
Today, the Luhya are spoken of as one of Kenya’s largest ethnic groups, a voting bloc, a cultural community, even a linguistic group. But peel back that label, and what you find is not a single people, but a confederation of at least seventeen distinct societies — each with its own language, origin story, and … Read more