Kenya

From Mount Kenya (the second-highest mountain in Africa) to the Indian Ocean coastline, Kenya has scenic landscapes of plains, hills, valleys, and gently sloping highlands gradually dropping to the northern lowlands of the Chalbi desert. Visitors to Kenya will experience dramatic differences in climate and temperature as they travel across its regions. They will also see how the vegetation changes, from coconut palms and baobabs on the coast to acacia in the savannah grasslands; and from coffee and tea bushes in the highlands to the doum palm in the arid north.

Sitting astride the equator, Kenya is home to a population of around 56 million, who speak around 60 languages amongst them. Although the official languages are Swahili and English, these are second languages to many.

Kenya is rich in prehistoric, archaeological and other cultural resources. The country’s seven UNESCO World Heritage sites (Fort Jesus, Lake Turkana National Parks, Mount Kenya National Park and Forest, Lamu Old Town, The Sacred Mijikenda Kaya Forests, The Kenya Lake System in the Great Rift Valley and Thimlich Ohinga Cultural landscape), are managed by the National Museums of Kenya (NMK) whose responsibility is to conserve them for recreation, education and research. There are also 17 sites on the tentative World Heritage list, and 400 sites and monuments gazetted for protection. NMK itself has documented more than 5000 archaeological sites. Many world-famous sites such as Olorgesailie, Enkapune ya Muto, Lomekwi and Gede have produced unique artefacts that make significant contributions to the story of human evolution and technological development.

Below are just a few of Kenya’s diverse cultural heritage sites, all of which are managed and protected by the National Museums of Kenya (NMK). Click through the gallery below to uncover the stories of these sites and read more about the NMK.

Heritage fieldwork in Kenya

Staff from the British Institute in Eastern Africa (BIEA) and the National Museums of Kenya (NMK) are continuing to conduct vital ‘ground-truthing’ surveys that add to knowledge about the country’s heritage sites. This means verifying information collected through remote sensing (analysis of satellite imagery), as well as data about sites that have been collected from existing records and publications. In 2022, a team of five surveyed an area that stretches over 100 km between Vanga (at the border with Tanzania) and Mombasa in southern Kenya, recording a mix of ca. 80 open sites and built monuments. Thirty new sites were also digitally documented for future monitoring.