Category: Tribes

The Kisii tribe inhabit an area in the western highlands east of Lake Victoria. The area is dominated by Nilotic-speaking groups with just this pocket of the Bantu-speaking Gusii.

The largest of Kenya s tribes, the Kikuyu tribe live in area around Mount Kenya where, at the dawn the colonial era, they came into violent conflict with the European settlers, to whom large tracts of Kikuyu homeland had been apportioned by the colonial government

Luhya people: The Luhya tribe, also known as Abaluhya, Baluhya, or Abaluyia, are a bantu tribe living in the agriculturally fertile Western region of Kenya. They are neighbors to some of the nilotic tribes including Luo, Kalenjin, Maasai and Teso (Iteso).

The Mijikenda Tribes are a Kenya coastal Bantu tribe that consists of nine closely related sub-tribes. Mijikenda literally means nine homesteads (in Swahili), referring to the common ancestry of the Mijikenda people.

Closely related to the Maasai, and in fact speaking the same language, the Samburu occupy an arid area directly north of Mt Kenya. It seems that when the Maasai migrated to the area from Sudan, some headed east (and became the Samburu) while the bulk of them continued south to the area they occupy today.

The Turkana tribe are another of Kenya’s more colourful (and warlike people). Originally from the Karamajong district of north-eastern Uganda, the Turkana people number around 250,000 and live in the virtual desert country of Kenya’s north-west. Due to their isolation, the Turkana are probably the last affected by the 20th century of all Kenya’s people.

Meru tribe is an ethnic group of Bantus living in the fertile agricultural land in the northeastern part of Mount Kenya . The Meru people arrived in the area from the coast sometime around the 14th century following invasions of that area by Somalis from the north.