Kenya Profile
The Republic of Kenya is in East Africa. Lying along the Indian Ocean to its southeast and at the equator, Kenya is bordered by Somalia, Ethiopia, Sudan, Uganda and Tanzania. The capital city is Nairobi.
Map source: OCHA/ReliefWeb
Kenya's area is 580,000 sq km with a diverse population of nearly 40 million people and nearly 40 different ethnic groups.
The official languages are English and Swahili, although multiple other languages are spoken in the country.
Kenya is a low-income food-deficit country. Twenty per cent of Kenyan children below five-years are underweight, 31 per cent of the overall population is undernourished, and the infant mortality rate per 1, 000 live births is 81.
The main threats to food security in Kenya are poverty, high demographic growth, arid and semi-arid lands in the north and east, droughts, and HIV and Aids. Sporadic outbreaks of political and tribal violence also pose a real threat to livelihoods and food security.
Shortly after the election of 2007, Mwai Kibaki was sworn in for a second term in office, prompting a wave of unrest and political violence across the country.
For information about GOAL's work in Kenya, click here.
Kenya - Fact Box
| Average life expectancy: 53.2 (men), 54 (women) |
| Infant mortality rate: 81 per 1,000 live births (World Bank, 2009) |
| Children under five underweight for their age: 20 per cent |
| Probability at birth of not surviving to age of 40: 30.3 per cent |
| Population not using an improved water source: 43 per cent |
| People living below poverty line of US$2 a day: 39.9 per cent |
| Internally Displaced Peoples (IDPs): 400,000 |
| Gross National Income (GNI) per capita: US$730 (World Bank, 2009) |
| Kenya was ranked 147th out of 182 countries on the UN’s Human Development Index (2009) |
Unless otherwise stated, all statistics in the Fact Box have been sourced from the United Nations' Development Report 2009