Mount Kenya Region in the Kenyan State

Abstract

These are troubled times, and they are more troubled for the people in the Mount Kenya area than in any other region. The region is literary central, with Nyeri County at the centre, going around the Mountain through Kiambu, Nyandarua, Nakuru, Laikipia, Meru, Tharaka Nithi, Embu, Kirinyaga, Murang’a and back to Kiambu. It is socio-economically productive and occasionally politically troublesome. It was troublesome in the colonial times when its people lost a lot of land to white settlers, they have yet to recover those lands, and continued to experience problems in the postcolonial times. It has a large but dwindling population that was the focus of colonial schemes on how to control “natives”. Its share on national activities is declining due to internal and external forces.