Kenya Counties (original) (raw)

Buy data Donate

Updates:

A new constitution for Kenya was enacted on 2010-08-27. It provides for devolved county government. There are 47 counties, as shown in the table below. The counties became active on 2013-03-27. They coincide almost exactly with the districts of Kenya as they were configured in ~1989. President Kibaki has stated that the number of counties will be increased in the future if this division proves unsatisfactory.

Update 11 to Geopolitical Entities and Codes (GEC, formerly FIPS 10-4) is dated 2013-04-30. It assigns codes to the new counties. "Geopolitical Entities, Names, and Codes, Edition 2" (GENC), a U.S. standard that's supposed to correspond to ISO 3166-2, was issued on 2014-03-31. It gives codes for the new counties, different from the GEC codes. On 2014-10-30, ISO revoked the codes for the provinces and added codes for the new counties, which exactly match the GENC codes.

When ISO 3166-2 came out in a second edition, dated 2007-12-15, it unexpectedly changed the code for Western province from900 to 800.

Country overview:

At the start of the 20th century, British East Africa included the territory of Kenya and Uganda, plus some parts of Congo, Ethiopia, and Somalia. Kenya was split off as a British colony on 1905-04-01, under the same administration as the Kenya Protectorate, a coastal strip about ten miles wide owned by the Sultan of Zanzibar and leased to the British. The tiny Witu Protectorate was also included. The name British East Africa continued in use as a geographical term. Kenya became independent on 1963-12-12.

Other names of country:

1. Danish: Kenya
2. Dutch: Kenia, Republiek Kenia (formal)
3. English: Republic of Kenya (formal)
4. Finnish: Kenia
5. French: Kenya m
6. German: Kenia n
7. Icelandic: Ken�a
8. Italian: Kenia, Kenya m
9. Norwegian: Kenya, Republikken Kenya (formal)
10. Portuguese: Qu�nia, Qu�nia (Brazil), Rep�blica f do Qu�nia m (formal)
11. Russian: Республика Кения (formal)
12. Spanish: Kenia, Rep�blica f de Kenya f (formal)
13. Turkish: Kenya Cumhuriyeti (formal)
14. Swahili: Jamhuri ya Kenya (formal)
15. Swedish: Kenya

Origin of name:

after Mount Kenya, from Kikuyu kere-nyaga: Mountain of Whiteness

Primary subdivisions:

Kenya is divided into 47 counties.

Postal codes:

Kenya uses five-digit postal codes. Generally a space is inserted after the first digit. The first digit indicates the province, with some exceptions.

Further subdivisions:

See the Districts of Kenya page.

When there were seven provinces, they were subdivided into 40 districts.

Territorial extent:

Coast includes all the islands along Kenya's coast, such as Funzi, Wasini (Shimoni), and the Lamu Archipelago (Lamu, Pate, Manda, and others).

There are three sizable islands in Lake Turkana. North Island is entirely within Rift Valley, South Island is entirely within Eastern, and Central Island is split between the two.

The UN LOCODE page for Kenya lists locations in the country, some of them with their latitudes and longitudes, some with their ISO 3166-2 codes for their subdivisions. This information can be put together to approximate the territorial extent of subdivisions.

Origins of names:

1. Nairobi: Masai for the cool place
2. Rift Valley: contains the Kenyan section of the Great Rift

Change history:

1. 1909: Kenya consisted of six provinces: Kenia, Naivasha, Nyanza, Seyide, Tanaland, and Ukamba.
2. ~1913: Jubaland and Northern Frontier provinces added, probably annexed from Somaliland and Uganda, respectively; Kenia and Naivasha provinces enlarged, probably at the expense of neighboring provinces. Spelling of Kenia changed to Kenya.
3. ~1922: Seyide and Tanaland provinces merged to form Coast. Name of Kenya province changed to Kikuyu. Masai province created, probably split from Ukamba.
4. 1925-06-29: Transjuba (everything west of the Juba River in modern Somalia) transferred from Kenya to Italian Somaliland.
5. The divisions of Kenya at the time of the 1948 census were as follows, according to source [1].

1. ~1955: Name of Masai district changed to Nairobi. Name of Northern Frontier changed to Northern. Southern province formed; its capital was Ngong.
2. 1962: Kenya reorganized into Central, Coast, Eastern, Northern, Nyanza, Rift Valley, and Western regions, and the Nairobi area. By 1970 the status of the regions had changed to provinces.
3. 1963: North-Eastern province formed from Northern and part of Coast.

1. 2013-03-27: Kenya reorganized into 47 counties, which are shown in the main table above.

Other names of subdivisions:

1. Homa Bay: Asego (Swahili)
2. West Pokot: Pokot (variant)
3. Central: Kati (Swahili)
4. Coast: Pwani (Swahili)
5. Eastern: Mashariki (Swahili)
6. Nairobi Area: Federal Area, Nairobi City, Nairobi District (variant); Masai District (obsolete)
7. North-Eastern: Kaskazini Mashariki (Swahili)
8. Nyanza: Nyanza (Swahili)
9. Rift Valley: Bonde la Ufa (Swahili)
10. Western: Magharibi (Swahili)

Population history:

Notes: 1962 total includes 2,600 persons in transit at the time of the enumeration. 1962 figures proleptic to post-1963 boundaries.

Sources:

1. [1] Encyclop�dia Britannica World Atlas, 1957 edition.
2. [2] L'�valuation des effectifs de la population des pays Africains, Tome I. Groupe de D�mographie Africaine, Paris, 1982.
3. [3] Kenya Open Data is the source for 2009 census data (retrieved 2011-12-31).
4. [4] http://www.provincialadministration.go.ke/ (dead link).
5. [5] National Atlas of Kenya, 3rd ed. Survey of Kenya, 1970.
6. [6] Central Bureau of Statistics census report (http://www.cbs.go.ke/census1999.html, dead link, retrieved 2004-01-10).