Kenya

Founding president and liberation struggle icon Jomo KENYATTA led Kenya from independence in 1963 until his death in 1978, when President Daniel Toroitich arap MOI took power in a constitutional succession. The country was a de facto one-party state from 1969 until 1982 when the ruling Kenya African National Union (KANU) made itself the sole legal party in Kenya. MOI acceded to internal and external pressure for political liberalization in late 1991. The ethnically fractured opposition failed to dislodge KANU from power in elections in 1992 and 1997, which were marred by violence and fraud, but were viewed as having generally reflected the will of the Kenyan people. President MOI stepped down in December 2002 following fair and peaceful elections. Mwai KIBAKI, running as the candidate of the multiethnic, united opposition group, the National Rainbow Coalition (NARC), defeated KANU candidate Uhuru KENYATTA and assumed the presidency following a campaign centered on an anticorruption platform. KIBAKI's NARC coalition splintered in 2005 over the constitutional review process. Government defectors joined with KANU to form a new opposition coalition, the Orange Democratic Movement, which defeated the government's draft constitution in a popular referendum in November 2005. KIBAKI's reelection in December 2007 brought charges of vote rigging from ODM candidate Raila ODINGA and unleashed two months of violence in which as many as 1,500 people died. UN-sponsored talks in late February produced a powersharing accord bringing ODINGA into the government in the restored position of prime minister.

Economical characteristics

 * Currency: Kenyan shilling (ISO code: KES)
 * Central bank discount rate: NA%
 * Commercial banks lending rate: 14.8% (31 December 2009 )
 * Stock of money (M1): $6.068 billion (31 December 2008)
 * Quasi money (with M1 makes M2): $5.468 billion (31 December 2008)

Notable events:

 * Banking crisis: 1985-1989, 1992, 1993-1995, 1996
 * Years in inflation: 8.5% (share of years 1963-2009 with annual inflation above 20 per cent per annum)
 * Public default: 1994-1998, 2000-2001 (external)

Links

 * Kenya on Wikipedia
 * Central bank of Kenya
 * Country profile (pdf) from the Enterprise Studies page (part of the The World Bank Group)
 * BBC country profile
 * Kenya Shilling at 17-Year Low on Spiralling Inflation Sparks State Concern by Chris Kay and Sarah McGregor, June 2011
 * Honey changes everything by Jonathan Kalan, December 2012