Way back in 1990 I went on sabbatical leave to St Mary’s College, Durham University, and produced an Atlas of Kenya. I specifically wanted to map where ethnic groups lived at independence (1963) and where they lived in 1979 at the end of President Kenyatta’s government.
I used the 1962 and 1979 population censuses to do this. Dai Morgan of Durham University, and formerly Head of Geography at the University of Nairobi, was an invaluable help with the 1962 census data and maps from that date. I had managed to collect similar maps and census information for the 1979 census when lecturing at Kenyatta University in the early 1980s. South Africa’s Human Sciences Research Council (HSRC) funded me as I managed to persuade them that it would be interesting to see what happened in post-colonial Kenya with a view to thinking similar trends would happen here in South Africa. Lastly Joan Kenworthy kindly hosted us at St Mary’s and we had a memorable six months there.
I’ve been able to put the maps into a slideshow – something that was impossible in 1990-1 when we worked on the Atlas. Then we used very early Geographic Information Systems technology to digitise the maps, manually adding in all of the data and plotting the 80 maps (using pens) on an A0 sized HP plotter. The maps and final report produced for the HSRC can be downloaded from the links below. What’s more interesting is to let the slideshow load and then see the patchwork of different ethnic groups (Kenyans would say Tribes) and how they spread after independence.
The slideshow is large (75mb) so needs quite a lot of time to load if you are on a slow internet connection but you can also download it. It’s best viewed full screen at High Definition.
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