Healing Kenya Series

This question lies at the heart of Kenya’s struggle with tribalism: When a Kenyan says “our people” in public dialogue, do they mean all Kenyans, or only members of their ethnic group?  

Tribal identity itself is not unique to Kenya. Throughout history, human beings everywhere have organised themselves into tribes, clans, races, and ethnic groups.

What is distinctive and destructive is tribalism: the elevation of loyalty to one’s ethnic group above commitment to the wider common good.

In Kenya, tribalism has eroded fairness, claimed lives, and stalled progress. Healing begins with understanding where tribes came from and how Kenyans can transcend inherited divisions. 

Beginnings

The overwhelming scientific consensus today is that East Africa is the cradle of humanity. From here emerged our earliest ancestors, scientifically known as Homo erectus and later Homo sapiens, the species to which all modern humans belong.

This conclusion rests on a wide body of evidence: fossil remains, charcoal, stone tools, and other organic materials unearthed by archaeologists, combined with genetic analysis of living populations. Together, these studies have traced ancient human development and mapped the great migrations that carried our ancestors across the globe.

Fossils nearly 1.9 million years old discovered in Turkana, Kenya, show that Homo erectus took some of the first human footsteps on Earth. Later, out of this lineage, Homo sapiens, a species strikingly similar to us today, evolved. 

The oldest known Homo sapiens fossils include remains found at Jebel Irhoud, Morocco, dating back about 300,000 years, and in Ethiopia’s Omo Valley, about 200,000 years old, not far from Lake Turkana in Kenya.

Around 60,000 to 70,000 years ago, scientists estimate that the global population of Homo sapiens may have been only between 10,000 and 50,000 individuals, subject to fluctuations caused by natural disasters. It was during this time that groups of humans began to leave Africa, migrating into Asia and Europe.

Over generations, they adapted to their new environments, shaping the diverse facial features, skin tones, languages, and cultures we recognize today. This conclusion is supported by both archaeological artefacts and genetic studies conducted in Asia and Europe.

In those early years, humans lived in small family groups of about 10 to 50 individuals. Over time, these expanded into larger clusters of perhaps 50 to 100 members, eventually evolving into the tribal and ethnic groups that form the building blocks of societies today.

Scientists also suggest that as early as 200,000 to 100,000 years ago, humans used a form of proto-language, likely through symbols, while fully developed modern languages appeared between 50,000 and 20,000 years ago.

Rise Of Powerful Groups

5,500 years ago, civilizations from places such as Sumer (modern Iraq), Egypt, the Indus Valley (modern India-Pakistan), and China began keeping written records. These texts, alongside archaeological evidence, reveal a striking pattern: the rise of powerful groups who conquered, plundered, enslaved, and imposed their language, religion, and customs upon others.

Religious texts mirror this same history. The Bible recounts the Jewish people living under successive empires: Babylonian, Assyrian, Persian, Egyptian, Greek, and Roman, and later under Muslim caliphates from 650 to 1948 AD.

The Romans (1 BCE/ – 650 AD/CE) and Muslims (650 AD/CE- 1918 AD/CE) spread their empires across parts of Southern and Central Europe, Northern Africa, and parts of Asia, where they also plundered, enslaved, and imposed their religions and cultures.

East Africa

East Africa itself was no stranger to sweeping human migrations. Between 1000 BCE and 1600 CE, Bantu-speaking peoples expanded from Cameroon and Nigeria into East and Southern Africa, bringing farming and iron technology. 

From around 1000 BCE to 1800 CE, Nilotic groups arrived from southern Ethiopia, introducing cattle herding, followed later by Cushitic groups from Sudan and Ethiopia, also pastoralists.

The current individual tribes may have developed their distinct languages 1500-500 years ago.

Kenya

Before these migrations, Kenya was home to hunter-gatherers such as the Ogiek, Sengwer, Gumba, Athi, and Dorobo. Most were assimilated or pushed into forests and mountains, where small remnants remain: the Ogiek in Mau and Mount Elgon, the Sengwer in Embobut, the Yaaku in Mukogodo, and others scattered in Laikipia and the Rift Valley.

The great migrations laid the foundation for Kenya’s tribal map as it looks today. 

Bantus settled in the west (Luhya), Nyanza (Kisii, Kuria, Suba), the coast (Mijikenda, Taita, Taveta), and central highlands (Kikuyu, Embu, Meru, Kamba).

Nilotes settled in Nyanza (Luo), western Kenya (Teso), and the Rift Valley (Kalenjin, Maasai, Turkana, Samburu). Cushitic groups (Somali, Borana, Gabra) established themselves in the northeast.

Along the coast, Swahili culture flourished between 800 and 1500 CE, born of intermarriage between Bantu locals and traders from Arabia, Persia, and India.

By the late 1800s, the land that would become Kenya was already home to all of today’s ethnic/tribal groups, except for Asians and Europeans, who came after 1800.

These migrations followed a familiar script: older communities were displaced or assimilated by new arrivals.

Colonialism

Colonialism disrupted the delicate balance of the tribes. 

The British in 1800 imposed borders that sliced through the traditional homelands of the Maasai, Luo, Luhya, Somali, and others, dividing them across Kenya, Tanzania, Uganda, and Somalia. 

They seized fertile land for settler farms for their people, displacing communities and crowding them into smaller areas, sparking grievances that continue to shape inter-ethnic resentments to this day. They imposed new taxes, which pushed men to migrate for wage labor, increasing intermingling across tribes. 

Colonial schools and missions and roads concentrated in settler highlands advantaged some tribes with early education and jobs, while others were left behind, inequalities that still fuel political rivalries today.

The Lesson for Kenya 

History shows that no tribe is “original” and no homeland is eternal. All are products of centuries of migration, conquest, and adaptation.

Every community in Kenya carries the story of arrival, displacement, and settlement. Migration is not just an ancient story but an ongoing reality. Globally, reverse migration is occurring as descendants of the formerly colonized move to Europe and the United States, lands of their former colonizers. These migrations have become a growing concern in those countries.

Tribalism, as practiced today, is a distortion of this reality. It pretends divisions are ancient and unchangeable when, in fact, they are recent and fragile. In reality, all humanity shares 99.9 % genetics that make us human, while the .1 % gives us our diversity in the shape of body parts, skin tones, and hair texture. 

Language, often seen as the strongest marker of tribal identity, is not fixed in our genes. Anyone can learn any language and, through it, gain an understanding of another community's culture. Indeed, one can assimilate into any tribe, speak their language and culture, and lose their previous tribal identity.

Kenya’s healing lies in this truth: our origins are shared, our identities fluid, and our future intertwined. 

What divides us today is shallow; what unites us runs back to the very beginning of humanity itself.

Dr.Wanjiru Muthui is a Scientist