Kenya Colony

The Colony and Protectorate of Kenya, commonly called British Kenya, existed from 1920 to 1963. It was formed when the East Africa Protectorate was transformed into a Crown colony on 23 July 1920. The interior was annexed as the Colony of Kenya, while a sixteen-kilometre coastal strip nominally leased from the Sultan of Zanzibar became the Protectorate of Kenya; the two were administered as a single unit from Nairobi. The colony attracted British settlers to the fertile highlands, where cash crops such as coffee, tea and sisal were grown, and a railway linked Mombasa to Uganda. African political activity grew through associations and, after the Second World War, through the Kenya African Union. The Mau Mau emergency of 1952–1960 prompted a forceful British response and accelerated constitutional change. The first elections with an African majority government were held in 1963, and Kenya became independent on 12 December 1963, with Jomo Kenyatta as prime minister and Nairobi as the capital.