Kenya 🇰🇪

Kenya is an independent state in Eastern Africa, and a member of the United Nations. Treaties and official documents call it Republic of Kenya. Government sits in Nairobi.

The land area is 580,367 km², which ranks it 49th of the 249 countries and territories in this dataset — just behind Botswana and just ahead of France. For scale, it is a little larger than France.

It is home to roughly 56.4 million people, placing it 26th of 249 by population — between Italy above it and Myanmar below. Within Eastern Africa alone it is the 7th largest of 20 and the 3rd most populous.

Spread across 580,367 km², that works out at about 97 people per square kilometre, which makes it more crowded than the typical entry on this list. Half the entries in this dataset fall below roughly 91 per square kilometre.

Someone from Kenya is a Kenyan.

It recognises 2 languages: English and Swahili. English, the first listed, is shared with 90 other entries worldwide.

Against Africa as a whole it is the 7th most populous of 59 entries, and it accounts for 12% of everyone living in Eastern Africa.

Zoom in from the world to Eastern Africa and Kenya sits 3rd of 20 by population and 7th by area. Its immediate company in that ordering is Tanzania just above and Uganda just below, which is a more honest comparison set than a global league table.

Ethiopia is the largest of the group by population, and every entry in Eastern Africa has its own page here if you want to work through the whole neighbourhood rather than one country at a time.

• 🇹🇿 Tanzania
• 🇺🇬 Uganda
• 🇪🇹 Ethiopia

Plotted on a globe it falls at 1.0° north, 38.0° east, which puts it in the northern hemisphere, roughly 111 km from the equator, in what geographers would call the equatorial belt.

It is one of the countries that the equator crosses. Follow that same latitude east or west and you reach Malaysia, Kiribati and Singapore — places that share its distance from the equator but little else.

It borders 5 neighbours: Ethiopia, Somalia, South Sudan, Tanzania and Uganda. The largest of them by area is Ethiopia, which is also the most populous. Together those neighbours hold about 281.6 million people.

With both a coast and land borders, it has the trade options a landlocked country does not.

Put next to every other entry on this site, Kenya ranks 49th of 249 by area and 26th by population. That works out at 0.39% of the combined land area of all 249 entries and 0.69% of their combined population. Those denominators matter: this list includes territories and dependencies as well as UN member states, so a rank here is not the same as a rank among sovereign countries.

For a sense of scale, the entries immediately either side of Kenya in the size ordering are Botswana at 582,000 km² and France at 551,695 km², against Kenya's 580,367 km². If you can already picture one of those, you can picture this one.

Density tells a different story from either raw figure. Kenya averages 97 people per square kilometre of total area, which makes it middling in density — 118th of the 247 entries that have both a population and a measured area. Total area includes inland water, so the true figure for habitable land is higher than this.

The Kenyan shilling (KES) is used only in Kenya among the 249 entries on this site. Its own currency is one of the clearest markers of an economy that sets its own monetary policy rather than importing somebody else's.

Language reaches wider still. English is listed for 91 entries here, Kenya among them, so a visitor who speaks it can be understood across a large part of the map. Shared language tends to outlive the empires, trade routes and migrations that spread it, which is why the linguistic map and the political one rarely line up.

The currency is the Kenyan shilling (Sh, KES). That currency appears nowhere else on this list.

Its internet country code is .ke. Calls from overseas start with +254. Standard country codes: ke and KEN.

Nairobi is the seat of government and the answer most quizzes are looking for.

It holds a seat at the United Nations, one of 192 entries here that do. The other 57 entries are territories, dependencies or observers, which is why totals on this site run to 249 rather than the familiar 195.