A former British
colony, Kenya gained its independence in 1963, and since then the country has become one
of the more economically advanced countries in Sub-saharan Africa. The economy is based
mainly on tourism and the export of a wide range of agricultural and manufactured goods.
Tea is the primary export, followed by coffee and other commodities such as cut flowers
for export to the European market and livestock products. Kenya has a well-developed
tourist infrastructure and the tourism sector is the largest source of foreign exchange.
Since its independence
in 1963, the country has only seen one change of leadership when the incumbent President
Daniel Arap Moi succeeded President Jomo Kenyatta in 1978. Despite the restoration of
multiparty system in 1990 and the elections which took place in 1992 and 1997, the ruling
party KANU still remains in power. The 1997 election results have been rejected by
opposition parties which allege that there was widespread fraud.
The capital city,
Nairobi, is an important provider of commercial and financial services to
neighbouring countries. The second largest city, Mombassa, is the largest cargo-handling
port on Africa's East coast. Together the two form part of a fairly well-developed
transport and telecommunications network. In 1999, the country's telephone network had a
capacity of 384,000 installed lines and had over 304,600 lines already connected resulting
in a telephone density of 1.03 line per hundred population. As in most Sub-saharan African
countries, the penetration of telephone is highly biased toward the largest cities. The
rest of the country has a teledensity of only 0.47. The Kenya Posts and Telecommunications
Corporation (KPTC), which is the sole provider of postal and telecommunications
infrastructure and services, is expected to undergo a major restructuring and
modernisation process following the drafting of a communication bill by the government.
Hopefully, this will result in improvements in rural telecommunications.
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