This archive report was first published on 10 December 2019.
On December 10, 2019, Business Daily columnist Douglas Kiereini made a claim that Kenya's boundaries were determined in a Berlin Boardroom in 1885. However, this claim is incorrect.
The Berlin Conference, held on February 26, 1885, established 'spheres of influence' in East Africa, but it did not determine the physical boundaries of the region. The conference covered a large area, including the Congo Basin, East Africa, and parts of what are now Angola and Mozambique.
After the Berlin Conference, the British and German governments negotiated an agreement in November 1886, which determined the border between their 'spheres of influence' in East Africa. This border, running from the eastern shore of Lake Victoria to the mouth of the Umba River, divided the region into British East Africa to the north and German East Africa to the south.
However, the Anglo-German Agreement of 1886 did not determine any border west of Lake Victoria. The Germans attempted to outflank the British in what is now Uganda by means of a proposed expedition in 1887 to rescue Emin Pasha, a German citizen in the service of Egypt, who had been cut off on the Upper White Nile.
Henry Morton Stanley relieved Emin Pasha on the Nile in 1888, and the Germans' plan to establish military occupation posts in what is today South Sudan was overtaken by events.
The Germans also attempted to outflank the British in the British sphere of influence by establishing a German trading company and a Protectorate at Witu at the mouth of the Tana River. However, these attempts were eventually blocked by an agreement between the Imperial British East Africa Company and the Sultan of Zanzibar concerning the 'Coastal Strip.'
The Germans were also frozen out by an agreement between the Company and the Italian Government, which transferred ports along the Somali Coast to Italian control with the Sultan's consent. The border between British East Africa and Italian East Africa was agreed by an Anglo-Italian Protocol signed in Rome in March 1891.
When the British Government took over from the IBEA and started to build the railway from Mombasa to Lake Victoria in 1896, it was called the Uganda Railway for a reason: it was the railway to Uganda and the original terminus at Port Florence (today's Kisumu) was in Uganda.
Only later, when white settlers came to understand the economic potential of the Uasin Gishu Plateau, the Kericho Highlands, and the Mau Forests, did the British Government cynically move the eastern Uganda border to its current location, in order to provide more highland land in what was then Kenya Colony for white settlement.
Patrick Gilbert-Hopkins, a retired teacher in Nairobi, notes that the actual physical boundaries of Kenya were determined and adjusted later.
