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Geography & Geology

Kenya straddles the equator and covers an area of some 583,000 sq km, which includes around 13,000 sq km of Lake Victoria. It is bordered to the north by the bush lands and deserts of Ethiopia and Sudan, to the east by the Indian Ocean and the wastes of Somalia, to the west by Uganda and Lake Victoria and to the south by Tanzania.


Kenya is dominated by the Rift valley, a vast range of valleys, rather that a single valley that follows a 500km long crack in the earth’s crust. Within the Rift Valley are numerous “swells” (raised escarpments), “troughs” (deep valleys often containing lakes), and some huge volcanoes including Mt Kenya, Mt Elgon, and Mt Kilimanjaro (across the border in Tanzania). The floor of the Rift Valley is still dropping at the unnoticeable rate of approximately a few millimeters per year. 


The Rift Valley divides the flat plains of the coast from the gentle hills along the lakeshore. Nairobi, the capital, sits in the Central Highlands, which are on the eastern edge of the Rift Valley. The other population centers are Mombasa on the coast, and Kisumu, on the shores of Lake Victoria. Kenya can roughly be divided into four zones: the coastal plains; the Rift Valley and Central Highlands; the lakeshore; and the wastelands of northern Kenya.


The main rivers in Kenya are the Athi/Galana River, which empties into the Indian Ocean near Malindi, and the Tana River, which hits the coast midway between Malindi and Lamu. Aside from Lake Victoria, Kenya has numerous small volcanic lakes and mighty Lake Turkana, known as the Jade Sea which straddles the border of Ethiopia.


Within volcanic craters, and on the Rift Valley floor, are several ”soda lakes” rich in sodium bicarbonate, created by the filtering of water through mineral rich volcanic rock and subsequent evaporation.