Mount Kenya

Africa's second-highest mountain, an extinct volcano with glaciers just south of the equator.

It is a volcano, created about 3 million years after the opening of the East African Rift. Before ice shaped it, it was about 7,000 metres high. An ice cap covered it for thousands of years and wore away its slopes, leaving many valleys running down from the peak. Mount Kenya National Park was set up in 1949, and the park and its forest became a UNESCO World Heritage Site in 1997.

Ice and life

There are 11 small glaciers left, shrinking rapidly, and they may disappear by 2050. The forested slopes are an important source of water for much of Kenya. Different belts of plants grow from the base to the peak. Many alpine species live only here, such as giant lobelias and senecios and a local subspecies of rock hyrax. The park receives over 16,000 visitors a year.

The mountain in local culture

The Kikuyu, Meru, Embu and Maasai peoples live around the mountain, and it is important to all of them. The Kikuyu believe that God, Ngai, lives on the mountain, and they built their houses with the doors facing it. Their name Kirinyaga means the one with the ostrich, because a bending ostrich with a white tail looks like the snowy peak. The Maasai name, Ol Donyo Keri, means mountain of stripes, from the dark shades seen from the plains.

How it got its name

The missionary Johann Ludwig Krapf sighted the mountain from Kitui and was given the Kamba name Ki nyaa, which he wrote down as Kenya. That became the name of the mountain and then of the whole country.

On the globe

The model shows the jagged volcanic peaks with their snowy tops close to the equator.