Kenya, officially the Republic of Kenya, is a country in East Africa that lies on the equator. With the Indian Ocean to its south-east, it is bordered by Tanzania to the south, Uganda to the west, South Sudan to the north-west, Ethiopia to the north and Somalia to the north-east. Kenya has a land area of 580,000 km and a population of a little over 43 million residents. The country is named after Mount Kenya, a significant landmark and second among Africa's highest mountain peaks. Its capital and largest city is Nairobi.
Kenya has a warm and humid climate along its coastline on the Indian Ocean, which changes to wildlife-rich savannah grasslands moving inland towards the capital. Nairobi has a cool climate that gets colder approaching Mount Kenya, which has three permanently snow-capped peaks. The warm and humid tropical climate reappears further inland towards lake Victoria, before giving way to temperate forested and hilly areas in the western region. The North Eastern regions along the border with Somalia and Ethiopia are arid and semi-arid areas with near-desert landscapes. Lake Victoria, the world's second largest fresh-water lake (after Lake Superior in the US and Canada) and the world's largest tropical lake, is situated to the southwest and is shared with Uganda and Tanzania. Kenya is famous for its safaris and diverse world-famous wildlife reserves such as the East and West Tsavo National Park, the Maasai Mara, Nakuru National Park, and Aberdares National Park.
The African Great Lakes region, of which Kenya is a part, has seen human habitation since the Lower Paleolithic period. The Bantu expansion reached the area from West-Central Africa by the first millennium AD, and the borders of the modern state comprise the crossroads of the Niger-Congo, Nilo-Saharan and Afro-Asiatic ethno-linguistic areas of the continent, making Kenya a truly multi-cultural country. European and Arab presence in Mombasa dates to the Early Modern period,
