Kakamega

0.2847222222222234.753333333333Koordinaten: 0 ° 17 ' N, 34 ° 45 ' E

Kakamega in Kenya is rather unremarkable, capital of the Western Province with 92 081 inhabitants ( 2005) and a lively market. The city is located about 60 km north of Kisumu on Lake Victoria directly at the equator on a rock -strewn plateau with lots of rain, mosquitoes and very fertile land.

In 1930 the city was the center of a short-lived gold rush. Even today laboriously minute amounts of gold are washed out of the ground in a small, dilapidated gold mine.

In addition to the usual administrative institutions such as provincial government, hospital, post office and prison, Kakamega has a 9 - hole golf course ( with Golf Hotel), a stadium, an AIDS orphanage and several churches.

Most residents of the city are Luhya. The birth of this region but was now fallen to 4.2 years, the highest in the world, to 2.9.

Roman Catholic bishop in the diocese of Kakamega, since 1972, Philip Sulumeti, which was separated from today's Archdiocese of Kisumu.

Since 2005, the Kakamega College was upgraded to university with agricultural and environmental focus. Since December 2006, there are now " Masinde Muliro University of Science and Technology" ( MMUST ). It is currently (2009) by Vice-Chancellor Prof. Barasa CC Wangila passed.

In the immediate vicinity of the town is the very last piece of rain forest that extends from the Congo via Uganda in a narrow tip to Kenya and as " Kakamega Forest National Reserve" enjoys a weak protection. In this forest since 2001 operates the BIOTA project for the preservation of the rainforest.