Census: Kenya has 38.6m people

There are 38,610,097 people in Kenya, according to the official 2009 population census figures released on Tuesday.

Out of these, men and women seem to have struck a balance, nearly, with 19,192,458 being male and 19,417,639 female.

Releasing the results on Tuesday in Nairobi, Planning minister Wycliffe Oparanya, however, said a repeat census has been ordered in eight districts after inconsistencies were noted in the population data for areas in northern Kenya.

The districts affected are Lagdera, Wajir East, Mandera Central, Mandera East, Mandera West, Turkana Central, Turkana North, and Turkana South.

Mr Oparanya said the inconsistencies in these regions were arising from the rate of population increase being higher than what birth and death rates would support, and age and sex profiles deviating from normal.

Releasing the census data exactly a year after the count, Mr Oparanya said the results are phased in different categories including: by administrative units, political units, by age and gender, and by cultural and socio-economic clusters.

Ethnic

Notably, the results include figures by ethnic and religious affiliation.

According to the census, the top ethnic communities by numbers are Kikuyu at 6.62 million, Luhya 5.33 million, the Kalenjin at 4.96 million, and Luo 4.04 million,

Others are Kamba (3.89 million), Kenyan Somali (2.38 million), Kisii (2.21 million), Mijikenda (1.96 million), Meru (1.65 million), Turkana (0.99 million), Maasai (0.84 million), Teso (0.33 million) and Embu (0.32 million) among others.

The census results indicate that Protestants churches enjoy the biggest following in the country, with 18.3 million followers.
They are followed by the Catholic Church with 9,010,684 followers while other Christian churches account for 4,559,584 followers.

The Muslim population in the country stands at 4,304,798 while that of Hindus is 53,393.

The last census in 1999 showed the number of Kenyans at 28.7 million, representing a growth of 10 million people within a decade.

On Monday, Mr Oparanya said giving the population of ethnic and religious groups should be taken positively because it will assist in general national development plans.

He said that, for the first time, population growth would be captured at intervals of five years, a development he said will make it easy to capture the data of both the young and the elderly.