Zheng He's fleet

Early Chinese mariners had a variety of contacts with Kenya. Archaeologists have found Chinese porcelains made during the Tang dynasty (618–907) in Kenyan villages; however, these were believed to have been brought over by Zheng He during his 15th century ocean voyages.^[3] On Lamu Island off the Kenyan coast, local oral tradition maintains that 20 shipwrecked Chinese sailors with 400 survivors,^[4] possibly part of Zheng's fleet, washed up on shore there hundreds of years ago. Given permission to settle by local tribes after having killed a dangerous python, they converted to Islam and married local women. Now, they are believed to have just six descendants left there; in 2002, DNA tests conducted on one of the women confirmed that she was of Chinese descent. Her daughter, Mwamaka Sharifu, later received a PRC government scholarship to study traditional Chinese medicine (TCM) in China.^[5][6][7]

On Pate Island, Frank Viviano described in a July 2005 National Geographic article how ceramic fragments had been found around Lamu which the administrative officer of the local Swahili history museum claimed were of Chinese origin, specifically from Zheng He's voyage to east Africa. The eyes of the Pate people resembled Chinese and Famao and Wei were some of the names among them which were speculated to be of Chinese origin. Their ancestors were said to be from indigenous women who intermarried with Chinese Ming sailors when they were shipwrecked. Two places on Pate were called "Old Shanga", and "New Shanga", which the Chinese sailors had named. A local guide who claimed descent from the Chinese showed Frank a graveyard made out of coral on the island, indicating that they were the graves of the Chinese sailors, which the author described as "virtually identical" to Chinese Ming dynasty tombs, complete with "half-moon domes" and "terraced entries".^[8]

Modern migration

The modern wave of Chinese migration to Kenya dates back to the late 20th century. As recently as 1996, there were few Chinese in Kenya, and the capital Nairobi had only one Chinese restaurant, but by 2007, the city boasted an estimated forty Chinese restaurants, largely opened by expatriates from mainland China.^[9] Most have settled in the area around the Chinese embassy, which is located near the State House and the Defence Headquarters, in a relatively high-security part of the city.^[2] There are also some Chinese in the coastal city of Mombasa. Restaurants and TCM clinics are two popular lines of business for Chinese in the city.^[10] Chinese in various parts of the country also run import/export businesses, with products as varied as computers, glassware, and automobile parts for import, and shark fins for export.^[10][2][11]

Recent Chinese migrants cite Kenya's relative stability and high rate of growth as factors in choosing it as their destination. However, many of them consisted of middle-aged people, as younger migrants preferred destinations in Europe or the United States.^[12] In total, estimates published in popular media from 2006 through 2008 place the number of Chinese in Kenya at anywhere between 3,000 and 10,000 people.^[9][12][13]

New interest in Kenya's natural resources has attracted over $1 billion of investment from Chinese firms. This has propelled new development in Kenya's infrastructure with Chinese firms bringing in their own male workers to build roads.^[14] The temporary residents usually arrive without their spouses and families. Thus, a rise of incidents involving local college-aged females has resulted in an increased rate of Afro-Chinese infant births to single Kenyan mothers.^[15]

In Kenya there is a trend of the following influx of Chinese male workers in Kenya with a growing number of abandoned babies of Chinese men who fathered children with local women, causing concern.^[16][17]

Chinatowns

There are several Chinatowns in the capital city of Nairobi. Most of them are low profile as some complain that the Chinese establishments were "Catering only to the Chinese community".