About 1 percent of the population consists of Asians, Europeans, and Arabs, many of whom have been citizens for generations. The largest ethnic groups are the Bantu-speaking Kikuyu, Luhya, and Kamba. Today Kiswahili, a mixture of Bantu, Arabic, Asian, and European vocabulary and structures, is an official language of Kenya, as is English. Kikuyu and Luo are widely used as well. They are nomadic, seeking grazing and water for their cattle.
Cattle are the center of Masai life, the group's only recognized form of wealth.
The Kikuyu are a Bantu-speaking people who make up the largest tribal group in Kenya. Traditionally an agricultural people, the Kikuyu long resided in separate family homesteads raising crops of millet, beans, peas, and sweet potatoes. In these family homesteads, the basic social unit has consisted of a patrilineal, polygamous group of males and their wives and children. During the early 1950s the Kikuyu led the Mau Mau Rebellion, which aimed to overthrow the British colonial government. The Kikuyu leader of that movement, Jomo Kenyatta, was elected prime minister after Kenya gained its independence in 1963.