Nairobi takes its name from a water hole known to the Maasai people as Enkare Nairobi (“Cold Water”). Before the late 1890s, the city was an uninhabited swamp that was chosen for its network of rivers and high elevation as a colonial railway settlement. Since then, Nairobi continued to flourish and replaced Mombasa as the capital of the British East Africa Protectorate. As a governmental center, the city attracted a stream of migrants from rural Kenya that made it one of the largest cities in tropical Africa. When Kenya gained independence in 1963, Nairobi remained the capital and the new constitution expanded the city’s municipal area, which became an independent unit administered by the Nairobi City Council
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