 | ||
The Mombasa Republic is a proposed state that encompasses the Coast Province of Kenya. The Mombasa Republican Council in the main organisation to raise claims that Mombasa should secede from Kenya to become an independent state. They argued that secession would liberate the people of the coast province from marginalization by the successive governments in Kenya. The slogan they are using is Pwani Si Kenya ("The Coast is not Kenya").
History
The Mombasa Republican Council was formed in 1999 to address perceived political and economic discrimination against the people of the coast province. The group traces its secession claims to the 1895 and 1963 agreements transferring the ten-mile strip of land along the coast to the Government of Kenya from Zanzibar. Some critics characterize these British agreements as a form of bribery designed to facilitate colonization of the interior. The group contests these agreements as invalid, because they were enacted without the consent of coastal stakeholders, and says the state of Kenya has failed to honor the provisions designed to protect the coastal population.