Modern ethnicities Diaspora Performing arts Government agencies Television Radio Newspapers Mijikenda ("the Nine Tribes") are a group of nine related Bantu ethnic groups inhabiting the coast of Kenya, between the Sabaki and the Umba rivers, in an area stretching from the border with Tanzania in the south to the border near Somalia in the north.

Archaeologist Chapuruka Kusimba contends that the Mijikenda formerly resided in coastal cities, but later settled in Kenya's hinterlands to avoid submission to dominant Portuguese forces that were then in control.

The nine Ethnic groups that make up the Mijikenda peoples are the Chonyi, Kambe, Duruma, Kauma, Ribe, Rabai, Jibana, Giriama, and Digo.

[4] Mijikenda people are also known for creating wooden kigango funerary statues which have been displayed in museums around the world and sold in the international art market.

Sometime during the late 19th century the Mijikenda peoples began leaving their kaya homesteads and settling areas elsewhere.

The Coastal strip of land near the Hinterlands was recognized as belonging to the Sultan of Oman, subsequently the Mijikenda people could only go there as squatters and were in danger of expulsion at any time.

[10] Differing accounts of this period exist, with some sources stating that these enslaved Giriama peoples participated in a complex patron-client relationship which was important for the establishment of large scale plantations on the East African coast.

[11] This account goes on to say that these enslaved Giriama peoples were integrated into Swahili and Arab land owning families and were sometimes referred to as dependents rather than slaves.

As slave ownership declined on the East African coast many of the Ex-slaves moved on to find employment as manual laborers on their former master's plantations and were paid a portion of the crop as compensation in a similar patron-client relationship as before.

Additionally the idea that the transition from ex-slaves to manual laborers was made difficult due to fear among members of the colonial government that the fugitive and freed slaves would start a rebellion.