ABSTRACT
East Africa includes nine countries (Sudan, Ethiopia, Uganda, Somalia, Djibouti, Rwanda, Burundi, Kenya and Tanzania) and has a population of just under 120 million, although only a minority can speak English. Contact with English goes back to the late sixteenth century, but it was not until the nineteenth century that a large community of English-speaking expatriates settled in the area. Many of these settler families have remained in Kenya and this nucleus of mother-tongue English speakers has been reinforced in the present century by expatriates on short-term contracts.
