The Clubs of Nairobi

A century and a quarter of Clubland history

Once swamp-land inhabited by the Akamba, Kikuyu, and Maasai people, modern-day Nairobi was founded in 1899 by the British forcibly resettling the existing population, and opening a railway depot on the site. The colony rapidly grew from this modest base, and by 1905 it was declared the capital of British East Africa (the previous capital having been Mombasa). In 1920, with the reconstitution of British East Africa as the colony of Kenya, Nairobi continued to be the capital - and has remained so with the onset of Kenyan independence from 1963.

The British brought with them the imperial club model, which had already flourished in serving the ruling elite in other colonies such as Australia, India, New Zealand, Singapore and South Africa; and clubs were set up by the British from Nairobi’s very earliest days as a colony. A number of them survive - as they do across Kenya as a whole today, with dozens of colonial-era clubs found in at least nine of the country’s counties. But unsurprisingly, Nairobi contains Kenya’s highest concentration of clubs. There is also one major modern club, set up just over a decade ago.

The Nairobi Club today. (Source: Nairobi Club website.)

The city’s oldest club is the appropriately-named Nairobi Club, which opened in 1901, to cater to colonial administrators with its sporting and social facilities. Located downtown in what is now the city centre, it follows the gymkhana model so popular in British colonies of the era, offering sports including snooker, squash, tennis, bowls and swimming. It still occupies its original stone building, though has been heavily modified in subsequent decades.

The Parklands Sports Club’s present premises. (Source: Parklands Sports Club website.)

With demand for the Nairobi Club being high, Edwardian-era Nairobi experienced a modest club “boom” once the city had become a capital, and the next club dating from this time was the Parklands Sports Club, founded in 1906 by eleven British colonists, with a Mr F. Watkins serving as its first president. Parklands was a northern white suburb popular with British civil servants at the time, which was named after the nearby City Park. The Club occupies a 22-acre site. Its first clubhouse was “a wooden and iron sheet shack”, followed by “a small corrugated iron hut where most of the paperwork was done.” In 1932, the Club opened its present clubhouse, built of stone. It was in the 1980s that it became a multi-racial club, which now admits women.

The current clubhouse of the Royal Nairobi Golf Club. (Source: Royal Nairobi Golf Club website.)

The Royal Nairobi Golf Club was also founded in 1906. Located slightly west of downtown, it opened as a 9-hole golf course, though has since expanded into an 18-hole course. Although it is Kenya’s oldest surviving golf club, it was only the third to be set up in the capital, the other two having since closed. Since 1924, it has been hosting the Tannahill Shield Easter Tournament, Kenya’s oldest inter-club amateur Golf tournament. It was granted a Royal charter in 1936 by King George V.

The pool in front of the historic building of the Muthaiga Country Club. (Source: Muthaiga Country Club facebook group.)

Probably Kenya’s most famous - or infamous - club is the Muthaiga Country Club, which opened in the north-east suburb of Muthaiga in 1913. Founded by Anglo-Irish aristocrats in the colony, including the 4th Earl of Enniskillen and the Hon. Berkeley Cole, the Club came to be synonymous by the inter-war and World War II years with hedonistic excess and debauchery among the Happy Valley set of colonists - an image immortalised in the books such as Out of Africa, and White Mischief. It is altogether rather more genteel these days.

The Muthaiga Golf Club today. (Source: Pulse Sports Kenya.)

Once the newly-christened Kenya had had its colonial status confirmed in the reforms of 1920, the colonists eagerly set about founding a flurry of inter-war clubs. Among these were the Muthaiga Golf Club, which claims a foundation date of 1922, and is close to the eponymous country club. Although it would come to rival the Royal Nairobi Golf Club with its 18-hole Championship golf course, its beginnings were humble, as an informal tournament among colonists. It was only with incorporation in 1943 that it would begin to be transformed into a much larger institution.

The Aero Club of East Africa. (Picture credit: Tripadvisor.)

The Aero Club of East Africa, founded in 1927 by 24 locally-based pilots, provided an important meeting-point for aviators at a time when air travel was still evolving in the region. Originally based at Dagoretti airstrip under the name of the Aero Club of Kenya, it asumed its present name within 9 months of operations, and moved to its present site in 1929. It corresponded with the Royal Aero Club of London. The clubhouse and aerodrome were seized for official use by the British government during World War II, but was returned to the Club in 1947. Since 2013, the Club’s restaurant has also been open to the general public.

The members’ grandstand of the Nairobi Gymkhana. (Picture credit: ESPNcricinfo)

The Nairobi Gymkhana was founded as a cricket club in 1929, and remains the country’s premier cricket ground. The land was allocated by the then-Governor of Kenya. The explosion of popularity experienced by cricket in Kenya in the 1990s saw a major expansion of the public-facing ground attached to the Club, which has a 7,000-capacity stadium.

The Karen Country Club. (Picture credit: Karen Country Club website.)

Further out in the leafy southwestern suburb of Karen is the Karen Country Club, Nairobi, founded as a golf club in 1937. Located close to the old house of the area’s namesake, Karen Blixen (prior to 1963, the area was Ngong County), it is a residential gymkhana club.

The United Kenya Club. (Picture credit: Wikimedia Foundation.)

A rare example of a post-war Nairobi club, the United Kenya Club, was founded in 1946 by local intellectuals who advocated for a multiracial Kenya. From the beginning, it embraced African, Asian and European members, and a number of its early members were involved in the Kenyan independence movement.

Kenya’s troubled transition to independence in the decade following the Mau-Mau rebellion saw much political and economic instability; and the granting of independence in 1963 saw a range of responses among the clubs dominated by white Europeans - these varied from opening up to African members overnight, to holding out against integration until the 1980s. However, with a new membership, most of the historic clubs adapted and survived - thrived, even; drawing on their unique cultural history.

The Capital Club East Africa. (Picture credit: The Real Kenya wordpress blog.)

A rare example of a modern club which has opened in the city is the Capital Club East Africa, which launched in 2014. This is part of the Signature Clubs International mini-chain, of clubs which spans Africa (with another branch in Lagos, and a former branch in Cairo) and the Middle East (with branches in Dubai and Bahrain). As with its branches elsewhere, its focus is on the city’s finance professionals.

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