Sagana State Lodge is a Kenyan state lodge, located in

Kiganjo Kiganjo is a small town in Kenya's Nyeri county. It hosts the Kenya Police College which is Kenya's main college for police training. Kiganjo also hosts one of the Kenya Cooperative Creameries KCC (now New KCC) and a milk depot for the Brookside M ...

town in

Nyeri County Nyeri County is a county located in the central region of Kenya. Its capital and largest town is Nyeri. It has a population of 759,164 and an area of 2361 km2. It is currently under the leadership of H.E. Governor Mutahi Kahiga. Other gov ...

, on the foothills of

Mount Kenya Mount Kenya ( Kikuyu: ''Kĩrĩnyaga'', Kamba, ''Ki Nyaa'') is the highest mountain in Kenya and the second-highest in Africa, after Kilimanjaro. The highest peaks of the mountain are Batian (), Nelion () and Point Lenana (). Mount Kenya is loc ...

. The lodge is used by the President when on official tours of the country.

History

Colonial history

Sagana Lodge was built in 1949–1950 as a royal residence. It was a wedding present in 1947 to the Duke and Duchess of Edinburgh (later the Duke of Edinburgh and Queen

Elizabeth II Elizabeth II (Elizabeth Alexandra Mary; 21 April 1926 – 8 September 2022) was Queen of the United Kingdom and other Commonwealth realms from 6 February 1952 until her death in 2022. She was queen regnant of 32 sovereign states during ...

respectively) from the colony whilst they were in Kenya. The lodge was leased to the couple by the government of Kenya. In 1952 the Duke and Duchess of Edinburgh were staying at Sagana Lodge upon their return from Treetops Hotel. The beginning of the

Mau Mau Rebellion The Mau Mau rebellion (1952–1960), also known as the Mau Mau uprising, Mau Mau revolt or Kenya Emergency, was a war in the British Kenya Colony (1920–1963) between the Kenya Land and Freedom Army (KLFA), also known as the ''Mau Mau'', ...

had made Kenya less secure and Ian Henderson, of Kenya Police Force Special Branch, was appointed head of the security detail at Sagana Lodge. While staying at Sagana Lodge, Elizabeth received the news that her father King

George VI George VI (Albert Frederick Arthur George; 14 December 1895 – 6 February 1952) was King of the United Kingdom and the Dominions of the British Commonwealth from 11 December 1936 until his death in 1952. He was also the last Emperor of Indi ...

had died and she had succeeded to the throne as Queen

. This was a unique circumstance for such an event. She was the first

British monarch The monarchy of the United Kingdom, commonly referred to as the British monarchy, is the constitutional form of government by which a hereditary sovereign reigns as the head of state of the United Kingdom, the Crown Dependencies (the Baili ...

since the accession of

George I George I or 1 may refer to: People * Patriarch George I of Alexandria (fl. 621–631) * George I of Constantinople (d. 686) * George I of Antioch (d. 790) * George I of Abkhazia (ruled 872/3–878/9) * George I of Georgia (d. 1027) * Yuri Dol ...

to be outside Great Britain at the moment of succession, and also the first in modern times not to know the exact time of her accession (because her father had died in his sleep at an unknown time).

Post-colonial history

The lease to Sagana Lodge was returned to Kenya in 1963. In 1976, it, along with several other official residences of the President of Kenya, were declared protected zones. The lodge's most prominent use, in independent Kenya's history was when

Mwai Kibaki Emilio Stanley Mwai Kibaki (15 November 1931 – 21 April 2022) was a Kenyan politician who served as the third President of Kenya from December 2002 until April 2013 and is regarded as one of Kenya's founding fathers. He had previously ser ...

, then the president of Kenya, and

Raila Odinga Raila Amolo Odinga (born 7 January 1945) is a Kenyan politician, former Member of Parliament (MP) for Langata and businessman who served as the Prime Minister of Kenya from 2008 to 2013. He is assumed to be the Leader of Opposition in Kenya s ...

, used the site as a retreat to come to agreement on Kenya's

grand coalition A grand coalition is an arrangement in a multi-party parliamentary system in which the two largest political parties of opposing political ideologies unite in a coalition government. The term is most commonly used in countries where there are t ...

government.

References

Houses completed in 1950 History of Kenya British Kenya Official residences in Kenya Wedding of Princess Elizabeth and Philip Mountbatten {{Kenya-struct-stub