Washington Independent: Two Experts point out problems with Kenyan BC

From the Washington Independent

Update: Two British professors who specialize in African history have e-mailed Salon to point out another apparent error in the purportedly Kenyan document. The certificate’s header reads Coast Province — but according to the professors, at the time the document is dated, what are now known as provinces were called regions.

Writes Dan Branch, an assistant professor of African history at the University of Warwick:

It seems highly implausible and certainly a hoax. I have not seen any documents from this period in early 1964 that uses the heading of Republic of Kenya — unsurprisingly given Kenya was not a Republic until December 1964. Moreover, the label of ‘Region’ was being used in early 1964 instead of ‘Province.’ While some of the old colonial forms may have still been in circulation, which would have used ‘Coast Province,’ these would have been headed as ‘Colony & Protectorate of Kenya.’

As for his qualifications to judge the document and the header on it, Branch e-mails, “I”ve been working in the Kenyan archives on late-colonial and post-colonial history for the past eight years.”