About us

The British Council is the UK’s international organisation for cultural relations and educational opportunities.

We create friendly knowledge and understanding between the people of the UK and other countries.

We do this by making a positive contribution to the UK and the countries we work with – changing lives by creating opportunities, building connections and engendering trust.

We work with over 100 countries across the world in the fields of arts and culture, English language, education and civil society.

Each year we reach over 20 million people face-to-face and more than 500 million people online, via broadcasts and publications.

Founded in 1934, we are a UK charity governed by Royal Charter and a UK public body.

The British Council in Kenya

The British Council Kenya was established in 1947 as a library that provided study opportunities for Kenyan students and educators. Every year, we reach out to thousands of students, educators, policymakers, academics, researchers, creatives and entrepreneurs in Kenya.

As demand for further study and access to UK educational opportunities grew, the British Council Kenya began a UK exams service and started offering UK scholarships programmes.

Today we have thriving exams and professional communication services that are run from our offices in Nairobi. Besides these paid-for services, we continue to offer opportunities to Kenyans through our programmes in the arts, schools, higher education, English language teaching and social development. For more information about these areas of work and specific projects we are involved with, please browse the ‘Our work in arts, education and society‘ section of this website.

With 47 million Kenyans, many of them young, and growing economic opportunities, we believe our work in cultural relations plays a key role in sustaining the cordial relationship between Kenya and the UK. Over the coming years, we will continue to focus our work on building capacity in education, supporting the development of thriving, sustainable creative industries and building the capacity of young people to make a positive contribution to Kenya.