Homa Bay

Homa Bay is a bay and town on the south shore of Winam Gulf of Lake Victoria, in western Kenya. It lies near Mount Homa (in the Luo language "Got Uma" or "God Marahuma" ["famous mountain"] ) and Ruma National Park, the latter noted for Jackson's hartebeests and roan antelope (the government has also released reticulated giraffes into the park).

Homa Bay was once the District Headquarters for all of South Nyanza Province, but that has now been divided into at least three districts. Homa Bay is now capital of the Homa Bay District. Homa Bay hosts a municipal council. The municipality has an urban population of 32,174 and a total population of 55,532 (1999 census [Kenya National Bureau of Statistics: [http://treasury.go.ke/cbs.go.ke/pdf/authority.pdf "Population of local authorities"] ] ).

Homa Bay municipality has six wards (Central, Kalanya, Kanyabala, Kanyadier/Kothidha, Katuma and Posta/Bonde). All of them belong to Rangwe Constituency, which has a total of fourteen wards. The remaining eight are located within Homa Bay County Council, the rural council of Homa Bay District [Electoral Commission of Kenya: [http://www.eck.or.ke/downloads/pollingcentres.pdf "Registration centres by electoral area and constituency"] ] .

Recent archaeological excavations in Kanjera South, located on the Homa Peninsula have yieldeda combination of artefacts of the Oldowan culture and well preserved faunal remains in a sedimentary context thatalso allows for environmental reconstruction. The earlier findings by Louis Leakey and others include fragments of four anatomically modern humans associated with Pleistocene mammal fossils. [L. C. Bishop et al., Recent Research into Oldowan Hominin Activities at Kanjera South,Western Kenya. Afr Archaeol Rev (2006) 23:31–40]

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