Meru municipality is located on the high-altitude North-East slopes of Mount Kenya, approximately 8Km North of the Equator. It is at latitude 0O 3’N and longitude 37O39’E and lies at an altitude of approximately 1640m above sea level. It is within Kenya’s Eastern region, approximately 250Km from Nairobi.
The growth of Meru municipality at its current site started in the colonial period, when it’s first District Commissioner, E. B. Horne made his camp there in 1910. The Meru people were already settled in the area but the exact locations of their settlements are undocumented. Later on, the Methodist Church was allocated land in Kaaga area with the arrival of the first two missionaries, Reverend RT Worthngton and Frank Mimmack and that formed the second node of urban development. Governor sir Edward Brandis Denham appointed the first 20-member Meru native council necessitating the construction of the first local native council house in 1926 at an estimated cost of 2000 East African Shilling. In 1950, Governor sir Fredrick Crawford declared Meru a native land unit. The colonial minister for local government in 1962 appointed a 10-member advisory council to serve in the township committee under the chairmanship of Mr GN Cooke, this council was later replaced by urban council in 1963, with councilor Jeremiah Kanyamu assuming the chairmanship.
In 1971 Meru became the only municipality to be established outside provincial headquarters with an extended area covering 207km2 from the initial 2km2. The Old town outgrew its boundaries and Kaaga developed into more than just a church mission area. Today, Meru Municipality is one of Kenya’s leading urban centers. It is the headquarters of Meru County. The notable developments are the Gazettement of Meru town council in the 1960s and later as a municipality in 1972.
In 2010 Kenya entered a new chapter in its historical evolution whereby a new constitutional dispensation was availed. Therefore, the new constitution replaced the old one. This repealed among others the Local Government Act cap 265 from where the municipal and county councils had been anchored.
The 2010 Kenyan constitution gave a provision for enactment of a new legal and regulatory framework that would spell among others, how urban centers would be established and managed in Kenya. The Urban Areas and Cities Act (UACA) became that statutory framework. The act broadly categorizes urban areas as Cities, Municipalities, Towns and Markets. Under this act Meru again met the threshold for Municipality status by two virtues: being a County capital as well as its population size.
It is based on this that in the year 2018, through a County Assembly resolution, the Meru Governor conferred the status of a Municipality to Meru town by granting it a municipal charter. This culminated to the establishment of the first Meru municipality board and recruitment of the first municipal manager as the very fundamental aspects to institutionalize the municipality of Meru.
The Meru municipality has both exotic and natural vegetation. The natural vegetation is found in the forest which makes up about 30% of the municipality and it has common indigenous trees which include the meru oak, camphor, cedar and croton. In addition, some parts of the forest have exotic tree species cash crops and food crops grown in the area thus forming part of the vegetation. Examples of food and cash crops include banana, coffee, tea, maize, fodder crops and others.
