AbstractA summary of the history of geodetic control surveys in Kenya is given and this is related to a geodetic datum. Determination of datum transformation parameters is carried out for the 7-parameter and 3-parameter models using 25 points distributed over the country. The determined parameters relate the local Arc Datum (1960) on Clarke 1880 ellipsoid to the Satellite Geocentric Datum on WGS 72 ellipsoid and the values of the translation parameters are−179·1 m,−39·7 m and−304·1 m in the X, Yand Z axes respectively, with a scale parameter error of about−0·3 ppm and the rotation parameters are less than 1″of arc for each axis.