President Uhuru Kenyatta Wednesday toured Kwale County where he issued national identification cards to the Makonde people, who are originally from Mozambique.
They were given the cards to enable them register in the ongoing mass voter registration exercise.
The Makondes staged a successful walk to State House Nairobi last year to protest being stateless despite living at the coastal strip for decades.
The Makondes, who number about 1000, are a small tribe that originated from Mozambique in the 1950s to work in the sisal farms along the coast.
This comes just weeks after the community complained over the delay in the issuance of their Identity cards after they were recognized as the 43rd ethnicity in Kenya.
The community was worried that they could miss out in the voter registration exercise, despite the fact that President Kenyatta had issued a directive to the Interior Ministry to issue the community with IDs before December 2015
Following the directive, Interior Cabinet Secretary Joseph Nkaissery launched the process of identifying the community as Kenyan on 25th October last year and promised to issue them with IDs before Christmas last year.
A visit to the Makongeni village in Kwale County which hosts the largest number of the Makonde community showed a dejected people who were eager to register as voters for the first time.