An earlier re-examination of the old controversy over Kipsigis and Nandi age-set transitions (Daniels 1976) raised issues of general significance concerning pre-colonial and current social processes among the Kalenjin. The list of colonial 'tribes' does not represent a series of equivalent, bounded polities; a critical question for determining larger Kalenjin social entities is the extent to which local groups coordinated their actions concerning the major institution of large-scale integration, the system of cyclical age-sets or ibinwek. The literature indicates that among the main groups four have retained eight age-sets while three have dropped one out to make a cycle of seven. Nonetheless the central groups were all reported to have initiated the same age-set in the first decade of this century while the outlying groups were one, or at most two, steps out of phase. Such synchronization suggests that most or all Kalenjin groups constituted not merely an ethnolinguistic category but a single information-sharing social system, obscured by the colonial categorizations which still hinder anthropological studies. Greater coordination among researchers is required, as well as greater comparability in future data collection.

The Kalenjin of Kenya are constituted by about eight ethnic groups which share the word 'kale' which translates roughly to 'I say'.