Situated in Mkomani and close to English Point, the monument is named after Johann Ludwig Krapf, a German missionary, explorer, linguist and scholar born in 1810. Dr Krapf died in 1881 in Germany aged 71. He studied at the Eberhard Karls University Tubingen from 1929, graduating in 1934. He went to Basel after this where the CMS posted him to Ethiopia in 1937 where he learned Amharic and Arabic. The Abyssinian people were however unwilling to change their brand of Christianity. Foreign missionaries were to be banned form going to Ethiopia from 1944.
The site dates back to 1844 when Dr. Krapf and his wife Rosine arrived in Mombasa via Zanzibar. Sultan Sayyid Said welcomed Krapf, granting him a permit to set up a mission in Mombasa which was by then under the Sultanate of Zanzibar. He had met her in Egypt and she was on missionary work too and they got married in 1842. The couple wit their daughter arrived in Mombasa in 1844 through Zanzibar and their daughter died the same day they arrived due to malaria complications. Rosine and a second daughter died within the same year and the graves are right next to the monument.
The monument is in a little bit of neglect with young boys smoking bhang and hanging around the site.