According to local history the name of town comes from a slave trader called Chief Kivoi who settled near the Voi river about 400 hundred years ago. There after the town grew as a trade post between the local Taita people, other Kenyan tribes and Arabs.
The town started to grow at the end of the 19th century when the Kenya-Uganda railway was constructed. People started to move in to work on the railway and the near by sisal estates