Kenya halts trader deportations, shifts to registration after xenophobia backlash

Kenya's government has halted deportations of foreign small-scale traders and begun a 90-day registration process for them to regularise their status, a reversal that came within a week of President William Ruto ordering a crackdown that has produced documented harassment and extortion of foreign traders.

State House spokesperson Hussein Mohamed announced the halt on deportations on 8 September, and government spokesperson Charles Owino set out the details in a video statement, according to Uganda's Daily Monitor. Owino said that during the 90-day window, people undergoing registration "will be presumed legally present in the Republic of Kenya," adding the exercise was "designed to bring our brothers and sisters out of the shadows so that they can access health, banking and legal protection without fear."

Ruto's order named China

The reversal follows an order Ruto gave on 2 September 2026, when he told small-business owners at State House in Nairobi that non-citizens should not compete with Kenyans in hawking, kiosks and small-scale retail, and directed that such foreign-run businesses close from 7 September. "It cannot be that a person comes from China or elsewhere to be a hawker or open a small shop," he said. Kenyan outlet Kenya Times reported the order as targeting Chinese-run shops specifically, and Chinese media outlet Tencent News reported Ruto telling the same gathering that the government would not allow Chinese nationals to open shops selling the same goods as Kenyan micro-traders, and would shut down any that did. Foreign Affairs Principal Secretary Korir Sing'oei pushed back on that framing on 6 September, saying Ruto's remarks, including the reference to China, had been "taken out of context" and were addressed to Parliament's pending Local Content Bill debate, and that foreign nationals holding valid permits and licences remained legally protected.

It is not the first flashpoint over Chinese-linked retail in Nairobi. In February 2023, about 1,000 Kenyan traders protested against China Square, a Chinese-owned supermarket chain, accusing it of undercutting local prices by roughly 45%; the store closed within a month, Kenya's then-investment minister called for its closure, and the Chinese embassy in Nairobi called instead for deepened trade cooperation, according to Radio Free Asia's Mandarin service.

Days of harassment and extortion

Within days of the 7 September deadline, non-Kenyan traders reported harassment across Nairobi, according to the Eastleigh Voice and the Police Reforms Working Group Kenya (PRWG-K), a rights organisation. PRWG-K said the crackdown produced "confusion, targeted operations, intimidation, profiling, extortion and unlawful harassment" of foreign nationals and called for enforcement to be suspended in favour of policy dialogue.

Nairobi police have already charged people over extortion linked to the crackdown. Four suspects — named in court as Peter Macharia Gatena, Lawrence Ireri Karani, Josphat Mburu Kamau and Ruannalice Nyambura Ng'ang'a — appeared at Milimani Law Courts on 9 September accused of demanding KES 200,000 (about US$1,540 at the September 2026 rate of roughly KES 130 to the dollar), "through menaces," from Hussein Yusuf, a foreign national working for a company on River Road, prosecutors said; all four denied that charge and were released on bond. The same four had been arrested two days earlier over a separate, related allegation: police said they posed as a "business community" group and demanded a combined KES 500,000 (about US$3,850) — KES 300,000 from one foreign-owned business and KES 200,000 from another — in the nearby Nyamakima area, under threat of forced closure, according to the Eastleigh Voice. It was not clear, as of 9 September, whether separate charges had been filed over the Nyamakima allegations.

Hundreds of Burundian nationals queued at their embassy in Nairobi seeking emergency travel documents in the days after the order, Semafor Africa reported. In that same first week, the Daily Monitor reported that hundreds of Ugandans, Burundians, Rwandans and Congolese had fled Kenya, with vigilante looting of foreign-owned shops reported in Eastleigh, Dandora and Kisumu; at the Lwakhakha border crossing alone, 200 non-Kenyans crossed into Uganda on Monday 7 September, MP Peter Okeyoh told the paper.

Registration instead of deportation

Facing that backlash, the government paused deportations and opened the 90-day window, coordinated with the embassies of affected countries. Officials said the aim is orderly compliance, not a reprieve from eventual enforcement: after the 90 days, Owino said, "immigration, work-permit, registration and licensing requirements will be enforced firmly and strictly in accordance with the law." The government also said "no individual or group has the authority to harass, intimidate, threaten or interfere with foreign nationals or their businesses" — an implicit acknowledgment of the vigilante activity reported since 7 September.

Legislation still unfinished

The administrative crackdown is running ahead of the law meant to underpin it. Ruto has asked Parliament to expand the Local Content Bill, 2025 — sponsored by Laikipia Woman Representative Jane Kagiri — to list activities reserved for Kenyan citizens, including hawking, kiosks and small-scale retail, the Daily Nation reported. As drafted, the bill would require foreign companies to source 60% of goods and services locally and staff 80% of their workforce with Kenyans, with fines of up to KES 100 million (about US$770,000) and a minimum one-year jail term for company executives who breach the rules. A separate Micro and Small Enterprises (Amendment) Bill, sponsored by Manyatta MP Gitonga Mukunji, remains before Parliament's Trade, Industry and Cooperatives Committee. Neither had passed when Ruto ordered enforcement to begin administratively.

What it means for Chinese traders

Ruto's own language has repeatedly singled out China, and Kenyan and Chinese media alike reported his order as targeting Chinese-run shops specifically — though his own Foreign Affairs Principal Secretary later said the China remarks were taken out of context. Analysts say the episode is being watched as a test of how Kenya will treat foreign — including Chinese — small-scale traders once "reserved sector" rules are written into law, and of how much protection the government's anti-harassment pledges actually deliver on the ground.

With the legislation still in committee and the registration exercise only beginning, Kenyan officials have not said what happens to businesses that fail to regularise within 90 days, or how "small-scale" trading will be defined once the rules take legal force.