Kenya moves to shut foreigners out of small-scale trade, raising fears for Burundians

From September 7, President William Ruto wants street vending and other small retail activities reserved for Kenyans. The move is likely to hit migrant communities hard , particularly Burundians, while exposing Nairobi to awkward questions over its commitments to the East African common market.

There was little ambiguity in William Ruto’s message. Addressing representatives of Kenya’s small and medium-sized businesses at State House on Wednesday, September 2, the Kenyan president gave foreigners operating in parts of the country’s small-scale retail economy just days to cease trading.

“From next week, all those people who are doing these small businesses must close,” Ruto said, effectively setting September 7 as the deadline. His remarks targeted foreign street vendors and small retailers, activities which the president argued should primarily provide livelihoods for Kenyans.

The argument from State House is fundamentally economic. Kenya, Ruto said, has worked to restore investor confidence and make the country attractive to foreign capital — but that effort was intended to bring investment, not greater foreign competition at the lowest rungs of the economy.

“We did not improve investor confidence so that hawkers can come to Kenya,” he said.

Behind the unusually stark formulation lies an increasingly clear distinction in Nairobi’s economic policy: Kenya remains eager to attract foreign investors with capital, technology and large-scale projects, while seeking to protect small businesses and jobs requiring little capital from foreign competition.

The policy does not come entirely out of the blue. Kenya has already been considering the Local Content Bill 2025, legislation designed to increase Kenyan participation in investment projects and give local workers, suppliers and businesses greater access to the economic opportunities they generate.

Ruto has now instructed his government and parliamentary majority to accelerate measures aimed at ring-fencing certain economic activities for Kenyan citizens.

For Nairobi, it is being presented as economic patriotism. For thousands of East Africans who have made their living in Kenya, however, the distinction could prove far more consequential.

Burundians already singled out

Among the foreign communities concerned, Burundians occupy an uncomfortable position.

Barely three months before Ruto’s announcement, they had already been singled out in an increasingly heated debate over foreign labour in Nairobi.

In June, Beatrice Elachi, the MP for Dagoretti North, accused some employers in the construction industry of hiring Burundian workers because they were prepared to accept lower wages than Kenyans.

Elachi claimed that some Burundian labourers were willing to work for approximately 400 Kenyan shillings a day, while Kenyan workers demanded 700 shillings or more. She also alleged that some foreigners were working without the necessary immigration documents and warned that she was prepared to mobilise protests unless the authorities intervened.

Those figures should be treated for what they are: claims made by a politician during a dispute over employment, rather than an independent assessment of wages across Kenya’s construction sector.

But the significance of the episode is difficult to ignore.

What in June was the rhetoric of an individual MP has, by September, been overtaken by a policy direction articulated by the president himself.

The issue also reaches well beyond the Burundian community. As East Africa’s largest and most diversified economy, Kenya has long attracted people from neighbouring Uganda, Tanzania, Rwanda and Burundi, as well as migrants from considerably farther afield.

Foreign nationals participate at virtually every level of the economy. At its most modest end, some sell food, tea, coffee or clothing; others work in salons, construction, repair services and other trades that form part of the vast informal economy on which millions of people in Nairobi and other Kenyan cities depend.

It is precisely this economy of small margins and daily earnings that Ruto now wants to protect for Kenyan citizens.

An awkward Tanzanian precedent

The decision is particularly striking because Kenya found itself making almost the opposite argument barely a year ago.

In July 2025, Tanzania introduced the Business Licensing (Prohibition of Business Activities for Non-Citizens) Order, closing 15 categories of economic activity to non-citizens. They included parts of wholesale and retail trade, mobile-money services, salons, electronics repair and several other relatively small-scale businesses.

Nairobi protested.

Kenya’s Trade and Industry Minister, Lee Kinyanjui, described the Tanzanian restrictions as discriminatory and called for them to be reconsidered. His ministry argued that Tanzanian citizens were able to live and conduct business in Kenya and demanded comparable treatment for Kenyans operating across the border.

More importantly, Kenya invoked the principles of the East African Community, arguing that Tanzania’s measures ran against the regional project of economic integration.

That argument is now returning to Nairobi.

The Tanzanian restrictions subsequently became the subject of proceedings before the East African Court of Justice, where their compatibility with regional law has been challenged.

A year later, the parallel is uncomfortable: Kenya risks adopting the very principle it criticised when Tanzania applied it to Kenyan traders.

The East African Community problem

This is where Ruto’s policy could encounter a much more difficult question than the political argument over jobs.

Kenya and Burundi are both members of the East African Community (EAC). So are Tanzania, Uganda, Rwanda, South Sudan, the Democratic Republic of Congo and Somalia.

At the heart of the EAC project lies its Common Market Protocol. It is intended to facilitate the movement of people, workers, services and capital and to guarantee rights of establishment across participating states.

The protocol contains protections against discrimination based on nationality. Its provisions on workers require partner states to avoid discriminating against citizens of other EAC countries in employment, remuneration and working conditions.

Regional rules also envisage self-employed East African citizens establishing businesses in other partner states, subject to the applicable national laws and administrative requirements.

That last qualification matters.

Membership of the EAC does not mean that a Burundian citizen can simply arrive in Kenya and disregard immigration, licensing, tax or employment requirements. Kenya retains the right to enforce its laws, just as Burundi retains that right over Kenyan nationals on its territory.

The potentially contentious issue is different: can an EAC member exclude otherwise lawfully established citizens of another member state from an entire category of economic activity simply because they are foreigners?

That question strikes at the heart of the common market.

It is also remarkably close to the question Kenya itself raised when Tanzania imposed its restrictions in 2025.

The politics of scarce jobs

Ruto’s intervention comes against a broader backdrop of economic frustration.

Kenya has experienced repeated disputes over taxation, the cost of doing business and employment. Small traders in particular operate on narrow margins and are politically important because they occupy the point at which macroeconomic policy becomes an everyday question of rent, food prices, taxes and the ability to earn a living.

Only days before Ruto’s announcement, traders protested in Nairobi over changes affecting import duties. Police used tear gas to disperse demonstrators.

The president’s intervention therefore speaks to an anxiety that is considerably broader than immigration.

For the government, restricting foreigners from small-scale trade offers a readily understandable political message: jobs and opportunities at the bottom of the economic ladder should first benefit Kenyans.

But it also carries a familiar danger.

Competition over jobs can quickly cease to be a discussion about wages, productivity, regulation and unemployment and become instead a dispute between nationalities. Foreign workers are particularly exposed when political language begins to portray them collectively as competitors for scarce livelihoods.

For Burundians in Kenya, this distinction is crucial.

Those without valid immigration or employment documentation are already vulnerable to enforcement under existing Kenyan law. The more difficult case concerns Burundian and other EAC citizens who are legally resident, properly documented and legitimately conducting business.

If the September 7 restrictions are enforced against them solely because of their nationality, Nairobi may eventually have to defend not merely an immigration operation but a principle of economic discrimination.

Could Burundians face a wider crackdown?

There is another, more immediate concern.

Once a national campaign against foreign traders begins, enforcement does not necessarily remain confined to the precise language of a presidential directive. Police checks, inspections of businesses and demands for immigration documents can multiply.

That could leave undocumented Burundians particularly exposed.

It would nevertheless be premature to conclude that Ruto has ordered a campaign specifically against Burundians. His public remarks concern foreigners more broadly. The connection with Burundi arises principally from the earlier controversy surrounding Elachi’s comments and the visibility of Burundian workers in certain sectors.

That distinction matters, particularly in a climate in which economic grievances can easily acquire a xenophobic character.

The decisive test will therefore be how the Kenyan authorities implement the president’s directive after September 7: which businesses are covered, which nationalities are affected, what happens to EAC citizens legally established in Kenya and whether enforcement respects due process.

Kenya confronted with its own argument

The affair ultimately reaches far beyond Nairobi’s pavements and market stalls.

For more than a decade, the East African Community has promoted the idea that its member states are gradually constructing something larger than a collection of neighbouring national economies: a regional market in which East Africans can move, work, invest and establish businesses with progressively fewer barriers.

Such principles are easiest to defend when economies are expanding.

They become considerably more difficult when jobs are scarce.

Tanzania demonstrated that tension in 2025. Kenya condemned its neighbour’s response, warning that protectionist restrictions threatened regional integration and the livelihoods of Kenyans who had crossed the border in search of opportunity.

Now Nairobi finds itself on the other side of much the same argument.

For Burundi, the challenge will be both diplomatic and consular. Bujumbura has an interest in ensuring that its citizens comply with Kenyan immigration and commercial law, but also in defending the rights of Burundians legally established under the framework of the East African Community.

The EAC itself may eventually be forced to intervene if national measures increasingly collide with the freedoms promised by the common market.

For William Ruto, meanwhile, the political calculation is clear enough: in a country where many citizens struggle to find work or sustain a small business, protecting Kenyan livelihoods is an easily understood promise.

The legal and diplomatic consequences are considerably less simple.

From September 7, the real question will no longer be what Ruto said at State House, but what Kenyan officials do on the ground. For Burundian traders and workers, that distinction could determine whether the president’s declaration remains an exercise in economic nationalism, or marks the beginning of a much broader crackdown.