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Section 183 of the Mining Act 2016 grants the Cabinet Secretary power to make regulations on royalty assessment, collection, remittance, and management. Following the High Court's September 2025 ruling in Kenya Chamber of Mines v Cabinet Secretary (Constitutional Petition E549 of 2024 [2025] KEHC 12697 (KLR)) that vacated the 2024 Royalty Collection and Management Regulations (LN 106/2024) for failure to conduct adequate public participation, the State Department for Mining undertook fresh stakeholder consultations documented in the Regulatory Impact Assessment (RIA) and re-promulgated the distribution-side rules as LN 3/2026.
Revenue allocation structure:
Government share.
county or counties where mining operations are located.
Account held in trust for the host community.
Community Mineral Royalty Management Committees: Each affected community has a statutorily established Committee comprising:
disabilities, and youth from the benefiting community.
Committee statutory authority: 1. Identify, discuss, and approve royalty-funded community projects through a participatory process. 2. Evaluate and monitor project implementation. 3. Ensure royalty-funded projects align with actual community needs.
Strategic minerals pre-emption: The underlying Mining Act 2016 framework — untouched by LN 3/2026 — preserves the State's right of pre-emption over all strategic minerals before sale. The Cabinet Secretary retains authority to issue further regulations on exploration, mining, processing, and export conditions for declared strategic minerals. All radioactive minerals are categorised as strategic minerals by default.
Relationship to voided 2024 regulations: LN 106/2024 addressed collection mechanics (royalty base = gross sales value, rate schedule by mineral class, 120-day payment window, CBK-rate late-payment penalties, digital reporting via Online Mining Cadastre). LN 3/2026 does not replicate those collection mechanics — it targets only distribution. The collection framework therefore remains formally unresolved pending further re-promulgation or legislative action.
Kenyan executive mining instrument issued after the September 2025 High Court vacatur. Its promulgation signals that the State Department chose a phased re-promulgation strategy (distribution first, collection separately) rather than a comprehensive omnibus replacement, keeping regulatory uncertainty elevated for operators on the collection side.
leakage from gross royalties must be priced into project-level financial models for Kenyan mining projects. For the emerging rare-earth cluster at Mrima Hill (Kwale County) and Kuranze (Taita Taveta), the 10% community tranche adds a new stakeholder consent dynamic that pure regulatory approvals do not capture.
share (documented as of early 2026) signal that the 10% floor may be politically contestable in the next legislative cycle. Upward revision to 15–20% community share would materially increase cost-of-capital for Kenyan mining projects relative to Zambia and Tanzania comparators.
within the African post-AMV (Africa Mining Vision 2009) revenue-sharing convergence cluster alongside Zambia's 2019/2023 royalty reforms and Tanzania's Finance Act 2025 mining amendments, though the explicit community-committee governance structure is more elaborate than most regional peers.
both the legacy Base Resources titanium operation and the emerging REE exploration cluster; the 20% county allocation creates a county fiscal interest in accelerating new licence grants, while the 10% community tranche creates a parallel community-consent layer potentially independent of county-level politics.
mechanics (royalty rate schedule, payment window, enforcement) as a separate LN following further public consultation, or amend LN 3/2026 to incorporate them.
to the Court of Appeal, and what interim collection enforcement regime applies in the meantime.
response to MP demands documented in early 2026.
still-suspended LN 106/2024 rate schedule — the granular rates for REE, niobium, graphite, and lithium at Mrima Hill and Kuranze remain effectively unenforced.