Industrial Policy & Trade Monitor· 2662 actions· ✨ 89 recent

Kenya's Senate introduced the Artificial Intelligence Bill, 2026 (Senate Bills No. 4 of 2025) on 19 February 2026, sponsored by Nominated Senator Karen Nyamu; the bill received its first reading on 2 April 2026 and was committed to the Senate Standing Committee on Information, Communication and Technology for public-input review. The bill establishes a risk-based AI regulatory framework explicitly modelled on the EU AI Act (Regulation 2024/1689), creating a four-tier classification (prohibited / high-risk / limited-risk / minimal-risk) with conformity- assessment, technical-documentation, and human-oversight obligations for high-risk AI systems. It creates the Office of the Artificial Intelligence Commissioner as a new statutory regulator with licensing, enforcement, and administrative-penalty powers, and bans social-scoring systems, real-time remote biometric identification in public spaces, emotion recognition in workplaces and education, and predictive policing based on profiling. The bill is the first comprehensive national AI regulatory instrument in Africa, closing a structural geographic gap in the global AI-governance architecture and positioning Kenya as the Brussels-effect template-recipient for the African continent.

The Cabinet Secretary for Mining, Blue Economy and Maritime Affairs promulgated the Mining (Mineral Royalty Sharing) Regulations, 2026 (Legal Notice No. 3 of 2026) under section 183 of the Mining Act 2016 (No. 12 of 2016), published on 29 January 2026 in the Kenya Law database. The regulations establish the intergovernmental and community architecture for distributing mineral royalties collected under the parent Act: 70% to the national Consolidated Fund, 20% to the relevant County Revenue Fund Account(s), and 10% to a dedicated Community Mineral Royalties Account held in trust for host communities. This is the executive's procedural cure following the September 2025 High Court ruling that voided the 2024 Royalty Collection and Management Regulations (LN 106/2024) for inadequate public participation; LN 3/2026 focuses solely on distribution architecture and is therefore structurally distinct from the collection mechanics of its predecessor.

The African Development Bank Group and KCB Bank Kenya Limited signed a USD 150 million financing package on 11 December 2025 to scale up green lending and trade finance. The package comprises a USD 100 million subordinated debt facility strengthening KCB's Tier II capital and a USD 50 million transaction guarantee under which AfDB provides up to 100% non-payment coverage to confirming banks on KCB-issued letters of credit and similar trade instruments. Global Trade Alert logs the transaction as a "red"-flagged state-linked lending-support intervention.

On 30 November 2025 the African Development Bank Group's Board of Directors approved a USD 16.5 million loan to OrPower Twenty-Two (OTTL), an independent power producer, to support development of a 35 MW geothermal power plant in Kenya's Menengai field. The loan is part of a USD 64.4 million debt package (alongside expected IFC co-financing) against an estimated USD 91.9 million total project cost. Global Trade Alert logs the transaction as a state-linked development-finance intervention.

Cabinet Secretary for Mining issued comprehensive royalty-collection regulations under section 183 of the Mining Act 2016, published as Legal Notice No. 106 of 2024 in Kenya Gazette Vol. CXXVI No. 98 of 5 July 2024 (commenced 3 July 2024). The regulations standardise royalty rates by mineral and royalty-base methodology (gross sales value), set a 120-day payment window with CBK-rate compounding penalties for late payment, and codify the 70/30 national-county allocation split with the county portion further divided 60% county / 20% community development / 20% landowner royalties. Companion to the October 2023 lifting of the four-year mining-licence moratorium and reclassification of REE, niobium, lithium, graphite and coltan as "strategic minerals" requiring case-by-case licensing through the National Mining Corporation. Subsequently declared unconstitutional by the High Court in September 2025 for failure to meet public-participation requirements (see amendments).

On 21 March 2024, President William Ruto formally launched Kenya's Fourth Medium Term Plan 2023-2027 (MTP IV) at State House Nairobi, the final five-year implementation plan under the Kenya Vision 2030 blueprint. MTP IV is the operational vehicle for the Bottom-Up Economic Transformation Agenda (BETA), the Ruto administration's foundational industrial-policy and value-chain framework. The plan organises Kenya's industrial-policy push around five core BETA pillars and nine value chains: agro-processing (incl. edible-oil crops, leather, dairy, tea), textiles and apparel, housing and settlement, healthcare and pharmaceuticals, digital superhighway and creative economy, manufacturing (incl. automotive and EV motorcycle and vehicle assembly), MSME and cooperative sector strengthening, and blue-economy/natural-resource value addition. Implementation is anchored in County Aggregation and Industrial Parks (CAIPs) across all 47 counties and in the County Integrated Development Plans (CIDPs). MTP IV is the umbrella framework shaping Kenya's domestic industrial-incentive architecture, foreign-investment priorities, and AfCFTA positioning over 2023-2027. Subsequent sectoral instruments — including the Mining Royalty Collection and Management Regulations 2024 — operate within this policy perimeter. This is the first KE foundational industrial-policy filing in the register.