Kenya appears to be taking a dangerous turn towards xenophobia, catching the same fever that has periodically plagued South Africa. The reported move to restrict or expel foreign nationals engaged in small-scale businesses, even when presented as an economic protection measure, is deeply troubling.
If this policy is indeed being driven by electoral calculations ahead of Kenya’s next general election, then it would represent a dangerous sacrifice of regional solidarity for short-term political gain. Appeasing a section of the electorate at the expense of East African unity is a precedent that could have consequences far beyond Kenya’s borders.
What is equally astonishing is the apparent silence of the African Union as hostility and vigilantism threaten the livelihoods of ordinary Africans who have crossed borders in search of opportunity. Pan-Africanism cannot merely be a slogan invoked at summits; it must be reflected in how African states treat one another’s citizens.
Kenya has historically been a relatively welcoming destination for migrants, asylum seekers and refugees. These communities have contributed significantly to the country’s economy and society through labour, entrepreneurship, skills, social networks, human capital and financial investment. Across East Africa, our people are also bound together by generations of intermarriage, shared cultures and family ties that do not recognise the artificial boundaries inherited from colonialism.
This is why governments across the region must exercise extraordinary caution when introducing policies that target foreign nationals. The consequences can easily become reciprocal. Kenyans themselves operate businesses across Uganda, South Sudan, Tanzania and other parts of the region. In Kampala and Juba, Kenyan traders, hawkers, entrepreneurs and professionals are part of the economic fabric of those societies.
If Kenya normalises the exclusion of foreign nationals from legitimate economic activity, what happens when other governments adopt the same principle? Should Kenyan traders and small-business operators in Kampala and Juba begin asking whether they, too, will eventually be told to return home?
This is precisely why electoral politics must not be allowed to dismantle the regional system that East Africans have spent decades building.
I watched the clarification issued by the Kenyan government spokesperson on Citizen TV with considerable concern. While the statement appeared intended to calm anxiety among foreign nationals, it did little to dispel the wider concerns about the direction of policy. If the intention is simply to identify and register foreign nationals engaged in business, then the Kenyan government should say so clearly, transparently and without ambiguity. Registration and regulation are legitimate functions of government; collective suspicion, harassment or exclusion are not.
There is also a larger contradiction that Kenya must confront. Kenyan businesses, banks and corporations operate extensively across the region, including in Uganda and other neighbouring countries. The movement of Kenyan capital, companies and professionals across borders is itself a reflection of the interconnected East African economy. The same openness that enables Kenyan businesses to thrive beyond Kenya’s borders must also be extended to citizens of neighbouring states who lawfully participate in Kenya’s economy.
Kenya should therefore be careful about the precedent it is setting. Policies introduced today against Ugandans, Tanzanians, South Sudanese, Congolese or other Africans can tomorrow be replicated against Kenyans elsewhere.
That is how regional integration begins to unravel—not necessarily through the collapse of treaties, but through the gradual erosion of trust, reciprocity and the spirit of solidarity that gives those treaties meaning.
The East African Community was created to move us in the opposite direction: towards greater freedom of movement, trade, investment and interaction among our peoples. The principles of regional integration cannot be selectively applied when politically convenient and discarded when domestic politics become difficult.
The fundamental question, therefore, is not simply what Kenya intends to do with foreign small-scale traders. The bigger question is: what kind of East Africa do we want to build?
Do we want an East Africa where citizens can move, trade, work and build relationships across borders, or one where political pressure turns our neighbours into foreigners to be feared and expelled?
Kenya has a responsibility to protect its citizens and regulate its economy. But it also has a responsibility to protect the regional project to which it is a founding and influential member.
Electoral politics will come and go. Governments will change. Presidents will leave office. But the consequences of policies that fracture East African solidarity can last for generations.
Kenya must therefore resist the temptation of xenophobia and short-term political expediency. East Africa cannot afford to import the worst lessons of South Africa’s xenophobic experience.
Pan-Africanism begins at home, and in East Africa, it begins with how we treat one another.
The authors is Walid Mulindwa Lubega, the Forum for Democratic Change (FDC) party Deputy Secretary for Publicity in charge of Documentation and Publication.
