President William Ruto’s directive to crack down on foreigners operating small-scale businesses in Kenya has unleashed a wave of violence, as reports emerge of physical attacks, intimidation, harassment, and their establishments being targeted, looted and destroyed, costing them their livelihoods.
While the regime has a legitimate authority to regulate immigration, employment and commercial activities, such regulation must comply with Kenya’s constitution, as well as regional, continental and international human rights obligations. It must not result in discrimination, collective punishment, arbitrary deprivation of livelihoods, or expose people to violence because of their nationality or national origin.
Ruto’s announcement, which initially set a September 7 deadline for all affected foreigners to leave Kenya (and later revised to a 90-day “regularisation” window), has pushed the country to the edge, drawing uncomfortable parallels to recent events in South Africa.
In South Africa, xenophobic attacks have posed severe human and economic dangers, undermining regional stability and the rule of law. Mobs and vigilante groups have targeted foreign nationals with beatings, whippings, pepper spray, and fatal shootings. Repeated waves of violence have displaced tens of thousands, forcing families to flee their homes and seek refuge in public spaces and consulates.
Kenya now risks following a similar path, as this week’s state-directed hostility toward foreigners suggests. The regime has a duty to refrain from violating the rights of migrant workers and take reasonable measures to protect them from violence, intimidation, discrimination and attacks, because they are entitled to equal protection of the law, personal security, dignity and due process.
Ruto is scapegoating foreign workers for his regime’s failure to deliver on promises to create jobs and alleviate poverty since taking office four years ago. With less than a year until a decisive poll, Ruto is, unfortunately, trying to whip up public emotions, especially among voters from low-income neighbourhoods (as he did with his Hustlers Vs Dynasties narrative in the last general election), by falsely attributing their unemployment to foreigners operating in Kenya.
Economic hardship and unemployment cannot justify discrimination against migrant workers or make them convenient targets for public anger. Nor can the regime respond to legitimate concerns about employment and economic opportunity by treating an entire category of people as collectively responsible for Kenya’s economic challenges. But Kenyans should recognise that the economic hardship many face is largely the product of the Kenya Kwanza regime’s own policies, not the presence of foreigners.
The regime must distinguish between lawful regulation and arbitrary or discriminatory enforcement. Any action against individual businesses or foreign nationals must be based on clear law, applied fairly and proportionately, and subject to due process and the right to challenge administrative decisions. The regime must not presume criminality or wrongdoing solely on the basis of nationality.
This troubling trend is not unique to Kenya. In July 2025, Tanzania’s President Samia Suluhu banned small-scale business activities by foreign nationals. Such arbitrary measures threaten socio-economic rights and expose small businesses across the region to retaliatory policies and violence.
These developments are particularly concerning within the East African Community, whose regional integration framework is premised on greater movement of people, goods, services and economic opportunity. Measures that stigmatise foreign nationals or encourage hostility towards them risk undermining regional integration and the principle of equality and non-discrimination.
The Local Content Bill, 2025, a centrepiece of the regime’s justification for its crackdown, purports to regulate small-scale trade. But equating “local content” with Kenyan nationality contravenes the EAC common market protocol and Article 2 of the African Charter on Human and Peoples’ Rights, which protects against discrimination based on national or social origin.
Any implementation of local-content, immigration or commercial regulations must comply with constitutional standards of legality, equality and non-discrimination. Regulation of economic activity cannot become a licence for collective punishment, harassment or the arbitrary destruction of livelihoods.
We demand that the regime halt directives that indiscriminately punish foreigners and infringe on their fundamental rights. Due process must be observed, and those responsible for attacks and looting should be immediately brought to justice.
