New York / Nairobi – As President William Ruto addresses the United Nations General Assembly this week, seeking to reassure the world of Kenya’s commitment to investment and reform, a different story is quietly unfolding at home. International investors and donors, long regarded as Kenya’s lifeline, are growing increasingly frustrated by a mining regime that appears designed less to protect enterprise and more to extract rents.
For decades, donors from Europe, the United States, and beyond have poured billions into Kenya, convinced that their contributions were building stability, improving governance, and reducing poverty. Yet, official records—gazette notices, court filings, corporate disclosures—tell a very different story: a system structured to undermine investor confidence while eroding the very goodwill donors continue to extend.
At the center of this dysfunction is the Mineral Rights Board (MRB), established under the Mining Act of 2016. By law, investors who spend millions of dollars on high-risk exploration are compelled to reapply for their licenses every three years.
On paper, this is meant to ensure accountability. In practice, it has become a revolving door of insecurity. Compliance requirements—quarterly reports, geological data, exploration findings—turn into a free intelligence dossier. Politically connected firms exploit the disclosures to position themselves to displace genuine risk-takers who invested first.
READ MORE: Kenya’s Mining Reforms Underway as Investors Remain Wary on Mines Rights
The situation is worsened by a shadowy practice: investors are often assured of license renewals, while unseen “applications” are filed on top of their concessions. MRB grants pseudo-approvals to keep companies spending, only for the Cabinet Secretary’s office to stall or redirect the rights elsewhere.
The outcome is predictable: international firms spend millions building knowledge and infrastructure, only to watch the resources they identified allocated to others.
Take the example of Base Titanium, once celebrated as Kenya’s flagship mining success. The company invested over USD 300 million in Kwale, creating thousands of jobs and building Kenya’s only world-class mineral sands project.
But when Base sought to expand into new zones, its bids stalled during a government-imposed moratorium from 2019 to 2023. Marketed as a “reform process,” the freeze paralyzed new investment. By the time the ore body was depleted, Base Titanium had no viable pathway forward. The result: an empty mine in Kenya, while Madagascar reaped the gains.
READ MORE: Mineral Rights Board (MRB) on the Spot as Shady Plots Play Off-Books Amid License Re-Application
Kenya’s own laws and records disprove the popular narrative that foreign investors “steal” national wealth:
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Taxes & Royalties: Publicly available data shows government revenues from mining far exceed donor grants.
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Community Investment: The Mining Act 2016 mandates 1% of turnover reinvested in local communities.
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Jobs & Skills: Payrolls, training programs, and infrastructure investment have been documented in annual reports.
When investors exit, these benefits vanish overnight. Bureaucrats, who engineer the exodus, neither invest nor prospect with their own funds. Kenya loses jobs, tax revenue, and dignity, while the bureaucracy remains shielded by taxpayer-funded salaries—nearly half of which consume Kenya’s annual revenues.
The contradiction is glaring: donors continue to underwrite Kenya’s budget, while Kenya’s bureaucracy dismantles the very industries that could make donor support unnecessary. Presidents and Cabinet Secretaries travel the world pledging security for investors, yet the MRB’s reapplication regime dismantles those promises at home.
The question is no longer speculative. The evidence lies openly in Kenya’s gazettes, budget books, and mining records: Why continue to fund a government that destroys its own economic future?
Kenya stands at a crossroads. Transparent, rules-based governance is still possible. But if the current system persists, the consequences will be dire: eroded donor trust, lost investment, and deepened dependency.
As President Ruto courts global leaders in New York, the international community must ask hard questions:
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How much longer can taxpayers abroad justify funding a system whose failures are already well-documented?
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And when will Kenya’s leaders choose to secure the industries that could replace donor aid with sustainable national wealth?
The choice is stark, the evidence public, and the time for reform long overdue.
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