Arnold Maliba: Ruto's Order Targeting Foreign Traders Contradicts His Own Kazi Majuu Program

Editor's note: The writer of this article is Arnold Maliba Nyajayi, the Executive Director of Open Future Hub (OFH). He argues that while Kenya has a legitimate right to enforce immigration and labour laws and protect Kenyan traders from unlawful competition, the crackdown on foreign small-scale traders, particularly Burundians, risks becoming discriminatory and inconsistent with Kenya's commitment to regional integration and Pan-Africanism. He highlights what he sees as a contradiction in Kenya encouraging its own citizens to seek work abroad while restricting other Africans seeking livelihoods in Kenya. There is something deeply revealing about the spectacle now unfolding in Nairobi: Burundians queuing outside their embassy, clutching travel documents, gathering their children and preparing to leave a country that, until yesterday, they regarded as part of their East African home. Arnold Maliba speaking during a past media interview. Photo: Arnold Maliba. Source: Facebook The Kenyan government insists this is not about xenophobia. It is about the law. That distinction matters. Foreign nationals do not have an automatic right to work or conduct business simply because they entered Kenya legally. The government is entitled — indeed obliged — to enforce immigration and labour laws. Kenyan traders also have a legitimate grievance if undocumented foreigners are competing for livelihoods in an economy where unemployment and the cost of living remain painfully high. But law is not merely about what a state does. It is also about how, when and why it chooses to do it. And that is where Kenya's present moment becomes uncomfortable. President William Ruto announced the crackdown on foreign hawkers and small-scale traders on 2 September, with enforcement beginning on 7 September. The government's stated position is that small-scale businesses such as hawking should primarily benefit Kenyans. Fair enough. But Kenya is not an island. We are a country whose own government has increasingly encouraged Kenyans to seek employment abroad. The Labour Ministry says more than 103,800 Kenyans worked abroad in 2024/25, sending home about US$4.9 billion. The government has even pursued an ambitious programme to facilitate labour migration. So let us ask the uncomfortable question: What happens when the countries receiving Kenyan workers decide that Kenyan nurses, drivers, teachers, technicians and traders have become inconvenient? Do we celebrate sovereignty when it protects Kenyans abroad, but invoke nationalism when Africans arrive here? This is the contradiction at the heart of the matter. Africa has spent decades proclaiming regional integration while governing migration through the anxieties of the moment. The East African Community was conceived precisely to make the movement of people, labour, capital and enterprise less burdensome. Yet the first instinct of our political class, whenever economic anxiety rises, is often to rediscover the border. Kenya's own Diaspora Policy acknowledges the scale and importance of intra-African migration: about 21 million Africans were living in another African country in 2022. Migration is not an aberration in Africa. It is one of the ways Africa survives. And the people now being scrutinised are not multinational corporations siphoning billions offshore. They are hawkers. They sell tea. Mandazi. Clothes. Shoes. Small household goods. They occupy the lowest rungs of the economic ladder — precisely the spaces from which many Kenyans have themselves moved as aspirations and opportunities changed. We must therefore be honest enough to hold two truths simultaneously: Kenyan workers deserve protection from unlawful competition, and African migrants deserve dignity, due process and protection from collective punishment. The answer cannot be anarchy. But neither can it be scapegoating. There is a familiar political temptation in difficult economic times: convert structural failures into human targets. If jobs are scarce, blame foreigners. If businesses are struggling, blame migrants. If citizens are angry, find somebody more vulnerable than yourself. It is old politics. And it is remarkably effective. But Kenya once aspired to something larger. We aspired to be East Africa's anchor — not merely its largest economy, but its diplomatic conscience. A country that could champion free movement in Kampala, defend African workers in the Gulf, demand fair treatment for Kenyans abroad and still extend basic dignity to a Burundian selling tea on a Nairobi pavement. That is the Kenya I recognise. To our Burundian brothers and sisters now facing uncertainty, let us say this plainly: you are not the enemy. If you are here unlawfully, the law must take its course — humanely, fairly and individually. If you are here lawfully, your rights must be protected. And if our political class believes that the answer to Kenya's economic crisis is to make an African neighbour poorer, poorer still, then perhaps we have forgotten the meaning of Pan-Africanism. Today it is Burundi. Tomorrow it may be Uganda, Tanzania, Rwanda, Congo — or Kenya itself. Because borders are lines drawn on maps. Human beings are not. One day, the borders will fall. The question is whether, when that day comes, history will remember Kenya as one of the countries that built the walls — or one of those that helped bring them down. Source: TUKO.co.ke