Indians in Kenya: the 2026 guide to the community, the census figures, Mombasa, Kisumu, Nakuru, work permits, taxes, temples and Diwali

About 80,000 overseas Indians (Indian citizens and people of Indian origin) live in Kenya, in the Indian Ministry of External Affairs’ estimate for January 2026. That is 20,000 Indian citizens and 60,000 people of Indian origin. The High Commission of India in Nairobi describes the community in the same round numbers, as around 80,000 people of Indian origin of whom an estimated 20,000 are Indian citizens. These are national estimates, not a count by suburb or town. Kenya’s own census asks a different question and gives two different numbers: in 2019 it recorded 47,555 “Kenyan Asians”, who are citizens recorded by ethnicity, and 42,972 “Asians” among the 463,562 people who were not Kenyan nationals, recorded by nationality. Neither figure counts Indians alone. The numbers section says what each one measures.

Most of the community lives in Nairobi and Mombasa, with older and smaller communities in Kisumu, Nakuru, Eldoret and Thika, along the line of the Uganda Railway. The railway brought some 32,000 indentured labourers from India between 1896 and 1901 and opened the interior to the traders who followed them. This page is the country guide. It covers the history, the towns outside Nairobi, the national rules that a newcomer from India meets (work permits, tax, health cover, banking, the High Commission in Nairobi and the Assistant High Commission in Mombasa), safety and the festival year. Indians in Nairobi covers the capital’s neighbourhoods, rents, schools, hospitals, restaurants and temples, and this page does not repeat that detail. We did not research rents, restaurants or hospitals in Mombasa, and say so where it matters.

Several things changed in 2026 and shape what follows. The Finance Act 2026 came into force on 1 July without the changes to the income-tax bands that ministers had promised. NSSF moved to its fourth-year limits in February. Kenya began requiring foreign visitors to hold Kenyan-government travel health insurance from 5 October. In September the government warned foreigners that visa-free entry gives no right to work. Kenya confirmed its first Ebola case on 6 October and nine cases in one cluster by 20 October. And mining at the century-old Tata soda-ash operation at Magadi has been suspended since 28 July. Each is covered below.

The two Asian rows in Table 2.31

Kenya’s 2019 census did not ask about “Indians”. Its household questionnaire asked one question, “Nationality/Ethnicity”, and the Kenya National Bureau of Statistics (KNBS) tabulated the answers in Table 2.31 of Volume IV of the results (printed pages 423 and 424). Citizens are listed by ethnic community, and people who are not Kenyan citizens are listed by nationality. The two Asian rows sit in different halves of the same table.

By our arithmetic the Kenyan Asians are 0.1% of everyone counted, and the Asians among the non-citizens are 9.3% of the 463,562 foreign nationals. Added together they give 90,527, the same sum that Wikipedia’s article on Indians in Kenya shows for 2019. The volume we read does not define either term. So the first row should be read as citizens of South Asian origin, which is how Kenyans use the word “Asian”, and the second as people holding an Asian nationality. That second row takes in every Asian country, so it includes Pakistanis, Chinese and Japanese as well as Indians, and the table does not break it down. No census table we opened gives a count of Indian nationals.

How this fits the Indian government’s figure

The ministry’s 80,000 is built differently. It counts Indian citizens (20,000) and people of Indian origin (60,000), and it is an estimate for January 2026. The census figures are a count of people on one night in August 2019 who gave a particular ethnicity or nationality. The 60,000 people of Indian origin sit beside the census’s 47,555 Kenyan Asians, and the 20,000 Indian citizens beside a non-citizen Asian count more than twice as large, but the two sources are not measuring the same people and neither explains the gap, so we do not net them off against each other. When someone asks “how many Indians live in Kenya”, quote the ministry’s figure with its date and say that the census counts Asians, not Indians.

A century of counts

The series below is Wikipedia’s table of Asians in Kenya, which cites Pascale Herzig’s 2006 study and Michael Adam’s 2015 book for the earlier censuses; post-1947 figures include people born in India or Pakistan. We did not open the earlier censuses ourselves, and the categories changed over the decades, so read it as the shape of the curve.

The 2019 count is 10.7% above 2009 and 48.7% below the peak of 1962 (our arithmetic). The drop from 176,613 to 78,600 in seventeen years is the exodus described in the independence section.

Hindus, county by county

The census also asked about religion, and Table 2.30 of the same volume gives Hindus by county. Its rows add up to 47,213,282 people, because the question was not asked of people in hotels, lodges, hospitals, prisons or police cells. Kenya had 60,287 Hindus, 0.13% of the people in the table; we re-added the 47 county rows and they give that total. Hindus are the largest religious group among Kenyan Asians, but the count is by religion and not by origin: Muslim, Sikh, Jain and Christian families are Asian too, and the table has no separate Sikh or Jain column.

The six counties above hold 85% of the country’s Hindus. Counties are not towns: Kiambu County also takes in Nairobi’s northern suburbs, and Nakuru County takes in Naivasha, so the table says where the Hindus are and not how many live in a town.

Before the railway

Indian merchants were trading on the Kenyan coast long before there was a colony. Wikipedia’s article on Indians in Kenya, drawing on Pascale Herzig’s study, says Vasco da Gama met Indian merchants on the coast in the late fifteenth century and took a Gujarati-speaking sailor on at Malindi to pilot his ships to Calicut, and that small numbers of Indian merchants were settled in East Africa’s trading posts by the early nineteenth century. The British East Africa Association, founded in Bombay in 1887, became the Imperial British East Africa Company a year later and moved to Mombasa, employing guards, police officers, clerks and accountants from Bombay. When the East Africa Protectorate took over its assets and staff in 1895 it made the rupee its currency and its legal system an extension of Indian law.

The railway, 1896 to 1901

The Uganda Railway began at Mombasa in 1896 and reached the Lake Victoria pier at Kisumu, then renamed Port Florence, on 20 December 1901. Some 32,000 indentured labourers were brought from India to build it, according to the BBC’s report on a Nairobi National Museum exhibition in 2000. Recruitment was overseen from Karachi, with Lahore as the main recruiting centre, and Wikipedia says most of the more than 30,000 labourers came from Punjab and Gujarat, particularly Sikhs and Gujaratis. About 2,500 died during construction, four for every mile of track laid, and a pair of man-eating lions at the Tsavo River killed at least 28 Indian and African workers in 1898. Some of the labourers settled when their contracts ended and sent for their families, and the railway opened the interior to traders.

The dukawallas

The shopkeeper who followed the line is the dukawalla, from the Swahili duka, a shop, and the Hindi -wala. Wikipedia says large numbers of Gujaratis and Punjabis migrated freely into the protectorate after the line was finished, usually with relatives or fellow villagers, and that by the early 1920s the entire retail trade inside Kenya was dominated by Indians. Two merchants show the scale. Allidina Visram, born in Kutch in 1851, went to Zanzibar at twelve with nothing, opened stores along the railway as it was built and became the supplier of food to its Indian workers; by his death in Mombasa in June 1916 he had more than 240 shops in East Africa and the Congo, and factories in Mombasa among other places. A.M. Jeevanjee of Karachi won a contract to supply labour for the railway, founded Kenya’s first newspaper in 1901 (now The Standard), and was estimated in 1904 to own half of Mombasa and the greater part of Nairobi.

Politics and the colonial order

The Highlands were reserved for European farmers from 1902, so Asians settled in the towns, and Nairobi, where Asians were allowed to live legally, took over as capital from Mombasa in 1907. Wikipedia records the Mombasa Indian Association of 1900, backed by Visram and the Jeevanjee brothers, as the protectorate’s first political organisation for Asians, and the East African Indian National Congress, modelled on the Indian National Congress, as founded in Mombasa in 1914. Indians won five seats on the Legislative Council in 1927, against eleven for Europeans, and no African was represented. By 1962 Asians were 2% of Kenya’s people but a third of Nairobi’s, and owned nearly three-quarters of the private non-agricultural assets in the country, according to the sources Wikipedia cites. That economic position, and the separate status it carried, is what the first decade of independence turned on.

The High Commission of India says the Indian community in Kenya has its origins mainly in Gujarat and Punjab, from the time the track was laid from Mombasa to Kisumu, and that families from Maharashtra, Andhra Pradesh, Goa, Kerala and Tamil Nadu came later. The Hindu Council of Kenya’s member list, published in December 2024, shows how many communities that means in practice: it names Kutchi Leva Patel, Sattavis Patidar, Kadwa Patidar, Navnat Vanik, Jansari, Sorathia Prajapati, Lohana, Rajput, Valand and Sindhi bodies beside Maharashtra, Telangana, Telugu, Bengali, South Indian and Hindi associations.

Gujaratis

Gujarat is the largest source. Wikipedia lists Lohanas, Lohars, Rajputs, Patels and Mehtas among the leading Gujarati groups, and the Kutchi-Swahili creole as a language of the community. The Swaminarayan temples and the Patel and Patidar samajs, covered in the towns and temples sections, are Gujarati institutions.

Punjabis and Sikhs

The Punjabis came as railway builders and filled the ranks of the British-officered police and army, according to Wikipedia. Their gurdwaras follow the line: the Sikh temple at Makindu on the Nairobi–Mombasa road was built in 1926 by Sikhs working on the railway, and the Eldoret gurdwara was founded in 1958 by the local sangat. In Nakuru the Nation’s 2023 account notes that the Asian schools taught in Punjabi, Urdu and Hindi.

Goans

Goans came as clerks, not as labourers. When the Imperial British East Africa Company turned to Bombay for staff in the 1890s it found English-speaking Goans qualified and willing to move, and Goans, who were Christians and mostly Portuguese nationals, were given a special non-Indian status with legal advantages in education and taxation, according to a Business Daily history of the Goan Gymkhana. In the early colonial administration Goans were the backbone of the district commissioners’ offices and the customs. They were kept out of European clubs and built their own: the Goan Institute in Nairobi in 1905, the Goan Gymkhana on Ngara Road in 1935, and in Mombasa the Goan School, whose foundation stone was laid on 14 August 1932 on land granted by the Liwali, Sir Ali bin Salim. The school was handed to the Catholic Church in 1961 and is now the Sacred Heart School, at the junction of Archbishop Makarios and Liwatoni roads.

Ismailis, Bohras and other Muslims

Muslims are the second-largest religious group among Kenyan Asians, mostly Sunni, with a Shia minority that includes Khoja Ismailis and Bohras, according to Wikipedia. The Ismailis, mainly from Gujarat, settled in Nairobi around 1900, and the Town Jamatkhana on Moi Avenue, known as the Khoja Mosque, opened on 14 January 1922 and was gazetted as a historic monument in 2001 (the Nation). The Aga Khan Academy in Mombasa is covered in the schools section. This guide does not map the mosques and jamatkhanas.

Jains

A 2015 Jain Digest survey of the Visa Oshwal Jains says young Oshwals began migrating to Thika between 1910 and 1925, that the community there formed the Shree Visa Oshwal Gnati Mandal in 1934, and that its first factory in the town, the Kenya Tanning Extract Co., was started by Meghji Pethraj and others. The Oshwal Education and Relief Board runs schools in Nairobi and Mombasa. Their derasars in Mombasa, Thika, Kisumu and Nakuru are in the towns section.

Languages

Wikipedia lists Gujarati, Marwari, Punjabi, Hindustani, Marathi, Konkani, Kutchi, Odia, Sindhi and Tamil as the home languages, with English and Swahili as the working languages. We found no census table of home languages for Asians, so there is no count.

Makhan Singh and Pio Gama Pinto

The High Commission of India’s page on the community names the labour leader Makhan Singh, M.A. Desai and Pio Gama Pinto among the people of Indian origin active before independence, and records that the Indian MP Diwan Chaman Lall joined Jomo Kenyatta’s defence team at his 1953 trial with F.R.S. De Souza and A.R. Kapila.

Makhan Singh was born on 27 December 1913 in Gharjakh, a village in Gujranwala District in Punjab, and moved to Nairobi with his family in 1927. Elected secretary of the Indian Trade Union in March 1935, he persuaded its members to rename it the Labour Trade Union of Kenya and open it to every race, and in 1949 he and Fred Kubai formed the East African Trade Union Congress, the first central trade-union body in Kenya. Wikipedia says he was arrested in May 1950 and detained until 1961, the longest political detention in Kenya’s history, though other accounts count his years in detention differently. He died in Nairobi on 18 May 1973.

Pio Gama Pinto was born in Nairobi on 31 March 1927 to a Goan Catholic family, and was educated in Goa and Bombay. Back in Kenya from 1949 he co-founded the East African Indian Congress and wrote for the nationalist press, was detained under Operation Anvil from 1954, founded KANU’s newspaper Sauti ya KANU in 1960 and became a member of the legislature in 1963. He was shot dead in the driveway of the family house in Parklands on 24 February 1965, the first Kenyan politician assassinated after independence. Three men were jailed, and Al Jazeera reported in 2023 that people close to the case believe those behind the killing are still unknown. Kenya issued a stamp in his honour in 2008.

The citizenship deadline and the exodus

At independence in 1963 Asians and Europeans were given two years to take Kenyan citizenship and give up their British passports. Of about 180,000 Asians, fewer than 20,000 had applied by the deadline, Wikipedia says, citing Donald Rothchild’s study, and many Africans saw those who had not as disloyal. The government’s policy of Africanisation cost many Asian civil servants and clerks their jobs; Wikipedia dates the Immigration Act, which required Asians to hold work permits, and a Trade Licensing Act that limited where non-citizens could trade, to 1967, though some accounts put the trade law in 1968. Many holders of British passports left. The United Kingdom’s Commonwealth Immigrants Act 1968, which received Royal Assent on 1 March 1968 after passing through Parliament in three days, was introduced amid fears that up to 200,000 Kenyan Asians would use their right to settle in Britain, and it restricted that right. The census series records the result: 176,613 Asians in 1962, 139,037 in 1969 and 78,600 in 1979.

Afterwards

Asian shops in Nairobi were attacked and looted after the failed coup attempt of 1982, but that did not set off another exodus. The community’s numbers rose again to 89,185 in 1989 and 90,527 in 2019 on the series above. On 22 July 2017 the government of Uhuru Kenyatta announced that Kenyans of Asian heritage would be recognised as the country’s 44th tribe, following the 43rd, the Makonde, in 2016; the Nation reported that some Asians were not elated by the new status. The Nairobi guide covers the recognition in more detail. Two Kenyans of Indian origin have been Chief Justice, Chunilal Madan (1985 to 1986) and Abdul Majid Cockar (1994 to 1997), the High Commission says.

Mombasa County had 1,208,333 residents at the 2019 census. Its 6,136 Hindus are 10.2% of Kenya’s Hindus, the second-largest county count after Nairobi’s, and 0.5% of the 1,190,987 people in the county’s row of the religion table.

Why Mombasa

Mombasa was the first capital of British East Africa until Nairobi took over in 1907, and the sea terminal of the Uganda Railway, begun in 1896, for which many workers were brought from British India. It is where the Mombasa Indian Association (1900) and the East African Indian National Congress (1914) began, where Allidina Visram died in 1916 with a soap factory among his holdings, and where A.M. Jeevanjee was said in 1904 to own half the town. The Old Town is Swahili in its architecture and has been mixed for generations: Wikipedia describes Kuze, one of its quarters, as increasingly cosmopolitan, and places Makadara, where the Hindu Union’s Shiva temple stands, in the Old Town. The Jain derasar sits in the Old Town too, between Digo and Langoni roads.

The temples and the derasar

The source for each place is named, and the table says where only a directory, an encyclopedia entry or a search result exists.

Dress modestly, take your shoes off and ask before photographing inside. The UK government’s advice, covered in the safety section, tells visitors to dress conservatively on the largely Muslim coast, particularly in Mombasa, and lists the Old Town and the Likoni Ferry as the places in Mombasa where crime is higher.

Work and the port

The port and the coastal special economic zones figure in the 2026 news about Indian investment. The High Commissioner toured the coastal zones, including the Revital EPZ in Kilifi County, on 12 February 2026, according to the Standard’s photo caption. An August 2026 Standard report on the Dongo Kundu zone says that after more than twenty years only two major private investors have visibly committed, and that the lack of roads, power and water is holding others back; read any job offer in a zone with that in mind. The Indian naval frigate INS Tarkash visited the port from 29 September to 2 October 2026, according to the High Commission. The Madaraka Express runs to Nairobi, and its fares are in the Nairobi guide.

These are the towns outside Nairobi and Mombasa where the community has been settled for the longest. Their worship places are in the temples table. The county figures are the Hindu counts from the numbers section.

Kisumu

Kisumu was the railway’s lake terminus: the line reached its pier on 20 December 1901. Wikipedia says plots were allocated in May 1900 to a few European firms and to the Indian traders who had come to Kisumu on railway contracts and decided to stay. It adds that Asians once made up more than a quarter of the town’s people and fell in number after 1963. Kisumu County had 1,155,574 residents in 2019 and 2,375 Hindus (0.2% of the 1,144,777 people in its row of the religion table). The Visa Oshwal community held a consecration ceremony for a new Jain temple in 2003, built for almost 300 Jain devotees with the help of the Shah family, according to Jain Digest. Pramukh Swami Maharaj performed the murti-pratishtha at the BAPS mandir on 26 September 2004 before more than 1,800 devotees, and the Hindu Council presented him with a citation. The Hindu Council’s Kisumu branch reports feeding programmes, eye and health camps, tree planting and sanitary-towel distribution in the lake region.

Nakuru

The Nation’s 2023 history says Asian settlement in Nakuru came with the railway, that Asians lived in an area then called Section 58 and that after independence wealthier families moved to Milimani, the former white settlers’ area. Businesses on Kenyatta Avenue, formerly Donald Avenue, were mostly Asian-owned, and the Hindu groups it names are the Lohana, Prajapati and Patel. Nakuru County had 1,660 Hindus out of 2,162,202 residents; it includes Naivasha, where HinduTone lists a Hindu temple established in 1925. The Jain Digest survey of 2015 counted about 550 Jains in Nakuru, with a ghar derasar built at the Visa Oshwal Mahajanvadi in 1976; it was rebuilt as a shikharbandhi derasar, consecrated from 2 to 7 February 2017, according to Jain Treasures. An undated album on the High Commission’s website shows a former High Commissioner visiting the Oshwal Centre and the Cutchi Hindu Union and seeing a new Jain temple under construction and a newly opened Ram Mandir.

Eldoret

Uasin Gishu County, whose main town is Eldoret, had 1,163,186 residents and 1,600 Hindus in 2019, 2.7% of Kenya’s Hindus. The Sri Guru Singh Sabha gurdwara was founded in 1958 by the local sangat, according to the All About Sikhs directory, which gives about 600 Sikhs in the area and weekly Sunday-morning diwans but is undated. BAPS’s history says new mandirs were established in Johannesburg and Eldoret in 1991. The Hindu Council has an Eldoret branch, whose 2026 committee is listed on its site.

Thika

Thika is in Kiambu County, which had 1,311 Hindus in 2019 but also takes in Nairobi’s northern suburbs, so the county count cannot be assigned to the town. The Hindu Council’s Mount Kenya branch is centred on the Shree Hindu Sanatan Dharama Mandir in Thika, established in 1945, which it says serves over 400 Hindus. The Oshwal story in Thika begins in 1910 to 1925, with a first derasar in 1952 and a shikharbandhi derasar consecrated on 3 February 1998; Jain Digest counted almost 300 Jain families there in 2015.

Makindu and the road to the coast

The Sikh temple at Makindu, about 170 km from Nairobi on the Nairobi–Mombasa road, was built in 1926 by Sikhs who worked on the railway, and Wikipedia says it serves free meals around the clock. BAPS’s 1999 history of its work in Africa also lists cultural centres and prayer halls in Nakuru, Kisumu, Kakamega and Kericho. After the six counties in the table, the largest Hindu counts are Machakos (976), Wajir (609), Kakamega (578), Garissa (529), Mandera (524) and Kilifi (518), and none of the remaining counties reaches 500.

Kenya’s immigration law is the Kenya Citizenship and Immigration Act of 2011. The Directorate of Immigration Services runs it, and all applications for permits and passes are made on the eFNS portal at fns.immigration.go.ke. The Nairobi guide sets out the Class D file, the dependant’s pass documents and the September 2026 statements on foreigners working without permits; this section is the national picture and the routes that guide does not cover.

The classes and what they cost

The fees are in the Directorate’s 2025 service charter, opened on 23 October 2026. Work and residence permits are decided in 21 working days and renewals in 10. East African Community citizens pay nothing; India is not a member.

Investors and business owners

The route for someone who is starting or buying a business is Class G, whose page asks for documentary proof of at least USD 100,000 to be invested, the company’s registration documents, a shareholder’s certificate, tax compliance certificates and a PIN. A KRA page on investment certificates, read as a search result, says a foreign investor proposing an investment of at least USD 100,000 qualifies for an investment certificate from the Kenya Investment Authority and can then apply for a work permit and a PIN; we did not open the Authority’s own pages. Class K is for residents aged 35 or over who live on an assured income from a pension, an annuity or sources outside Kenya. In September 2026 the government warned that foreigners running small retail and trading businesses without permits could lose their visas and gave them a 90-day window to regularise; see the Nairobi guide.

Remote workers and the new classes

The classes N, P, Q and R were created by an amendment of the immigration regulations in 2024. Law-firm summaries, which we read as search results because the firms’ sites refused our requests, describe Class N as a permit for people employed by a company abroad, or freelancing for clients abroad, who work remotely from Kenya, with an income test of USD 24,000 a year after a reduction from USD 55,000. The same summaries describe Class P as for staff of international organisations such as the United Nations and diplomatic missions, Class Q as for staff of religious or charitable organisations who do not preach or lead services (those who do need Class I), and Class R as for East African Community citizens, with fees waived. They give a USD 200 processing fee for Class N, where the charter lists KSh 20,000, and a February 2025 note from Clyde & Co said the department had not yet opened two of the new classes on the eFNS portal. Among the class pages we opened on Immigration’s website there is none for Class N. Confirm with Immigration that Class N is open and what it costs before relying on it. A visitor’s eTA never gives a right to work, as the Nairobi guide explains.

Permanent residence and citizenship

The charter lists permanent residence for lawful residents with a spouse and children at KSh 50,000 to process and KSh 750,000 to issue, for the spouse of a Kenyan citizen at KSh 50,000 and KSh 150,000, and for the children of a Kenyan citizen at KSh 20,000 and KSh 750,000, with a service time that the charter shows as 24 months. Registration as a citizen after lawful residence costs KSh 1,000,000, and a declaration of dual citizenship KSh 10,000. India does not give dual citizenship, so an Indian citizen who takes Kenyan citizenship surrenders the Indian passport; the High Commission’s OCI page lists a renunciation or surrender certificate among the documents a former Indian citizen sends with an OCI application (see the missions section).

Advice

Apply only through the portal and pay only the government. Be wary of anyone who offers to fast-track a permit for a fee, and check the rules for your class on Immigration’s own page before you pay an agent.

The High Commission of India’s page on trade and investment says India is Kenya’s third-largest trading partner, with trade of USD 4.31 billion in the financial year 2025–26: USD 4.01 billion of Indian exports to Kenya and USD 290 million of imports from Kenya. The Kenya Investment Authority had registered and facilitated 243 projects from India worth KSh 57.02 billion (US$441.83 million) by December 2025, with the potential to create 14,213 jobs, across manufacturing, trade, services, information technology, agriculture, tourism, construction, health, education, telecoms, mining, energy, water and logistics. Over 60 major Indian companies have invested in Kenya, the mission says, with a substantial pharmaceutical presence.

Who is named

Outlook Business, in an article of 4 September 2026, reported the High Commission’s count of nearly 200 Indian companies operating in Kenya, and its list of major investors, which includes Airtel, several Tata companies, Mahindra, Godrej, Thermax, UPL, Bank of Baroda and Bank of India. Airtel is Kenya’s second-largest mobile operator, the article says, and received a new 25-year licence in August 2026. The Assistant High Commission in Mombasa works from the Bank of India Building on Nkrumah Road, and the High Commission’s notice on paying consular fees names the Bank of India on Kenyatta Avenue in Nairobi for cash payments. We found no source on Indian information-technology employers hiring in Kenya, so we name none. The High Commission has a page on which Indian companies register with the mission.

The 2026 disputes

Several Indian firms have been in disputes with the Kenyan government in 2026, and a job offer from one is worth reading twice. The Ministry of Mining suspended mining and exports at Tata Chemicals Magadi on 28 July 2026, the High Court declined to lift the suspension on 7 August, and in Kajiado County on 3 September President Ruto ordered the company to leave, saying it had held a contract for a century without building a factory in the region. The company says it has supplied everything the government asked for. Company executives met the Mining Cabinet Secretary on 8 September, and Tata Chemicals said on 9 September that a joint technical committee, headed by the Principal Secretary for Mining and the company’s chief executive, would review the ministry’s concerns, among them beneficiation, community benefits and royalties, land and multiple mineral extraction. We found no report that the suspension has been lifted. Adani’s airport and power projects in the country had collapsed months earlier, Outlook Business says. Outlook Business lists earlier cases: Essar’s yuMobile telecom venture, sold in 2014, and its stake in the Kenya Petroleum Refineries at Mombasa, sold back to the government in 2016.

Outlook Business notes that this string of disputes could be read as a country turning against Indian business, but that nearly 200 Indian companies still operate in Kenya. These are disputes between firms and a government, not rules about Indian workers. Read a contract with a company in dispute twice, and ask whether the company is the one named in a ministry notice.

Four things come off a Kenyan salary: income tax collected by the Kenya Revenue Authority (KRA) as Pay-As-You-Earn (PAYE), a pension contribution to the National Social Security Fund (NSSF), a health contribution to the Social Health Authority (SHA) and the Affordable Housing Levy. None of the pages we opened says an expatriate on a work permit is exempt from any of them, and none says they are not, so ask the employer’s payroll which apply to your contract. The Nairobi guide has a worked example on a KSh 300,000 salary.

Income tax and the KRA PIN

KRA’s PAYE page, copyright 2026, gives the bands that apply since 1 July 2023 under the Finance Act 2023.

Resident individuals get a personal relief of KSh 2,400 a month (KSh 28,800 a year), and insurance relief of 15% of life, health or education premiums up to KSh 60,000 a year. The Finance Act 2026 came into force on 1 July 2026 without the PAYE changes that the government had promised, and the Treasury Cabinet Secretary said on 1 July that work on a review would start at once (Kenyans.co.ke, 2 July 2026). We found nothing since that changes the bands. The PIN is the number that employers, banks and landlords ask for first. The list of documents for a non-Kenyan employee, which includes the passport, the employer’s introduction letter, the employer’s PIN and the work permit, is in the Nairobi guide. A non-resident without an employer may need a tax agent to break a circular requirement between the bank and the PIN, according to the Rio Times.

Whether you are resident for tax depends on a legal test in the Income Tax Act that turns on a permanent home in Kenya and on days spent in the country, so ask an adviser before you assume. India and Kenya have a double-taxation agreement: the original is of 1985, a revised one was negotiated in July 2016 and India’s tax board notified it in February 2018. We did not open its text, so ask an accountant how it treats salary, pensions and Indian income.

NSSF

NSSF’s own notice to employers sets the fourth-year rates from February 2026: 6% from the employee and 6% from the employer on pay between a lower earnings limit of KSh 9,000 and an upper limit of KSh 108,000 a month. The most that either side pays is KSh 6,480 (KSh 540 on the first tier and KSh 5,940 on the second), KSh 12,960 in all, and contributions are due by the 9th of the following month.

SHIF

The Social Health Authority’s premium-rates page (copyright 2026) sets contributions at 2.75% of gross monthly income, with a minimum of KSh 300 a month and no upper limit. Salaried staff are in Tier 1, with the contribution deducted by the employer, and people outside formal employment are in Tier 2 and pay 2.75% of household income as set by a means test. SHA says all residents of Kenya, citizens, refugees and other non-citizens, are eligible to register, and that a foreign resident registers with a Foreign Resident Certificate (an alien ID). It does not say whether registration is compulsory for a work-permit holder. A 2024 news report cited section 26(5) of the Social Health Insurance Act as making registration mandatory for foreigners residing in Kenya, which is a point to put to your payroll.

The Affordable Housing Levy

Employers deduct 1.5% of gross monthly salary from the employee and add 1.5% of their own, with no ceiling, according to KRA’s public notice on the levy. We found no notice that exempts expatriates from it.

A SIM card

Kenya’s rules for registering a subscriber are the Registration of Telecommunications Service Subscribers Regulations, 2025 (Legal Notice 90 of 2025). They say the operator or agent must ask for original identification, and for a foreigner that is a valid passport or a Foreign National Registration Certificate. The operator must check the details against government databases, a person who registers a subscriber without verifying commits an offence, there is no proxy registration except by a parent or guardian for a child, and the operator may require the subscriber to appear in person. The regulations do not list a work permit as an identity document. Buy the SIM at an operator’s shop and take the original passport.

M-Pesa

M-Pesa mobile money is how rent, salaries, deliveries and small shops are paid in Kenya. The Rio Times says a valid passport is enough to register an M-Pesa line, and that not every international financial service is available on a number registered on a passport without further verification. The same guide, citing Safaricom, gives KSh 250,000 as the cap on a single transaction; we did not open Safaricom’s own page, so confirm the limits in a Safaricom shop. Keep your Indian number active for bank messages from home.

A bank account

We did not open any bank’s current checklist, and each bank sets its own rules for foreign nationals. The Rio Times guide of 2026 says a Kenyan bank usually asks for a tax number, a passport and proof of your immigration status, and that a resident employed foreigner typically needs an employer introduction letter, a valid passport, a work permit naming the employer and confirmation that the permit is endorsed in the passport. The Central Bank’s foreign-exchange guidelines allow residents and non-residents to open foreign-currency accounts, the same guide says. The non-resident route has a catch: the tax authority asks for a bank letter and the bank asks for the tax number. The Rio Times suggests a tax agent for that.

Two Indian banks operate in Kenya, Bank of Baroda and Bank of India, named by Outlook Business in September 2026 among the Indian companies there; we did not research what accounts they offer. Ask your own bank in India for its rate and fee before the first salary transfer home. This site has no Kenya send-money guide.

Public cover and private insurance

The Social Health Authority runs the public scheme, and the tax section gives the SHIF contribution and who may register. Many foreign residents also buy private cover, because access and billing differ by hospital, as the Nairobi guide explains from a September 2026 Rio Times guide. We did not research individual hospitals in Mombasa or the other towns, so ask your insurer for its network. The Nairobi guide names the large private hospitals in the capital.

Visitor insurance from 5 October 2026

The High Commission of India’s advisory of 14 October 2026 says Kenya has made travel health insurance mandatory for foreign nationals entering on or after 5 October 2026 for stays of under twelve months. Every non-exempt traveller, including children, needs their own cover, and existing foreign travel or medical policies are not accepted as substitutes. The policy is bought through the eTA application at etakenya.go.ke for new applicants, or at insurance.ecitizen.go.ke for people who already hold an eTA, and it is valid for 90 days with multiple entries. Kenyan citizens, holders of valid Kenyan residence status, citizens of East African Community states, asylum-seekers, diplomatic, official and service passport holders, crew and transit passengers are exempt. Airlines may check the policy at check-in and immigration will check it at the port of entry. A High Court in Marsabit suspended the rule in August, and by mid-October both the Indian and the British governments were telling travellers that it applied. Plan on buying it.

Ebola, October 2026

Kenya confirmed its first imported Ebola case on 6 October 2026. On 20 October the Ministry of Health confirmed a ninth case, in a man who was already in quarantine as a contact of the first patient, and said all nine belonged to one known cluster with no evidence of transmission beyond it. Citizen Digital reported the ministry’s statement that the eight surviving patients were stable and responding to treatment and that 134 of the 135 contacts identified had been traced and quarantined. Citizen Digital names the strain as Bundibugyo, for which, the Nairobi guide notes, there is no vaccine or specific treatment. The UK government’s travel advice, updated on 16 October, carries new information on Ebola screening at entry. The High Commission handed over Indian medical supplies to the Kenyan authorities on 19 October. The count may have changed since 20 October: follow the Ministry of Health, and see the Nairobi guide for the fuller account.

Medicines

Bring a prescription and a doctor’s letter for regular medicines and check Kenya’s rules on controlled drugs before you pack them. The UK government’s advice notes that the status of medicines differs between countries.

The choices for an Indian family are the international schools, which charge in dollars or in large sums of shillings, and the schools that Indian communities set up. We found no CBSE-affiliated school on any official page in Nairobi, and none in the other towns either. The Nairobi guide covers the International School of Kenya, with its 2026–27 fees, and Brookhouse.

Mombasa

Oshwal Academy Mombasa is a private co-educational school owned by the Oshwal Education and Relief Board, a Jain community body. Wikipedia says it follows the English GCE curriculum, replaced by the IGCSE from 2012–13, and moved to a 14-acre campus in Nyali in 2005. The Nairobi guide warns that a consultancy page claims Oshwal schools are CBSE-affiliated; we found no confirmation, so ask the school which curriculum it teaches. The Aga Khan Academy Mombasa belongs to the Aga Khan Academies network, which offers the International Baccalaureate. Fee figures for both schools on aggregator sites conflict with one another by a wide margin, so none is printed here: ask each school for its fee schedule, application fee and any deposit or levy.

The Mombasa Goan School, founded in 1932, was handed to the Catholic Church in 1961 and is now the Sacred Heart School, which had more than 1,000 primary pupils in 2012 (Wikipedia). The Sikh gurdwara on Mwembe Tayari Road is listed with a nursery school, a primary school and a clinic by an older directory, which we did not confirm for 2026.

Elsewhere

The Hindu Council of Kenya provides a syllabus and books for Hindu religious education, and temples, gurdwaras and samajs run children’s classes that are not published anywhere we could find. In Thika the Oshwal community started a Jain pathshala in 1942 and, from 1998, classes for children and adults, according to Jain Digest.

Applying

Ask for the full fee schedule, including one-off levies, and apply as early as the school allows. Keep your child’s transfer certificate and recent reports from India attested, and ask whether the school will hold a place until the permit and the dependants’ passes are issued. A student’s pass, USD 100 a year, is the immigration document for a child at an approved institution, though the dependant’s pass may be the better route; the Nairobi guide explains how to ask Immigration which applies. For Indian government scholarships, the High Commission’s site lists ITEC applications, ICCR scholarships and the Know India Programme.

Nairobi

The High Commission of India is at UN Crescent, Gigiri, Nairobi. Its fee page, last updated on 22 October 2026, lists these services; the full table, the appointment booking and the telephone numbers are in the Nairobi guide.

Mombasa

The Assistant High Commission of India is on the third floor of the Bank of India Building, Nkrumah Road, PO Box 90614, Mombasa, telephone 00254 41 2224433 or 2311051, email hoc.mombasa@mea.gov.in. Its menu lists visa, OCI, passport and attestation services, registration of Indian nationals and of Overseas Citizens, and its pages were last updated on 29 August 2026. Its pages give different hours. The passport overview says applications are received with prior appointment only from 09:30 to 12:30, with documents delivered from 09:30 to 16:30. The homepage lists receipt of applications and delivery of documents from 09:00 to 12:30 and passports, OCI and other consular documents from 15:00 to 16:00. Its visa page gives delivery from 15:00 to 16:30. Telephone before you travel. Passport applications are made online first and then submitted in hard copy with the documents; a lost-passport replacement is issued as a regular passport only to someone with a valid residence permit, work permit or dependant’s pass. We found no page saying which areas the Mombasa mission serves, so check with the mission that is nearer to your address. The mission’s 2026 holiday list includes Diwali on Sunday 8 November and Guru Nanak’s Birthday on Tuesday 24 November.

OCI for Kenyan Asians

The High Commission’s eligibility page lists who may register as an Overseas Citizen of India: a foreign national who was an Indian citizen on or after 26 January 1950 or eligible to become one on that date, or who belonged to a territory that became part of India after 15 August 1947, or who is a child, grandchild or great-grandchild of such a person, together with the minor children and foreign-origin spouses of eligible people. Proof can be an Indian passport, a renunciation or surrender certificate, a domicile certificate (attested by the Ministry of External Affairs in New Delhi), a nativity certificate certified by the District Magistrate or Collector and likewise attested, or the OCI or PIO card of a parent or spouse with its base papers. Anyone who, or whose parent, grandparent or great-grandparent, is or was a citizen of Pakistan or Bangladesh is not eligible, and British Overseas Citizens, asylees and stateless applicants are not eligible. The page says its list is not exhaustive. The fresh OCI fee is USD 275 (KSh 35,480), and applications start at ociservices.gov.in.

For many Kenyan Asian families the hard part is the paperwork: ask relatives who kept the family’s papers, and check which ancestors lived in territory that is now Pakistan or Bangladesh before you pay. The High Commission also runs a registration for Persons of Indian Origin and one for Indian nationals; we did not find either described as compulsory, but both help the mission to reach you in an emergency.

The UK Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office’s advice for Kenya, updated on 16 October 2026 and still current on 23 October, is the dated, reputable source we found. It advises against all travel to Mandera County, to parts of Wajir County near the Somali border, to most of Garissa County and to Lamu County except Lamu Island and Manda Island, and against all but essential travel to Garissa Town, to Tana River County north of the river as far as Saka, and to within 15 km of the east coast between the Tana and Galana rivers. Nairobi, Mombasa, Kisumu, Nakuru, Eldoret and Thika are not in those areas.

Crime

The advice reports frequent violent crime, including mugging, armed robbery and carjacking, particularly in large cities and on major highways, and says it has killed British nationals, including by day. It names Eastleigh, the Central Business District, Mathare and Kibera in Nairobi, and the Old Town and the Likoni Ferry in Mombasa, as places where the risks are higher. It advises against walking alone in isolated areas even in daylight, against carrying large sums or showy jewellery, and against resisting an attack; it says bag-snatching is common at bus and railway stations and airports and that criminals pose as police officers or guards, so ask for identification. Crime rises at Christmas and New Year.

Terrorism

The advice says terrorists are very likely to try to carry out attacks in Kenya, that attacks are indiscriminate and that targets can include hotels, restaurants, shopping centres, beaches, places of worship and diplomatic premises. The main threat is al-Shabaab. There is a high threat of kidnap, and westerners have been targeted in northern counties and in coastal counties. The advice recommends varying routines, travelling in daylight where possible and looking at the security arrangements, including bag searches and guards, in the buildings you use regularly. At a temple, a gurdwara or a community hall, expect guards and bag checks.

Protests

Protests, demonstrations and strikes are common, particularly in Nairobi, and the advice says a number of demonstrators have been injured and killed in recent years and that the situation can change quickly, especially on anniversaries of earlier protests. Some figures, from sources on different sides, give a sense of scale. The Kenya National Commission on Human Rights reported 19 people killed, 531 injured and 15 forcibly disappeared in the protests of 25 June 2025. An agency report of 7 July 2026 said at least 127 people had been killed in the protest periods of 2024 and 2025, citing Kenya’s police watchdog without naming it, and that police blocked the planned Saba Saba march in Nairobi on 7 July 2026, where fewer than ten protesters gathered. The Finance Act 2026 came into force on 1 July. Avoid political gatherings, follow the local news and stay away from crowds on anniversaries. We found no report that the protests targeted Indians or Asians.

The coast and the law

The advice tells visitors to dress conservatively on the coast, particularly in Mombasa, where the population is largely Muslim. You must carry identification, a copy of your passport is normally accepted, and it is illegal to photograph official buildings or airports. Possession of illegal drugs carries up to ten years in prison, and smoking in a public place can bring a fine of up to KSh 50,000.

Scams

The High Commission issued two advisories to Indian companies in October 2026, one on repeated frauds in which advance payments were made for scrap aluminium that never shipped and one on people posing as United Nations procurement officials. Do not pay for a permit, a job or a flat that you have not seen, and check a consular service against the High Commission’s own appointment page. The Nairobi guide has the longer account.

The source for each place is named, and the table says where only one source exists, such as a directory or a search result. Opening times change, so call before a first visit. This site has no Kenya temples page, so none is linked; Nairobi’s temples are in the Nairobi guide, and Mombasa’s are in the Mombasa section.

Notes

BAPS’s own history of its work in Africa says it opened cultural centres and prayer halls in Nakuru, Kisumu, Kakamega and Kericho by 1999. The Hindu Council of Kenya, founded in 1971 on its history page, is the umbrella body and has branches at Mombasa, Kisumu, Nakuru, Mount Kenya and Eldoret; each branch page on its site gives a 2026 committee. When you visit, dress modestly, take your shoes off and ask before photographing inside. The Sunday programmes at gurdwaras and temples are open to everyone and are the easiest first visit; a Sikh gurdwara asks you to cover your head.

Diwali is kept in Kenya’s temples, community halls and homes, and it is not a public holiday. At State House in October 2024 President Ruto told Hindu leaders his government would decide on making it one by the next Diwali and that any change would have to go to Parliament; we found no report that this has happened. The Assistant High Commission in Mombasa’s holiday list for 2026, which includes Kenyan public holidays such as Madaraka Day and Mashujaa Day, shows Diwali on Sunday 8 November as a mission holiday. Families celebrate on the evening of that Sunday. The Hindu Council of Kenya, which lists Diwali among the celebrations it organises, showed no scheduled event on its site on 23 October. We found no Diwali programme for Mombasa, Kisumu or Nakuru, so ask the Hindu Union of Mombasa, the BAPS mandirs or the Hindu Council’s branch for your town. The Diwali in Kenya page and the Diwali in Nairobi page carry any 2026 programme as it is announced.

Fireworks

Fireworks need a licence from the State Department for Mining. For Diwali 2025 the ministry allowed displays only from 17 to 20 October, at licensed places, and Nairobi County enforced against fireworks in residential areas afterwards (see the Nairobi guide). We found no 2026 notice, and no county rule for Mombasa, so assume the same limits and use lamps at home. Ask your temple or hall which licensed display it is running.

The rest of the year

The Assistant High Commission’s list for the rest of 2026 has Diwali on 8 November, Guru Nanak’s Birthday on 24 November and Christmas Day on 25 December. The Kenya events page and the Nairobi events page list Indian events as organisers post them.

Most day-to-day information in the community runs on WhatsApp groups organised by samaj, temple, language, school, estate and workplace: which clinic takes your insurance, which landlord to avoid, whether the road is open. They are fast and generous. But you need to know someone to get the link, links circulate for months after a group has died, every member can usually see your phone number, and groups are where scams spread: the “visa provided, pay the processing fee” job, the flat that needs a deposit “today”, and the consular appointment offered by someone who says he acts for the High Commission, which the mission warns against.

What Namaste Community adds

Namaste Community’s app and website have groups, events, a directory and a way to ask questions. The local groups for the country are on the Kenya groups page, the events are on the Kenya events page, and the Kenya directory lists the businesses on the site; a business can add itself. Groups in the app are moderated and tied to a place, Ask lets members put a question to people who have done it, and an anonymous mode exists for questions you would rather not attach to your name, such as a permit or a tax query.

Your first week, practically

1. Open the Kenya groups, join the one for your town and read before you post; the paperwork answers are often there already.
2. Go to one event in your first fortnight, such as a Sunday diwan or an aarti, and say who you are.
3. Say in your question whether you are an Indian national on a permit, a dependant, a visitor or a Kenyan Asian family, because the answers differ for permits, OCI, tax and schools.
4. Never send a deposit, a passport scan or a fee to someone you met in a group without checking who they are.
5. When you have found your doctor, your school and your grocer, leave an answer for the next person from Pune, Ahmedabad or Hyderabad. This guide links a city page only for Nairobi, so for Mombasa, Kisumu and Nakuru start from the country pages, and if the group you need is missing, start it.

The groups near you are listed below.