Kenya’s National Treasury says it wants to expose the real owners of companies operating in the country, promising that the reforms will help fight corruption, money laundering and tax evasion.
Before Kenyans applaud, the government owes them an answer to a bigger question: who is hiding behind the companies winning public contracts, acquiring state assets and closing the most lucrative deals in the country?
The worry is not only that private businessmen conceal their identities. It is that politically connected individuals, including people at the highest levels of government, could be using nominees, relatives and layered corporate structures to hide their financial interests. The public cannot rule this out, because the system has never let it look.
Kenya has had a beneficial ownership law for years. The rules took effect in October 2020 through the Companies (Beneficial Ownership Information) Regulations. A 2022 amendment went further, and companies participating in public procurement and PPPs must now disclose their beneficial owners to the procuring entity. On paper, the state already has the tools to know who profits from taxpayer money.
In practice, compliance has been dismal. Business Daily reported that of 794,741 registered companies, 399,595, or 50.28 percent, had not complied. The Open Government Partnership’s review of Kenya’s action plan reaches a similar conclusion: compliance levels remain below 50%, so Kenya cannot fully reap the benefits of the law. A law that half the corporate sector ignores is not a transparency regime. It is a suggestion.
Even the information that is collected is largely out of public reach. The regulations prohibit companies from disclosing a beneficial owner’s details without that owner’s written consent, except under a court order or as the amended regulations prescribe.
A Kenyan whose taxes fund a multibillion-shilling contract cannot simply look up who owns the company that won it.
Pressure from abroad has made the matter urgent. Kenya was grey-listed in February 2024 after a 2021 evaluation found gaps in compliance with global standards, including on beneficial ownership transparency. As recently as February 2026, the Financial Action Task Force was still calling on Kenya to designate a competent authority to regulate trusts, maintain accurate and up-to-date beneficial ownership information, and introduce effective measures against breaches. More than two years after the listing, the work is still unfinished.
That is why the Treasury’s proposed transition period of up to 24 months is so hard to defend. Kenya has been on the grey list since February 2024. Why should identifying the real owners of companies take another two years when public money and national assets are at stake? A government that truly wanted to expose hidden owners would not build a long runway for the very disclosures it says are urgent.
The new trust law follows the same pattern: existing trusts get 24 months from 25 September 2026 to comply, the Registrar can extend that period, and key details are left to regulations that have yet to be published. Deadlines that stretch and details that wait for later are how reforms lose their teeth.
The government cannot credibly claim to be fighting hidden ownership while leaving unanswered questions about the people behind companies that secure multibillion-shilling contracts and acquire interests in strategic public assets. Credibility is built by doing the hard part first.
If President William Ruto’s administration is serious about transparency, the reforms should begin with the companies doing business with the government. Publish their beneficial owners. Identify the politically exposed persons among them. Require disclosure of conflicts of interest. Publish who has been penalised for non-compliance and who has not. None of this requires two years. It requires political will.
That is the real test. If the new rules expose politically connected beneficiaries, they will mark a genuine break with the past. If they only add a compliance burden for ordinary businesses while powerful individuals stay protected, Kenyans will have reason to see them as one more reform announced for the benefit of foreign evaluators rather than the public.