Kenya’s County Licensing (Uniform Procedures) Act 2024: What Changed for Businesses Operating Across Counties

Any business operating in more than one Kenyan county has likely run into the same frustration: each county government sets its own licensing procedures, its own fees, and its own timelines, with little consistency between them. The County Licensing (Uniform Procedures) Act, 2024 is Parliament’s answer to that problem. It does not create one national business licence. It creates a common set of rules that every county’s licensing process must follow. Here is what actually changed, and where implementation genuinely stands.

A Harmonized Procedure, Not a Single National Licence

The Act, No. 8 of 2024, was assented to on 28 June 2024 and commenced on 28 December 2024, six months later as provided in the Act itself. Its long title describes its purpose precisely: to establish standard uniform procedures for licensing by county governments. That distinction matters. A business with operations in, say, Nairobi, Mombasa, and Kisumu will still hold separate county licences for each location. What the Act standardizes is how each county must process, price, and time-limit the application for that licence, and it allows an applicant to submit a single application covering more than one licence within the same sector, with each licensing authority required to put in place procedures for exactly that.

Fees, Timelines, and a Deemed-Approval Backstop

The Act sets fee-setting principles rather than a single fixed national fee schedule. County licensing authorities must consider efficiency, public participation, the administrative cost of the licence, and the impact of fees on vulnerable groups, and must avoid charging multiple or duplicate fees for the same licensed activity. This is a standardization of methodology, not a promise that every county will now charge identical amounts.

The Act’s more concrete protection for applicants is procedural. A licensing authority must determine an application within 28 days of receipt, and if it fails to do so within that window, the application is deemed approved. Once a decision is made, the authority must communicate it in writing within 7 days. Together these two provisions give a business a genuine, statutory ceiling on how long a county can sit on a licence application, something that did not previously exist in a uniform way across counties.

What Happens If a County Refuses or Delays

An applicant aggrieved by a licensing decision can pursue review either under whatever specific licensing legislation applies to that licence, or by applying directly to the relevant county executive committee member, who is required to decide the review within 21 days. This gives businesses a defined, time-bound escalation route that sits above the county licensing officer level, rather than leaving a refusal or an unreasonable condition to informal negotiation or a slower court process as the only option.

Where Implementation Actually Stands

The Act itself has been in force since 28 December 2024, but its practical effect depends heavily on implementing regulations. The County Licensing (Uniform Procedures) Regulations, 2025, Legal Notice No. 91 of 2025, were gazetted on 30 May 2025. As of the most recent parliamentary record available, the National Assembly’s Committee on Delegated Legislation was still reviewing these Regulations as late as November 2025, several months after their gazettement. Under Kenya’s statutory instruments framework, a gazetted regulation generally takes effect on publication, with parliamentary review functioning as a check that can annul it afterward rather than a precondition to it taking effect, so the Regulations should be treated as operative since May 2025 even while that review continues.

On the ground, the rollout has proceeded through regional stakeholder consultation rather than a single national launch. In January 2025, all 47 counties were grouped into seven regional clusters for consultation workshops, supported by the EU-funded Business Environment and Export Enhancement Programme, feeding into the Regulations. Each county is required to establish a County Licensing Board to handle the grant, renewal, amendment, and replacement of licences, coordinated across counties through the Council of County Governors. We were not able to confirm from any published source which, if any, individual counties have fully implemented the new uniform procedures in practice versus still transitioning administratively. A business relying on this Act today should confirm the specific county’s current practice directly rather than assume uniform application has already been achieved everywhere.

A related, longer-term commitment worth noting: the Act requires licensing authorities to put electronic application mechanisms in place within three years of commencement, meaning by around December 2027. A single national electronic licensing portal is a medium-term goal under the Act, not something already delivered.