How Kenya Funds Sport: Legal Duties Under the Sports, Arts and Social Development Fund

Most of the money Kenyan sport receives from the state does not come from a parliamentary budget line for sport. It comes from a statutory fund fed largely by a levy on betting and gaming revenue, channelled through the Sports, Arts and Social Development Fund (SASDF). For federations chasing a grant, athletes applying for support and betting operators wondering what they actually owe, the legal mechanics of the Fund, not just its existence, determine what happens next. This article explains who must pay into the Fund, how the money is split, who decides where it goes, and what changed when the regulations were amended in 2025.

The statutory basis of the Fund

The SASDF is established under the Public Finance Management (Sports, Arts and Social Development Fund) Regulations, 2018, made under the Public Finance Management Act. Its stated mandate is to provide funding for the development and promotion of sport and the arts, and, under the original 2018 regulations, the promotion of social development including universal health care. It is not a discretionary pot the Ministry hands out at will; it is a fund with defined revenue sources, defined allocation percentages and a defined governance structure, all set out in subsidiary legislation.

Who has to pay, and how much

Regulation 4(1) of the 2018 Regulations lists the Fund’s sources of revenue. The most consequential for the betting and gaming industry is regulation 4(1)(a): all proceeds required to be paid into the Fund under section 69A of the Betting, Lotteries and Gaming Act. In practical terms, this is the legal hook that obliges licensed betting, lottery and gaming operators to remit a share of their revenue into the Fund rather than treating it as a matter of goodwill or corporate social responsibility. The Fund also draws on a share of income tax and excise duty receipts under regulation 4(1)(b) and (c), together with parliamentary appropriations, grants, donations and any income the Fund itself generates under regulation 4(1)(d) to (g). Betting operators who are uncertain about their own remittance obligations under the Betting, Lotteries and Gaming Act should treat this as a compliance question distinct from, but connected to, their general licensing obligations under Kenya’s betting and gambling law.

Once money is in the Fund, regulation 4(2) sets ceilings, not fixed entitlements, for each stream: social development and health may take up to sixty percent, sport up to thirty-five percent, arts up to twenty percent, and strategic interventions up to five percent. Because these are described as maximums rather than guaranteed shares, and because the Cabinet Secretary may adjust them on the Board’s advice under regulation 4(3), the sport sector’s actual allocation in any given year is a matter of administrative decision within those ceilings, not a fixed statutory entitlement.

Who runs the Fund

Regulation 8 establishes an oversight Board made up of the Principal Secretaries responsible for finance, sports, arts, health and education, together with three appointed members chosen for specialised expertise, with the Chairperson designated by the President and a quorum of four members. Day-to-day administration sits with an Administrator designated by the Cabinet Secretary under regulation 11, typically the accounting officer responsible for sport. This structure matters for federations dealing with the Fund: decisions on disbursement are not made by a single ministry official acting alone, and an applicant with a complaint about how a decision was reached should be asking who on the Board, and under what delegated authority, actually approved or declined it.

How federations and athletes access the money

The Fund does not pay out on request. Regulation 14 requires eligible applicants, which include national sports organisations, athletes and other qualifying bodies, to apply by specified deadlines and to support the application with the documentation the Fund requires. Recipients are not free to treat a disbursement as a one-off grant with no further obligations: regulation 15(2) requires them to submit quarterly or annual progress reports and to permit monitoring of how the funds are used, and regulation 15(3) requires any unused funds to be returned. A federation that receives SASDF support for, say, facility development or an athlete support programme, and then cannot account for how the money was spent when asked, is not merely at risk of losing future funding; it is in breach of a specific regulatory condition attached to the disbursement it already received. Federations that have not yet formalised their own registration and governance structures should note that eligibility itself typically depends on being a properly constituted and registered sports organisation in the first place.

The 2025 amendment: a narrower mandate

In late 2024, the National Treasury issued a public notice proposing to amend the 2018 Regulations to narrow the Fund’s mandate. As set out in that notice, the change would limit the Fund’s purpose to “funding the development and promotion of sports and arts only,” dropping the social development and universal health care component that the original 2018 Regulations had included, and refocusing the Fund’s objectives on sports and arts facility development, equipment, and direct support to athletes, artists and their organisations. The proposal went through a public participation process, with written submissions and a stakeholder meeting held at the National Treasury before the amendment was finalised. A Legal Notice amending the 2018 Regulations followed in 2025. Federations should treat the practical effect as a tightening of focus: money that could previously have been characterised as social development spending with only an indirect sport connection is harder to justify once the Fund’s purpose is confined to sport and arts, and grant applications should be framed accordingly.