Burundians Rush to Leave Kenya as Ruto’s Foreign Traders Crackdown Takes Effect
September 2026
President William Ruto’s crackdown on foreign small-scale traders took effect on Monday, September 7, 2026, sending hundreds of Burundian nationals rushing to their embassy in Nairobi for travel documents home. The directive, which ordered the crackdown on foreigners running hawking stalls and small shops, has turned into one of the most contentious governance rows of the year.
Ruto issued the directive on September 2 after meeting Kenyan traders who had been protesting tax reforms, telling authorities to shut the businesses down within days. Reuters reported that Ruto last week called on authorities to close down all small-scale businesses operated by foreign traders, starting on Monday. The trade ministry later clarified that the order applied to foreigners operating without work permits.
Addressing traders at State House earlier in the week, Ruto framed the move as protection for local entrepreneurs rather than an attack on foreigners generally. As webrwanda’s coverage of his remarks put it, Ruto said, “It cannot be that a person comes from China or elsewhere to be a hawker or open a small shop.”
Burundians Queue For Papers
Long lines of mostly young men formed outside the Burundi embassy in Nairobi on Monday, many clutching suitcases as they waited for travel papers. Wire coverage carried by The Citizen quoted 62-year-old Peter Nakumujango describing the scramble: “I have been forced to go.”
Other Burundians outside the embassy said the pressure went beyond the trading directive itself. Per The Citizen’s report, there were no immediate signs of a crackdown in Nairobi on Monday, though some Burundians outside the embassy said they had received threats from neighbours following Mr Ruto’s remarks. The UN refugee agency puts the number of Burundian refugees and asylum seekers in Kenya at roughly 16,000 people, many of whom run small trading businesses selling coffee and second-hand clothes.
Karua Accuses Government
People’s Liberation Party leader Martha Karua, a former Justice Minister, was among the sharpest critics of the directive. Karua accused Ruto’s government of promoting collective punishment and said the policy sat badly with Kenya’s constitutional values and its regional integration commitments, per People Daily’s coverage of her statement.
“We wish to state clearly to the global community: this xenophobic stance is a unilateral political position of President William Ruto and his administration,” Karua said. She argued that millions of Kenyans themselves live and trade in neighbouring countries, so singling out foreign hawkers cuts against decades of shared movement across East Africa.
Maraga Calls It Scapegoating
Former Chief Justice David Maraga added his own criticism, arguing the enforcement rested on a presidential directive rather than an actual law. In a statement carried by People Daily, Maraga said Ruto cannot use a State House announcement to override Kenya’s constitutional and regional obligations.
Maraga went further, saying the crackdown distracts from deeper economic troubles. “This is scapegoat policy,” he said, adding that ordinary Kenyans will not fall for what he called cheap diversionary and divisive tactics. He pointed to the Local Content Bill, 2025, still before Parliament and not yet law, as the proper route for any local-content rules rather than an administrative order.
Government’s Side Of It
Ruto’s team has defended the timeline by tying it to that same pending bill, which would require foreign firms to meet Kenyan employment and sourcing quotas. Officials have also stressed the order targets undocumented traders specifically, not all foreign residents, per People Daily’s separate analysis of the unfolding standoff.
Burundi’s own Foreign Affairs Ministry weighed in too, saying some of its traders had faced dispossession and unjustified violence linked to the crackdown, and warning that Kenya would be held responsible for harm to its citizens. The Burundian embassy in Nairobi, meanwhile, cautioned that the queues for documentation should not automatically be read as proof of a mass exodus.
That gap between what the crowds outside the embassy suggest and what Burundian officials are willing to confirm is likely to keep this story moving. With the September 7 deadline now behind Kenya’s traders and enforcement only just beginning, how strictly the government distinguishes documented residents from undocumented ones may decide whether this settles down or escalates further.
