President William Ruto said on 14 September 2026, at a media engagement at Kisumu State Lodge, that exporting gold from Kenya without processing and outside approved government channels will be made illegal, with the Central Bank of Kenya as the first point of sale. Kenya’s State Department for Mining records gold exports of 359.13 kg for FY 2025/26 in its sub-sector report for the MTEF period 2027/28–2029/30, dated August 2026. The report states that a domestic gold purchase programme with the Central Bank of Kenya is to be rolled out and that the gold refinery in Kakamega County is being finalised. It counts 3,270 export permits issued in FY 2025/26 against a target of 4,000 and attributes the shortfall to a new directive requiring mineral value addition before export.
The Kakamega refinery is not on LBMA’s Good Delivery List, whose refiners must each refine at least 10 tonnes of gold a year and are audited annually against LBMA’s Responsible Gold Guidance. That Guidance classes gold as mined gold, with its origin at the mine, until it is refined to 995 or greater, made into a refiner’s product and sold, so gold refined in Kenya to that standard stops being mined gold at a refinery outside the Good Delivery List. The draft Minerals, Mining and Beneficiation Policy 2026 of the Ministry of Mining, Blue Economy and Maritime Affairs commits the government to legislation restricting raw-mineral exports through export bans and to facilitating imports of raw minerals from the region for processing in Kenya. A Kenyan refinery working under that policy can take in domestic and imported feed, so the refinery mark on its bars records where the gold was refined, and the country of the mine is established from the refinery’s intake records. Section 27 of the Central Bank of Kenya Act, amended in July 2026, lets the Bank buy, sell, import, export, transfer and hold gold under terms and conditions it determines, which places seller eligibility, fineness and documentation for a first sale with the Bank. For unrefined Kenyan gold, including doré, the licensing document for export is the permit issued by the State Department for Mining, and the report ties the FY 2025/26 shortfall in those permits to the value-addition directive.
The policy remains a draft with its Sessional Paper number blank, and the report identifies the directive only through its effect on permit numbers. The scope and commencement of a gold export prohibition rest with the Ministry of Mining, Blue Economy and Maritime Affairs and Parliament, and the terms of purchase with the Central Bank of Kenya.