County Licensing (Uniform Procedures) Act 2024 Stakeholders meeting

The President assented to the County Licensing (Uniform Procedures) Act 2024 on June 28, 2024. The Act seeks to harmonize and standardize licensing procedures across all 47 counties in Kenya to improve the ease of doing business in Kenya and make Kenya the preferred investment destination in Africa for local and foreign investors.  The Act provides that the Cabinet Secretary for Ministry of Investments, Trade and Industry will develop regulations for the implementation of the Act. A Technical Working Group representing the public and private sectors was established to steer the process of developing regulations. In this regard, the State Department for Investment Promotion, in collaboration with the Council of Governors, organized counties into seven workshops to obtain proposals for the development of the County Licensing Regulations. The workshops were held concurrently from 20th to 24th January 2025. The seven clusters were as follows: 1. Mombasa 2. Kisumu 3. Nakuru 4. Nyeri 5. Isiolo 6. Machakos and 7. Kakamega. In each workshop, representatives from public and private sectors were invited to present their views on the regulations. County Executive Committee Members for Finance, Trade, and Agriculture from each county presented their views during the workshops. For the private sector, the Kenya National Chambers of Commerce and Industry and the Kenya Association of Manufacturers nominated their representatives to present their organizations views at the workshops. The outcome of the workshops is a report from each cluster which will be consolidated into one report with recommendations on the regulations that will be developed.

The workshops were sponsored by the European Union under the Business Environment and Export Enhancement Programme (BEEEP) Strategic Objective 3 which aims at enhancing the business and investment climate in Kenya.