AiA and AGOK sign three-year Kenya gambling MoU

The African iGaming Alliance (AiA) and the Association of Gaming Operators of Kenya (AGOK) have signed a three-year memorandum of understanding (MoU) covering regulatory engagement, taxation, responsible gambling and financial crime compliance, with an option to renew by mutual agreement.

The agreement was announced on 27 August. It lands while Kenya is between regulators and one year into a rewritten betting tax charged on player deposits and withdrawals.

AiA is led by chief executive Peter Emolemo Kesitilwe. AGOK is led by chief executive Dr John Mutua. Both organisations keep their own mandates and remain independent under the MoU.

What the agreement covers

The MoU sets out nine areas of work: regulatory engagement, responsible and safer gambling, consumer protection, taxation, licensing compliance, anti-money laundering and counter-terrorism financing (AML/CFT), market research, technology, and unlicensed gambling.

The planned activities are conferences, workshops, webinars, roundtables with regulators and operators, capacity-building programmes, policy papers and joint research. No funding figure, staffing commitment or first project date was given.

“Building sustainable and well-regulated gaming markets across Africa requires stronger cooperation,” Kesitilwe said, describing Kenya as “one of Africa’s most important and dynamic gaming markets.”

Mutua described the agreement as a link between Kenyan operators and associations elsewhere on the continent, giving members a route to compare licensing and compliance practice across jurisdictions.

“Our priority remains the development of a responsible, sustainable and appropriately regulated gaming sector,” Mutua said.

Kenya is mid-handover to a new regulator

The Gambling Control Act 2025 created the Gambling Regulatory Authority (GRA) to replace the Betting Control and Licensing Board (BCLB), the body that has licensed Kenyan betting since the 1960s. The handover was scheduled to complete by the end of February 2026.

Processing of annual licence applications was suspended for the transition. Existing licensees were told they could continue operating until their current licences expire. The GRA is still drafting the regulations that will sit under the Act, so the detail operators need on fees, licence classes and county-level requirements is not yet published.

The MoU’s licensing-compliance and policy-paper work is aimed at that gap. Whether it matters depends on whether the GRA treats an operator association and a continental body as consultees once the draft regulations go out. Neither AiA nor AGOK has a statutory role in that process.

Kenya is not alone in tightening supervision. South Africa’s National Gambling Board launched an operator verification portal in April and has issued alerts on non-compliant advertising, both aimed at the same problem the MoU names last: unlicensed operators taking bets from a regulated market.

The tax base moved from wagers to transactions

Taxation sits in the MoU for a reason. Under the Finance Act 2025, Kenya charges excise duty of 5% on betting deposits and withdrawals, replacing 15% on amounts wagered. Withholding tax on winnings fell to 5% from 20%.

The rates went down and the base went up. The 5% applies to money moving between mobile-money accounts and betting wallets whether or not a bet is placed, so a player who deposits and later withdraws is taxed twice on the same funds.

The Parliamentary Budget Office projects KES 11.4 billion (around $88.3 million at current rates) in betting taxes for the 2025/26 financial year, against KES 5.4 billion under the old structure. The Kenya Revenue Authority (KRA) collected KES 5.7 billion in the year to 30 June 2025, up 22% year on year.

A transaction-level charge gives operators a direct commercial interest in how the GRA and KRA interpret it, particularly on withdrawals and on transfers that never reach a bet slip.

What happens next

The first test is the GRA’s draft regulations. If they open for consultation before the end of the year, the MoU has something concrete to produce a policy paper on. If they do not, the agreement stays at the level of conferences and webinars for its first year.

The three-year term also gives both bodies room to show whether cross-border comparison changes anything on AML/CFT reporting, where Kenyan operators handle high volumes of low-value mobile-money transactions and the compliance burden falls unevenly on smaller licensees.

Source: African iGaming Alliance