Certificate of Origin Kenya: Rule Killed in 2026

What Is the Certificate of Origin Kenya Situation Right Now?

Kenya’s Certificate of Origin rule changed twice in just over a year. A mandate requiring one for every import took effect in July 2025, and the Finance Act 2026 repealed it effective September 1, 2026, so for most Kenya-China shipments a Certificate of Origin is no longer required at all.

If you have been holding off on a shipment because you were not sure whether you still needed one, that is the short version. A lot of the guidance still online, including some of our own past coverage, was written for the version of the rule that no longer applies.

The first change made a Certificate of Origin mandatory for every import into Kenya, with no exceptions for ordinary trade. The second change, thirteen months later, undid that, and both came through Kenya’s annual Finance Act, taking effect on specific dates that matter if you are working out which rule applied to a shipment that already cleared.

The mandatory Certificate of Origin rule drew criticism from parts of Kenya’s trade and logistics community soon after it took effect, largely because it added a document requirement to every shipment regardless of size or value, with little apparent connection to Kenya’s actual customs valuation or duty collection process. Reversing it in the following year’s Finance Act suggests lawmakers accepted at least some of that criticism, rather than the rule being a temporary or transitional measure that was always due to expire.

If you are wondering whether this could change again, there is no way to rule that out entirely. Kenya’s Finance Act is revisited annually, and both the 2025 and 2026 versions touched this exact requirement, so what is certain is the rule in force right now, which is what the rest of this guide covers.

Note the two source-of-truth documents here: the original Section 44A mandate was described in a KRA public notice dated September 2025, and the repeal is described in KRA’s own Finance Act 2026 guidance. Both are cited later in this post, and both are worth reading directly if you want the primary source rather than a summary.

Why This Matters if You Import Regularly

If you place shipments from China every month or two, a rule reversal like this one is not just a compliance footnote. It changes what your freight forwarder should be asking your supplier for, what you should be checking before a shipment leaves China, and what you actually need to keep on file if KRA ever asks a question about a past import. Getting this wrong in either direction has a cost: over-complying by chasing a Certificate of Origin nobody requires anymore wastes time and sometimes money, while under-complying by assuming no documentation is needed at all ignores the five-year retention requirement that replaced it.

What Did the Old Certificate of Origin Mandate Require?

The old certificate of origin Kenya mandate required a formal Certificate of Origin, issued by a competent authority in the exporting country, for every good imported into Kenya, in force from July 1, 2025 to August 31, 2026. Without one, KRA warned that goods would not clear and could be held or seized.

This came from Section 44A of the Tax Procedures Act, introduced by the Finance Act 2025, effective July 1, 2025 and enforced from October 1, 2025, with no exception for importers who were not claiming any tariff preference. KRA’s own notice at the time set out exactly what was required.

KRA did carve out exemptions. Nine categories were exempt: privileged persons and institutions, used goods including motor vehicles, personal baggage and effects, postal parcels, human remains, imported samples of no commercial value, temporary imports, small medicament packages, and courier packages under a set weight and value threshold. Where a formal Certificate of Origin was not practical, KRA also accepted four provisional alternatives: an Origin Declaration, an Export Permit or License, a Customs Export Declaration, or a PVoC certificate.

That was the environment behind most of the “how to apply for certificate of origin in Kenya” guidance you will still find online, including law firm bulletins and freight forwarder blog posts written between October 2025 and mid-2026. None of it is wrong about the period it covers. It is simply describing a rule that has since been replaced.

What Does Kenya Require Instead of a Certificate of Origin Now?

Since September 1, 2026, KRA requires an export declaration, export entry, customs export certificate, or equivalent document from the country of export, instead of a formal Certificate of Origin. This document must show the exporter, importer, goods description, quantity, value, tariff classification, and country of export, and must be retained for five years.

The Finance Act 2026, assented into law in June 2026, repealed Section 44A entirely, and KRA introduced this new and less rigid requirement in its place. This is a real part of the Kenya import documentation requirements 2026 update, confirmed directly on KRA’s own Finance Act 2026 guidance page, and it is worth reading carefully, because the framing is different from the old rule in a way that matters practically.

The old Certificate of Origin rule was a clearance gate: no certificate, no clearance. The new rule is framed around supporting claims, meaning it affects your ability to substantiate value, origin, ownership, exemptions, deductions, or refunds if a question comes up later, rather than blocking your shipment from moving in the first place. This is the core of the certificate of origin Kenya change: a lower bar, and it accepts several different document types instead of insisting on one specific certificate.

When Do You Still Need a Certificate of Origin in Kenya?

You still need a Certificate of Origin only if you are claiming preferential tariff treatment under EAC, COMESA, or AfCFTA. Outside of a COMESA certificate of origin Kenya claim or the EAC and AfCFTA equivalents, the repeal removed the general requirement entirely.

This reverts to the situation before July 2025: a Certificate of Origin is required only when you want to claim a lower or zero duty rate under one of these preferential trade arrangements.

For most Kenyan businesses importing general merchandise from China, this exception does not apply. China is not a party to COMESA, the EAC, or AfCFTA, so a Kenya-China shipment is not eligible for preferential tariff treatment on origin grounds in the first place. If your imports come from China, the preferential-treatment exception is largely academic. It matters more if your business also imports from a COMESA or EAC member state and wants the lower duty rate that origin can unlock there.

If you do need a Certificate of Origin for a preferential claim, it is issued by a competent authority in the exporting country, typically a chamber of commerce, not by KRA in Kenya. The request goes to the exporter’s side of the transaction.

Do You Need a Certificate of Origin for a Sample Shipment?

No. Samples of no commercial value were already exempt under the old mandate, and now that the general requirement has been repealed, a sample shipment needs no Certificate of Origin at all unless it is separately structured as a preferential-tariff claim.

One of the nine exemptions under the old mandate covered imported samples of no commercial value, and it is worth updating that specific point now that the general rule is gone. A certificate of origin Kenya sample question used to have a narrow, exemption-based answer: samples were exempt from a rule that otherwise applied to everyone else. Now that the underlying mandate no longer exists, the answer is simpler, since a sample shipment does not need a Certificate of Origin for the same reason any other general China-Kenya shipment does not.

This is a small but genuine correction to guidance published earlier this year, including our own guide to ordering samples from China, which framed the samples question around an exemption to a mandate that has since been repealed.

Will Your China Supplier Provide an Export Document?

If you are ordering directly from Alibaba or Made-in-China, most suppliers on these platforms are already used to exporting and can usually produce an export declaration or similar document without much prompting. Pinduoduo and 1688 do not enter into this for a self-directed buyer, because a Kenyan buyer cannot access either platform directly in the first place.

Pinduoduo and 1688 are built for domestic Chinese buyers: they run on Chinese phone numbers, Chinese payment methods such as WeChat Pay or Alipay, and delivery addresses inside China. Without those, a Kenyan buyer cannot complete an order on either platform alone, which is a large part of why a sourcing agent with a China-based team exists in the first place. If your sourcing question is really “how do I get Pinduoduo or 1688 pricing without being able to order there myself,” that is a sourcing problem, not a documentation one, and it is covered in our Pinduoduo vs Temu comparison.

Alibaba and Made-in-China are different. Both are built around international, export-facing trade, so most suppliers there already have export documentation as a normal part of doing business, since they deal with buyers outside China as a matter of course. That does not mean every supplier gets it right without being asked. Smaller Alibaba suppliers in particular can still be inconsistent, so it is worth confirming which document they intend to provide before the shipment leaves, rather than assuming it will be handled automatically.

As a practical check, ask your Alibaba or Made-in-China supplier directly which of the four accepted document types, export declaration, export entry, customs export certificate, or an equivalent, they will issue for your order, and confirm your freight forwarder is expecting to receive it. This is a five-minute question before shipment, and it is considerably simpler than the documentation question was under the old mandate.

What Should Kenya Importers Do Now?

Check what document your supplier or freight forwarder is producing for each shipment and keep it on file, since KRA can ask for it up to five years later. Beyond that, most of the old checklist for this rule no longer applies.

If you already have a shipment moving, the certificate of origin Kenya question for that specific shipment comes down to whether it is covered by the old rule or the new one, and what document you actually need to keep on file. Here is a short checklist to work through.

None of this changes how Kenya import duty, VAT, IDF, or RDL are calculated on your shipment. This is a documentation requirement that sits alongside those charges, not part of how they are worked out. If your shipment moves by sea, it also sits alongside the Advance Cargo Declaration, a separate pre-arrival document requirement that took effect in August 2026.

Frequently Asked Questions: Certificate of Origin Kenya

These certificate of origin Kenya questions come up most often. For more answers to common questions about importing from China to Kenya, visit our Kenya import FAQ page.

Jonatan Sirak sirak.se

Founder of Pamoja Imports, a Kenya-China import agency with an operations team based in Chengdu, China. Based in China since 2018, he studied Mandarin and built direct factory relationships in Chengdu, and now helps Kenyan entrepreneurs source and import products profitably. He splits his time between Nairobi and Chengdu.

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