The Kenyan shilling has barely moved for more than two years: since July 2024 it has stayed between 128 and 131 to the US dollar. That calm is recent and unusual. The shilling lost more than a third of its value between 2020 and January 2024, touching about 163, and before that spent decades sliding from 7 to the dollar at independence to more than 100.

The biggest single source of the dollars behind it is not a crop or a beach. Kenyans abroad sent home about $5.1 billion in 2025, more than the country earned from any single export or, on the ministry's figures, from tourism. That is about a quarter of the $21.4 billion Kenya earned from exporting all its goods and services, so it is the largest source but far from the only one. Behind both sits a bigger change: after 24 years under Daniel arap Moi in which income per person did not grow, it has risen 63% in the 23 years since. This article follows the shilling from independence through the Kibaki years, Chinese lending and the startup funding fall, and looks at how Kenya compares with its neighbours, where its foreign currency comes from and who is sending it.

The short version

• The rate is steady now, but only now. Between July 2024 and October 2026 the weekly rate stayed between 128 and 131 shillings per dollar. It was equally flat from late 2016 to 2019 (100 to 104). Between 2020 and January 2024 it did the opposite and rose from about 101 to about 163.
• Income per person went nowhere for 24 years, then rose 63% in 23. It was $1,204 in 1978 and $1,171 in 2002, the end of Moi's years, then reached $1,908 in 2025. Real output grew 2.1 times under Moi and 2.9 times since.
• The shilling has lost about 95% of its dollar value since 1960. It was fixed at 7.14 per dollar until 1972, floated in October 1993, and averaged 129 in 2025.
• The Kibaki years were Kenya's fastest growth in decades. Growth averaged 5.5% a year from 2003 to 2007, against 2.3% from 1993 to 2002, and the shilling strengthened 14.5% against the dollar between 2002 and 2007.
• Remittances are Kenya's biggest single source of dollars. About $5.1 billion in 2025, 3.8% of GDP, more than tea, horticulture, coffee and clothing exports put together ($4.0 billion). They were $1.6 billion in 2015. They are not most of all foreign currency: goods and services exports together came to $21.4 billion.
• The senders are shifting, slowly. The United States still supplies about half. The Gulf states rose from about 8% of inflows in 2019 to 13% in 2024, then fell back. Africa and Oceania have grown most in 2026.
• China is the third-largest creditor. It held 11.9% of Kenya's external public debt in June 2025, behind the World Bank's IDA (30.3%) and Eurobond holders (18.6%).
• Startup funding fell 25% in 2023. Kenya raised about $800 million in 2023, down 25% from 2022, and was still the top destination in Africa.

In this article

1. How steady is the rate?
2. 1960 to 1992: fixed, then crawling
3. 1993: the float and the worst inflation year
4. 2003 to 2007: the Kibaki boom
5. What the growth means for income
6. 2008 to 2019: shocks, then a long flat stretch
7. 2020 to early 2024: the slide and the spike
8. 2024: the reversal
9. Diaspora money
10. Where the money comes from, and how that is changing
11. Chinese lending
12. Kenya's weight in East Africa
13. The startup funding fall
14. How Kenya compares with its neighbours
15. What this does and does not show
16. Method and data

How steady is the rate?

For the last two years, very. The weekly rate has barely moved since the middle of 2024. The Treasury's own debt report says the shilling "remained stable against the US dollar" in the year to June 2025, moving from 129.5 to 129.2. Against other currencies it was not stable at all: over the same year the shilling fell 8.4% against the euro, 7.7% against sterling and 10.2% against the yen. So the stability is against the dollar specifically.

The longer picture is less tidy, as the chart below shows. A steady rate is a recent condition, not a permanent feature of the shilling.

1960 to 1992: fixed, then crawling

The shilling stood at 7.14 to the dollar from 1960 to 1972, and varied only between about 7 and 9 until 1981. The Central Bank of Kenya describes the period 1966 to 1982 as a fixed exchange rate system. In 1983 it introduced a crawling peg, in which the rate is adjusted in small steps. The official rate crept from 11 in 1982 to 32 in 1992, a loss of about 66% of the shilling's dollar value in ten years, even though the rate was still administered rather than set by the market.

1993: the float and the worst inflation year

Kenya floated the shilling in October 1993, according to the central bank's own timeline. The annual average moved from 32 per dollar in 1992 to 58 in 1993, a rise of 80% in a year. Consumer price inflation reached 27% in 1992 and 46% in 1993, the highest of any year in the World Bank series, which begins in 1960. Real GDP shrank 0.8% in 1992 and was almost flat in 1993. The shilling then recovered to 51 in 1995 and drifted back to 76 by 2000. Forex bureaus were permitted from 1995.

2003 to 2007: the Kibaki boom

Growth averaged 2.3% a year from 1993 to 2002. From 2003 to 2007, in the first term of President Mwai Kibaki, who took office in December 2002, it averaged 5.5%, reaching 6.9% in 2007. The shilling strengthened over the same period, from an annual average of 78.7 in 2002 to 67.3 in 2007, its strongest level since 1998. Inflation was not low: it averaged 11.2% from 2003 to 2007, so the boom was not a quiet one.

Source: World Bank, indicators NY.GDP.MKTP.KD.ZG, FP.CPI.TOTL.ZG and PA.NUS.FCRF. Our averages of the annual figures.

What the growth means for income

The cleanest way to see the change is to set the 24 years of President Daniel arap Moi (1978 to 2002) against the 23 years since. Both are measured in constant 2015 US dollars, from World Bank data.

Total output did not stagnate under Moi: it more than doubled. But the population grew just as fast, so the average Kenyan ended where they started. Income per person peaked at $1,329 in 1990 and did not get back above that level until 2010. Since 2002 output has grown faster and the population more slowly, and income per person has risen by almost two thirds. In the 15 years from 2010 to 2025 alone, real output almost doubled (1.97 times, $55.7 billion to $109.8 billion) and income per person rose 42%.

The currency's course sits against that backdrop: the shilling fell from about 11 to 76 per dollar between 1982 and 2000 while average income went nowhere, and lost more than a third again between 2020 and 2024 while income kept rising. Income per person in constant dollars measures output, not what households can buy or how it is shared, so it says nothing on inequality.

2008 to 2019: shocks, then a long flat stretch

Growth fell to 0.2% in 2008, the year after the disputed December 2007 election and the violence that followed, and inflation reached 26.2%. The shilling weakened to 77 in 2009 and, with inflation at 14.0% in 2011, to an annual average of 89 that year. By 2015 the average was 98.

From October 2016 to the end of 2019 the weekly rate stayed between 99.7 and 104.0, a range of about 4%. The annual averages tell the same story: 101.5 in 2016, 103.4 in 2017, 101.3 in 2018 and 102.0 in 2019. This is the first period in which a rate that is officially floating looked fixed.

2020 to early 2024: the slide and the spike

The shilling then lost value in a steady line rather than a shock. It averaged 106 in 2020, 110 in 2021, 118 in 2022 and 140 in 2023, a rise of 37% between 2019 and 2023. The central bank's own series puts the rate at about 157 at the start of January 2024. On xe.com's market rates it peaked at about 163 on 25 January 2024. Inflation was 7.7% in both 2022 and 2023, lower than in 2008 or 2011, so this was a currency slide without an inflation spike to match.

The Treasury's external debt, most of which is owed in US dollars, grew in shilling terms as the rate fell: from KSh 4.0 trillion in June 2021 to KSh 5.4 trillion in June 2023.

2024: the reversal

The recovery was fast. On xe.com's weekly figures the rate fell from about 159 on 11 February 2024 to 145 a week later, and was back to about 128 by mid April. By July it had settled and stayed there. The Treasury's debt report says an external bond operation in 2024 "supported the stabilization of the foreign exchange market and bolstered the Kenyan Shilling", and notes that a $2 billion Eurobond fell due in June 2024. We cannot say from public data how much each factor mattered.

The recovery also shows in the Treasury's books. External public debt was KSh 5,447 billion in June 2023 and KSh 5,172 billion in June 2024, a fall of 5% in shilling terms, even though the World Bank's figure for the dollar value of Kenya's total external debt was $42.9 billion in both 2023 and 2024. The central bank's foreign exchange reserves also rose: $7.3 billion at the end of 2023, $10.1 billion in 2024 and $12.4 billion in 2025 (World Bank). A larger reserve gives a central bank more room to keep a rate steady, though the data cannot show how it was used.

Diaspora money

Tea, flowers and safaris are the best-known dollar earners, but the biggest single one is money sent home by Kenyans abroad. The Kenya National Bureau of Statistics (KNBS) records KSh 661.2 billion of diaspora inflows in 2025, which is about $5.1 billion at that year's average rate of KSh 129.30, and the World Bank's balance of payments figure agrees.

• Tea: KSh 187.1 billion of exports in 2025, about $1.4 billion. Remittances are 3.5 times that.
• Horticulture (cut flowers, vegetables and fruit), Kenya's largest export: KSh 216.5 billion, about $1.7 billion.
• Coffee and clothing: KSh 52.1 billion ($0.4 billion) and KSh 63.3 billion ($0.5 billion).
• Tourism: the Ministry of Tourism reports about KSh 0.5 trillion of total earnings in 2025, up to $3.9 billion. That figure does not separate foreign visitors from Kenyans travelling at home, so it is an upper bound for foreign currency. Remittances are still larger.

Remittances are the biggest single source, but not most of Kenya's foreign currency. Goods exports were $13.0 billion in 2025 and services exports $8.4 billion (World Bank), so remittances were about a quarter of the $21.4 billion total. They have also grown faster than exports: from $1.6 billion in 2015 to $5.1 billion in 2025, a factor of 3.2, against 2.2 for goods exports ($6.0 billion to $13.0 billion).

Remittances grew every year of the slide: $2.8 billion in 2019, $3.1 billion in 2020, $4.2 billion in 2023 and $5.0 billion in 2024. They did not stop the shilling from sliding between 2020 and 2023, so they are not a guarantee of a steady rate. What they do is supply dollars every month that do not depend on lending or investment. The central bank's own figures show they were flat in 2026: $3.77 billion from January to September, against $3.77 billion in the same months of 2025.

Where the money comes from, and how that is changing

The central bank publishes remittance inflows by source country each month. The United States is still the largest source, but its share has slipped while the Gulf, continental Europe, Africa and the Pacific have grown.

• The United States is still the main source, but it slipped in 2026. Its share was between 53% and 60% every year from 2020 to 2025. From January to September 2026 it was 47.5%, against 54.3% in the same months of 2025, and inflows from the United States fell from about $2.05 billion to $1.79 billion, a drop of about 13%. Because total inflows were flat, other sources made up the difference.
• The United Kingdom has not shrunk in dollars. Its share has stayed between 7% and 9%. It was $360 million in 2025. The rise is in the rest of Europe, led by Germany, whose inflows more than doubled from $83 million in 2019 (eleven months of data) to $197 million in 2024.
• The Gulf rose, peaked in 2024, and fell back. Inflows from Saudi Arabia, Qatar, the United Arab Emirates, Bahrain and Oman together rose from about $200 million in 2019 to $623 million in 2024, 12.6% of the total. Saudi Arabia alone went from $56 million to $403 million, then fell to $302 million in 2025 and, in the first nine months of 2026, about half the same months of 2025. The Emirates went the other way: $138 million in 2024, and $150 million in the first nine months of 2026, up from about $98 million in the same months of 2025.
• Africa has grown, mostly in 2026. Africa's share rose from 6.0% of January to September 2025 inflows to 8.6% in the same months of 2026, from about $226 million to $324 million. Tanzania ($78 million), Uganda ($57 million) and South Sudan ($15 million) lead the African list in 2026. Excluding South Africa, African inflows more than tripled between 2019 and 2024, from $113 million to $352 million.
• Australia and New Zealand are the quiet climber. Oceania went from 2.3% in 2020 to 4.7% in 2025 and 5.9% in 2026.

The shift is real but modest. About three quarters of the money still comes from North America and Europe. What has changed is the margin: Gulf, African and Pacific inflows now add up to more than a fifth of the total, and in 2026 a falling US share is the main reason the others look larger.

Chinese lending

China is a major creditor but not the dominant one. At the end of June 2025 the Treasury reported total external public debt of KSh 5,488 billion. The three largest creditors were the World Bank's International Development Association (30.3%), Eurobond holders (18.6%) and the Government of China (11.9%, about KSh 650 billion). Multilateral lenders together held 55.5%; all bilateral lenders held 20.2%, down from 28.5% in 2020/21.

The most visible project is the standard gauge railway. The Treasury report says loans on-lent for it to Kenya Railways Corporation are in arrears of KSh 413 billion, which is 81% of all on-lent loan arrears. It explains that railway revenues go into an escrow account with a minimum balance before any surplus can repay the loan, and that this arrangement "has effectively locked out loan repayments". It recommends renegotiating the escrow terms. The same report shows 5.0% of external debt is in Chinese yuan and 59.8% in US dollars, down from 67.0% a year earlier.

These figures describe debt, not the full economic effect of Chinese investment, which also covers trade, construction and jobs. They do show that the exchange rate matters to the debt bill: about 60% of it is owed in dollars, so a shilling slide of the 2020 to 2024 kind raises the cost directly.

Kenya's weight in East Africa

Kenya's economy was $12.7 billion in 2000 and $135.9 billion in 2025 at market exchange rates (World Bank), the largest of the five East African economies we compared (Ethiopia, Tanzania, Uganda and Rwanda are the others) in 2025. But its share of the five has been about the same all century: 30% in 2000, 32% in 2010, 32% in 2020 and 32% in 2025, with a dip to 29% in 2024 when Ethiopia's output in dollars was larger. Foreign direct investment was $1.1 billion in 2025, similar to 2013 and below the $1.4 to $1.5 billion of 2011 and 2012. So on these measures Kenya is large and growing in line with its neighbours, not pulling away from them. Its role as a base for regional headquarters, finance and services is not something these indicators measure well.

The startup funding fall

Startup funding is the other place the currency slide may have left a mark. According to the Africa: The Big Deal report, as relayed by Nairametrics, Kenyan startups raised about $800 million in 2023, down 25% from 2022, and still attracted the most funding of any African country that year, 28% of the continent total. Kenya's share of East Africa's funding rose from 86% to 91%.

The currency slide may have made dollar investors more cautious, and a shilling fall does cut the dollar value of shilling revenues. But we cannot separate that from a wider slowdown in venture funding. The figures show a fall of a quarter between 2022 and 2023, a year in which the shilling's annual average slid from 118 to 140.

How Kenya compares with its neighbours

Seen from outside, Kenya's currency has been among the steadier ones. On annual average rates, it took 32% more shillings to buy a dollar in 2024 than in 2019. For Uganda the figure was 1%, for South Africa 27% and for Rwanda 47%. Egypt, Ghana and Ethiopia needed about 2.7 to 2.8 times as much local currency, and Nigeria 4.8 times. Our earlier look at whose money lost the most value since 2000 points the same way on prices: Kenya's consumer prices rose 6.8 times between 2000 and 2024, about 8.3% a year. That is more than the typical economy (2.4 times) but nowhere near the ten biggest losers, where prices rose between 22 and 355 times.

What this does and does not show

• Causes are not proved. The data show when the rate moved and what else moved at the same time. They do not isolate why. Central bank intervention, interest rates, debt repayments and investor sentiment all mattered, and we have not measured them separately.
• Two sources for the daily rate. The central bank's file ends on 3 January 2024. From December 2023 we use xe.com market rates, which are not the central bank's official rate. At the one date where they overlap, 29 December 2023, the two differ by under 0.5% (156.5 against 157.0). The January 2024 peak of about 163 is an xe.com figure.
• Annual averages hide the path. World Bank figures are annual averages, so a rate that rose and fell within a year shows a smaller move than the peak.
• Source classification changes. The central bank's source-country table shows a sharp fall in recorded inflows from South Africa between 2020 ($196 million) and 2021 ($18 million). We have not found the reason, so we show Africa with and without South Africa.
• Remittance figures differ by source. The World Bank and the central bank measure remittances slightly differently. We use the central bank's figures for the breakdown and the World Bank's for the long run.
• Startup funding is reported by industry trackers, not an official statistic. Different trackers give different totals.
• 2026 figures are year to date, January to September.

Method and data

• Exchange rate, annual average: World Bank, official exchange rate (LCU per US$, period average), PA.NUS.FCRF, 1960 to 2025, for Kenya, Uganda, South Africa, Rwanda, Egypt, Ghana, Ethiopia and Nigeria. Retrieved October 2026.
• Daily exchange rate, October 2016 to January 2024: Central Bank of Kenya, historical exchange rates (US dollar mean rate), converted to weekly last observations. December 2023 onward: xe.com currency tables (market rates, weekly, daily for the January and February 2024 peak). Retrieved October 2026.
• Export earnings by commodity, diaspora inflows in shillings, and the 2025 average exchange rate: Kenya National Bureau of Statistics, Kenya Facts and Figures 2026 and the Economic Survey 2026. Dollar values are our conversion at KSh 129.30. Figures for 2025 are provisional.
• Tourism earnings: Ministry of Tourism and Wildlife, press release of 2 April 2026. It gives "approximately Ksh. 0.5 trillion", which includes domestic travel.
• Growth, inflation, remittances, goods exports, reserves, external debt, GDP and foreign direct investment: World Bank, indicators NY.GDP.MKTP.KD.ZG, FP.CPI.TOTL.ZG, BX.TRF.PWKR.CD.DT, FI.RES.TOTL.CD, BX.GSR.MRCH.CD, BX.GSR.NFSV.CD (services exports), NY.GDP.MKTP.KD and NY.GDP.PCAP.KD (real GDP and GDP per person, constant 2015 US$), SP.POP.TOTL, DT.DOD.DECT.CD, NY.GDP.MKTP.CD and BX.KLT.DINV.CD.WD. Retrieved October 2026.
• Remittances by source country, monthly, February 2019 to September 2026: Central Bank of Kenya, Diaspora Remittances (remittances by source, US dollar thousands). We sum months into calendar years. 2019 has eleven months.
• Exchange rate regime history: Central Bank of Kenya, Key milestones.
• External debt by creditor and currency, arrears and exchange rate movements: Kenya National Treasury, Annual Public Debt Report 2024/2025.
• Startup funding: Nairametrics, reporting Africa: The Big Deal's 2023 figures; the underlying series is at Africa: The Big Deal.
• Era averages are simple means of annual values. Shares are calculated from the summed months. Charts and figures are our own derived work and are not endorsed by the sources.