Starting this year, Kenyan families will have a formal way to stop a relative from betting or gambling, even if that relative doesn’t want to stop.
New regulations gazetted on June 30, 2026, called the Gambling Control (Conduct of Gambling Operations) Regulations, give households the power to ask the country’s gambling regulator, the Gaming Regulatory Authority of Kenya (GRAK), to bar a family member from betting.
Under the old system, only the gambler themselves could request a break, through a voluntary self-exclusion process that every betting site is required to offer. That option still exists, but it depended entirely on the gambler recognizing they had a problem and choosing to act on it.
The new rules add a second path that doesn’t require the gambler’s cooperation at all.
Here’s how it works. If a person’s gambling has caused, or looks likely to cause, serious financial hardship, or puts their dependents’ welfare at risk, a family member or other interested party can apply to GRAK to have that person excluded from betting.
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The gambler gets a chance to contest the application before GRAK makes a final call. If the request is approved, GRAK sets a time period for the ban and notifies every licensed betting company in the country, so the person can’t just switch platforms.
Betting operators are getting new powers too. Companies can now suspend a customer’s account on their own initiative if they reasonably suspect the person is showing signs of compulsive gambling or is betting more than they can afford.
Once a company does this, it has 24 hours to report the suspension to GRAK, which then reviews the case and decides whether the exclusion should stick.
One obvious problem hasn’t been solved yet: betting companies don’t actually have a clear window into a customer’s finances. They don’t see someone’s income, debts, or bills.
So how a firm is supposed to judge whether a customer is gambling beyond their means is still an open question, and the regulations don’t spell out a method.
Kenya isn’t inventing this idea from scratch. A small number of countries, including Belgium, Singapore, and New Zealand, already allow third parties, whether relatives or gambling operators, to trigger an exclusion.
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Kenya’s move brings it into that same group and pushes it closer to the stricter regulatory approach used in places like the United Kingdom, Germany, Malta, and Austria.
The push for reform comes from a betting boom that officials say is hurting more than individual gamblers. Kenya has some of the highest rates of youth gambling participation in Africa, ahead of larger economies like Nigeria and South Africa.
The 2024 Finaccess Household Survey by the Central Bank of Kenya found that the average bettor spends about KES 1,825 a month on betting.
Cheap smartphones, wide mobile money access, and high youth unemployment have all fed into the trend, with many people turning to betting apps hoping for a quick financial win. The government’s response so far has mostly relied on taxation.
Betting companies already pay a 15% tax on gross gaming revenue plus corporate tax, while gamblers themselves are taxed 12.5% on every stake they place and 20% on any winnings.
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Those taxes were designed to make betting less attractive by shrinking the payout, but they haven’t slowed the growth of the industry.
