Kenya is reviving its residency-by-investment “Golden Visa” proposal, seeking to modernize the long-standing $100,000 Class G Investor Permit framework.
This current push follows strong 2025 venture capital data, ongoing investment dominance, and major regional projects like the Dangote oil refinery, aiming to leverage Kenya’s position as a top African investment destination, according to media reports.
The proposed “Golden Visa” program aims to overcome the slow, temporary hurdles of the active investor visa program, the $100,000 Class G Investor Permit framework, set up to compete with regional heavyweights Mauritius and South Africa.
Plan Is to Remain Top Startup Funding Destination
Kenya’s residency-by-investment program under development would grant long-term residency to international high-net-worth individuals, Nigerian investors, and venture capital founders, as the country works to strengthen its position as one of East Africa’s leading investment destinations.
The Kenya Investment Authority (Invest Kenya) is drafting the program to offer permanent residency to individuals who commit significant capital and generate employment in the country, according to a July media interview with the agency’s chief executive, John Mwendwa.
Invest Kenya has yet to announce confirmed investment thresholds or the sectors that would qualify. The current legal pathway to foreign entrepreneurs has a minimum threshold of $100,000, compared with Mauritius’s $375,000 property/commercial route and South Africa’s high approximate $ 730,300 asset requirement.
Now Kenya intends to offer a much more attractive, predictable, and seamless permanent residency alternative for high-impact global investors, reviving a proposal first floated in 2019.
Kenyan startups raised $984 million in 2025, the highest total on the continent, driven by deals in climate technology, energy and fintech. Kenya retained that lead into 2026, remaining the continent’s top startup funding destination in the first half of the year despite a global slowdown in dealmaking, according to online reports.
