Kenya’s gambling regulator is building a system that would let it watch the betting industry’s money move in real time, rather than waiting for operators to report their own numbers.
At the Gaming Tech Summit Africa in Nairobi this month, Gambling Regulatory Authority (GRA) Director-General Peter Karimi said every licensed betting company, casino and lottery operator would be required to connect to a central monitoring platform. That platform would give regulators direct visibility into transactions as they occur across the licensed industry.
The aim is to retire a reporting model that has long relied on figures operators submit themselves. With a live feed of transaction data, the GRA expects to assess revenue more accurately, settle disputes over what operators owe, and back enforcement decisions with verifiable records.
What is actually new here
If real-time betting oversight sounds familiar, that is because part of it already exists. We’ve already explained how the Kenya Revenue Authority integrated its tax system directly with betting firms, so that excise duty and other levies are computed and remitted daily, almost as the bets are placed.
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What the GRA is proposing is broader. KRA’s integration is built for one job: collecting tax. The GRA’s platform is meant to be a regulatory layer that sits across the entire licensed sector, betting, casinos and lotteries, and feeds more than the taxman. It is designed to support licensing checks, consumer protection and investigations, not just revenue assessment. So this is less a brand-new idea than the next, wider step on a path KRA started years ago.
Why now
The timing is partly fiscal. The GRA told MPs in May that gambling tax collections had risen about 11% to roughly KES 28.45 billion by April 2026, up from about KES 25.24 billion a year earlier. Officials have pointed to full-year collections nearing KES 40 billion. Those numbers climbed after 2025 reforms shifted betting tax away from winnings and onto deposits and withdrawals, which widened the base.
But the value goes past tax. Agencies that police money laundering have taken a growing interest in gambling because of the sheer volume of digital payments flowing through it. Transaction-level access would help the GRA flag unusual activity quickly and support investigations into suspicious flows. The regulator says the platform would work alongside the Communications Authority of Kenya, the Central Bank of Kenya and the Financial Reporting Centre. That combination is aimed at identifying unlicensed operators and cutting off the payment channels that illegal gambling services rely on.
The bigger overhaul
The plan fits a wider reset of how Kenya governs gambling. The GRA took over from the Betting Control and Licensing Board earlier this year, under the Gambling Control Act, 2025, which replaced rules dating back to the 1960s. The authority has talked about hiring close to 200 staff, investing in surveillance systems, and running a new licensing regime. Online betting, the fastest-growing part of the market, has been the hardest segment for regulators to police.
Industry figures at the summit argued that tighter technology helps compliant operators too, because it separates licensed firms from illegal rivals that target Kenyans without meeting local rules. The GRA has repeatedly warned that people who use unauthorised platforms have little recourse when funds vanish or a dispute arises.
No implementation timeline has been announced. The authority says integration with licensed operators will be a core requirement once the framework is operational.
For bettors, the practical change is easy to state. Once the platform is live, every licensed operator will be expected to send transaction data straight to the regulator, so the state will see betting activity as it happens rather than months later in a filed report. Whether that mainly strengthens consumer protection, as the GRA argues, or mainly tightens tax collection will come down to how the data is used once it starts flowing. That is the part worth watching.
