Kenya’s used car prices keep climbing

Jiji Kenya says the average price of a vehicle listed on its site rose from about KES 797,000 in 2024 to about KES 1.37 million in 2026, and that the median listing price for locally used vehicles has crossed KES 1 million. That is a rise of roughly 72% in two years, in a country where annual inflation was 6.5% in July 2026, according to the Kenya National Bureau of Statistics.

The figures in the release do not all fit together. Alongside the KES 1.37 million, Jiji says the average asking price across all its vehicle listings is about KES 2.5 million, that locally used vehicles average about KES 1.5 million, that foreign used vehicles average about KES 4.5 million, and that about half of all listings sit below KES 2 million. The middle two figures are consistent with an overall average of KES 2.5 million if roughly a third of listings are imports. The KES 1.37 million is not an average across all listings on those terms. Jiji did not publish its method or listing count, so we report the number as given and note that it does not reconcile.

These are also asking prices. A classifieds site records what sellers want, not what buyers pay, and cars priced too high stay listed longer, which lifts the average without anyone paying more. Jiji has not published sale prices.

What is not in dispute is that buying and running a car in Kenya has got more expensive, and most of the reason sits in tax and import rules rather than in how people shop.

The number that sets your tax bill is not the price you paid

When a used car is imported into Kenya, the Kenya Revenue Authority does not tax the invoice. It taxes a value it assigns: the Current Retail Selling Price, KRA’s own estimate of what that model would sell for new in a Kenyan showroom, reduced by depreciation for the car’s age. KRA set this out in a clarification published on 6 June 2025. Import duty, excise duty, VAT, the import declaration fee and the railway development levy all stack on that assigned figure. Raise the CRSP and all five rise with it.

KRA published a new CRSP list on 30 May 2025, its first update since 2019, to take effect on 1 July 2025. Its stated reasons: the shilling had moved from about KES 100 to the dollar in 2019 to about KES 130 in 2025, import duty on vehicles had risen from 25% to 35%, and excise duty on some units from a maximum of 30% to 35%. The new list carries more than 5,200 models against about 3,000 before.

The effect on ordinary cars was large. The Car Importers Association of Kenya told The Standard that under the new list the CRSP for a Toyota Probox rose from KES 1,755,000 to KES 3,356,786, up 91%, and a Nissan Vanette doubled from KES 2,329,000 to KES 4,669,000. Those are taxable bases, not showroom prices, but every shilling added to them runs through the whole tax stack. We already followed that stack through one import: a KES 2.7 million electric SUV from China landed in Nairobi at KES 6.8 million.

The list did not start cleanly. On 30 June 2025, a day before it was due to take effect, Justice Joe Omido at the High Court in Kisumu suspended KRA’s circular and notice in a petition arguing the list was drawn up without adequate public participation. We searched Kenya Law’s judgment database and news archives and found no reported final ruling. KRA’s notice is still published, and its link to the July 2025 spreadsheet was live when we checked on 4 August 2026. We wrote about where the reform was heading when KRA first floated invoice-based valuation.

Age rules keep deleting the cheap end

The other rule shaping supply is age. Under Kenya Bureau of Standards code KS 1515:2000, an imported vehicle cannot be more than eight years old from first registration. KEBS said in a November 2025 notice that from 1 January 2026 only right hand drive vehicles first registered on or after 1 January 2019 would be allowed in, and that 2018 vehicles arriving later would be rejected at the importer’s cost. Every January, the cheapest tier of importable cars disappears.

That is where Jiji’s three times gap comes from. An imported car on the platform is at most eight years old and has paid the full tax bill at 2025 valuations. A locally used car can be any age and paid its tax years ago at a lower CRSP. Two different products, two different prices.

Running the car is the other half of the cost. Petrol in Nairobi is KES 214.03 a litre and diesel KES 222.86, held unchanged by EPRA for 15 July to 14 August 2026. Diesel now costs more than petrol, a reversal from January 2026, when petrol was KES 182.52 and diesel KES 170.47. KNBS put transport inflation at 15.6% in the year to July 2026, the largest single contributor to the 6.5% headline rate, with diesel up 29.7%. We covered the record diesel price in May.

Jiji says the Toyota Prado is its most listed model, at just over 5% of listings. Most listed is not most bought. The Prado sits at the expensive end of the market, and a platform where it tops the listing count will have a high average.

Maxim Makarchuk, chief operating officer at Jiji Africa, said the opportunity in a maturing market lies in making the exchange of vehicles more efficient rather than in selling more of them. That describes a classifieds business, and it is the same argument Jiji made when we covered its used-goods data in May. It does not describe what set the prices.

So take the KES 1 million figure for what it is: a listings median for locally used cars on one platform, not a price to expect for any particular car. What decides your bill is the CRSP that KRA has assigned to the exact model and trim you want, the eight year cut-off, and fuel. KRA publishes the current list on its own site and says it will keep adding models. EPRA reviews pump prices again on 14 August.