In Kenya, a presidential directive has set enforcement machinery against foreign nationals running small businesses — a move framed as economic protection but widely read as something older and more troubling: the scapegoating of the migrant in times of collective anxiety. The policy strikes at the informal economy's most vulnerable participants, many of whom have spent years weaving themselves into the fabric of Kenyan commercial life. How a nation treats those who arrived seeking only to work is, in the end, a measure of what it believes about human dignity and shared prosperity.
Kenya's crackdown on foreign traders stokes xenophobia fears
Migrant communities face potential business closures, economic displacement, and heightened discrimination amid the enforcement actions.