👨🏿‍🚀TechCabal Daily – New landlord, same old tenant

Kenya’s gambling industry has spent the past month in a regulatory limbo. The government said it needed new rules to clean up the sector, operators said some of those rules were too expensive, and the courts have been stuck in the middle. 

Now, the regulator has won a temporary round.

What happened? Kenya’s High Court has ruled that the Gambling Regulatory Authority of Kenya (GRAK), the regulator that licences and supervises gambling businesses, can resume collecting disputed licencing fees while a case challenging the country’s new gambling rules continues. The decision reverses an earlier order that had stopped the fees from being implemented.

Explain like I’m new here: Kenya overhauled its gambling laws with the Gambling Control Act, 2025, which replaced the old Betting, Lotteries, and Gaming Act that GRAK created. The detailed licencing regulations came into effect in June 2026, setting out licence categories, application procedures, financial requirements, and renewal rules. 

Between the lines: An online bookmaker licence rose from KES 200,000 ($1,545) to KES 50 million ($387,000), while a casino licence increased from KES 7 million ($54,000) to KES 120 million ($930,000). Operators and other petitioners, including lawyers Thomas Buckley Opar Owuor and Ken Brance, challenged the rules in court, arguing that they were unlawful and that the government had not followed the proper process in making them.

On August 7, the High Court suspended the new licence fees and capital requirements for gambling operators, while allowing most of the other rules to remain in force. 

What’s changed now? GRAK went back to court because the suspension created a practical problem: 246 licence applications were stuck. After all, the authority could not complete licencing without collecting the prescribed fees. The court has now allowed GRAK to collect those fees while the main case is still being decided. GRAK has also promised that if the court eventually rules that the fees or regulations were unlawful, it will refund the money collected.

What happens to the gambling industry? Operators can now pay the disputed fees and get licenced, but the fight is not over. The petitioners want the court to cancel the new rules, arguing that the higher fees could push some operators to cut back or leave the market. The case returns on September 21.