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Africa’s seat at the table: Why Kenya’s push to rewrite global tax rules matters for business
Treaty positions that companies have relied on — particularly reduced withholding tax rates — may not hold in the same way going forward. Structures built around those provisions will need a closer look.
For a long time, the rules on how multinationals are taxed were written without Africa in the room. That is starting to change — and Kenya is right in the middle of it.
Take a familiar example. A multinational tech company earns significant revenue from Kenyan users. It has no office here. It pays no corporate tax here. The profits sit in a low-tax jurisdiction elsewhere, structured in a way that is fully compliant with the current rules. Those rules, however, were never really designed with markets like Kenya in mind. That is the system we have lived with.
