Cannabis Law and Access in Kenya

Kenya's cannabis framework is moving , but not in a straight line

Somewhere between a colonial-era prohibition and a 2024 licensing push, Kenya's cannabis law sits in that uncomfortable middle space that policy researchers know well: the law says one thing, enforcement does another, and the regulations underneath are still being written. I've been watching this play out for a couple of years now, and the short version is that the picture is more complicated than either the "Kenya legalised cannabis" headlines or the "it's still fully illegal" corrections suggest. Both are partially true. Neither tells you much.

For Australian readers trying to understand how other jurisdictions structure cannabis access, Kenya is a genuinely instructive case , a country that has attempted to open an industrial and medicinal cannabis sector whilst keeping recreational use firmly prohibited, inside a legal infrastructure that was never really designed to support either distinction cleanly.

The baseline law: Narcotic Drugs and Psychotropic Substances Act

Kenya's foundational prohibition instrument is the Narcotic Drugs and Psychotropic Substances (Control) Act, Cap 245 of 1994. Under that Act, cannabis , referred to in Kenyan law primarily as "bhang" in its traditional form, and as cannabis in newer regulatory instruments; is a controlled substance. Cultivation, possession, trafficking and supply are all prohibited and carry serious criminal penalties. That framework remains in force.

The Act aligns Kenya's domestic obligations with the United Nations Single Convention on Narcotic Drugs (1961) and its 1972 Protocol, to which Kenya is a signatory. Under the Single Convention, cannabis is scheduled under Schedule I and IV, the most restrictive dual-listing, identical to the international categorisation framework that shapes scheduling decisions in countries like Australia. For Australians familiar with the Poisons Standard, think of it as an international analogue to the scheduling architecture the TGA works within, though without the same licensing carve-outs that have evolved here since 2016.

So: at the criminal law level, general cannabis prohibition is still intact in Kenya.

The pivot: Industrial Hemp Act and the 2023–2024 licensing moves

The shift came in stages. Kenya's Industrial Hemp Act (No. 33 of 2023) created a specific legislative pathway for industrial hemp, defined as Cannabis sativa L. with a tetrahydrocannabinol (THC) content not exceeding 0.3% by dry weight. This is a threshold you'll recognise from other jurisdictions; it's the standard low-THC demarcation used across most hemp-permitting frameworks globally.

Under the Industrial Hemp Act, the Agriculture and Food Authority (AFA) is empowered to issue licences for cultivation, processing and export of hemp-derived products. The legislation is explicit that this does not decriminalise higher-THC cannabis; the 0.3% ceiling is a hard limit.

Then, separately, the Pharmacy and Poisons Board; Kenya's medicines regulator, has been developing a pathway for medicinal cannabis products. Regulations covering the importation and prescription of cannabis-based medicines have been progressively developed since 2020, though as of early 2025 the framework for domestic medicinal production and full prescription access pathways has not been fully operationalised across all product categories. This is the part that gets misreported. A regulatory instrument existing on paper and a functional access pathway are different things. Kenya has the former; the latter is still maturing.

Recreational use: still a criminal offence

There is no recreational cannabis legalisation in Kenya. Possession for personal use remains an offence under Cap 245, and enforcement, particularly in urban centres; continues, though it is uneven. Nairobi's enforcement patterns differ markedly from rural areas where cultivation has historically been widespread, particularly in regions around Meru and parts of the Coast Province.

I'd argue that the gap between formal prohibition and actual enforcement in those agricultural regions is less a sign of policy tolerance and more a function of limited enforcement resources combined with longstanding economic dependency on the crop. That's not unique to Kenya, you see it in several Sub-Saharan African jurisdictions, but it's worth naming clearly rather than interpreting it as de facto decriminalisation.

Export ambitions and the international complication

Kenya's government has been openly interested in positioning the country as a cannabis export hub for medicinal and hemp-derived products, particularly targeting European markets. The 2023 Industrial Hemp Act was partly motivated by this ambition. Kenya's equatorial climate, established agricultural export infrastructure, and relatively low production costs make it an appealing candidate in theory.

In practice, exporting cannabis or hemp-derived products; including cannabidiol (CBD) isolates or extracts, requires compliance with the destination country's import regulations, GMP-equivalent manufacturing standards, and in many cases bilateral or multilateral treaty arrangements. Kenya does not yet have the same depth of regulatory infrastructure as, say, Lesotho (which moved earlier on medicinal cannabis export licences) or Morocco (which operates under its own distinct legal framework for resin). The hard yards of building that export pipeline, testing infrastructure, Good Manufacturing Practice compliance, traceability systems; are still being done.

I spent part of a Sunday last month pulling apart the AFA's published licensing guidelines while Trevor (my sourdough starter, for the uninitiated) did his thing on the bench. Even from a desk in Canberra, it's clear the AFA framework is real but thin in places, the administrative machinery is there, the deeper compliance architecture is still being populated.

What about the cannabinoids themselves?

Kenya's legal instruments focus primarily on the plant and its THC content as the regulatory trigger, which is consistent with older prohibition models globally. There is no equivalent of Australia's detailed cannabinoid-by-cannabinoid scheduling architecture in Kenyan law at this stage. Minor cannabinoids like cannabigerol (CBG), CBN, and CBD are not individually scheduled in Kenya's medicines framework in the same manner as they are under Australia's Poisons Standard.

That matters for the export question above. A CBD isolate derived from compliant industrial hemp; below 0.3% THC, sits in a different legal space than a whole-plant extract with a higher cannabinoid profile. The full-spectrum versus isolate distinction, which is commercially and scientifically meaningful in markets like Australia and the EU, is not yet cleanly addressed in Kenya's current regulatory text.

Comparing the Kenyan and Australian frameworks

For context: in Australia, medicinal cannabis is regulated under the Therapeutic Goods Act 1989, with products either registered on the Australian Register of Therapeutic Goods or accessed via the Special Access Scheme or Authorised Prescriber pathway. Higher-THC products sit under Schedule 8 of the Poisons Standard; lower-THC CBD products above a certain concentration sit at Schedule 4. It's a layered, documented system built on about a decade of regulatory iteration.

Kenya is at an earlier stage. The ambition is clear; the scaffolding is still going up. That's neither a criticism nor an endorsement, it's just where the framework sits in 2025. Several African nations are at similar points, and the trajectory matters as much as the snapshot.

Key points on Kenya's current legal position

• General cannabis prohibition remains in force under Cap 245 (1994); recreational use is a criminal offence.
• The Industrial Hemp Act (No. 33 of 2023) permits licensed cultivation and processing of hemp below 0.3% THC, regulated by the Agriculture and Food Authority.
• A medicinal cannabis regulatory pathway exists under the Pharmacy and Poisons Board but is not yet fully operationalised across all product categories.
• Kenya is a signatory to the UN Single Convention on Narcotic Drugs (1961), which constrains the degree of liberalisation available without treaty reform.
• Export-focused cannabis agriculture is a stated government priority, but full GMP-standard export infrastructure is still developing.

If you're coming to this as an Australian reader trying to map comparative frameworks, the clearest analogy is probably to the position Australia occupied around 2015–2016: clear prohibition still operative, enabling legislation newly in place, the licensing and compliance architecture being built out beneath it. Kenya's trajectory from here will depend significantly on how quickly the Pharmacy and Poisons Board can operationalise its medicinal cannabis access rules, and on whether the AFA licensing framework generates enough legitimate licensed industry to displace the informal sector over time. Neither of those is guaranteed, and anyone who tells you the outcome is obvious hasn't read Cap 245 recently.

Sources

• Single Convention on Narcotic Drugs (1961) and 1972 Protocol; United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime
• Agriculture and Food Authority, Industrial Hemp Licensing Framework (Kenya)
• World Drug Report 2024, UNODC
• Medicinal Cannabis; Therapeutic Goods Administration (Australia)

, Marcus Hale, Regulatory researcher, TGA & access law