Kenya’s Interior Minister Fred Matiang’i says by July 1 the government will shut down all gaming companies that do not provide proof that they have paid their taxes, and also revoke their licenses to operate.
According to AFPFactCheck.com, the minister wants a broader crackdown on gaming in the country, which he says has caused widespread problem gambling among young people. “We have the unfortunate situation where we in Kenya are leading on this continent on the population of our young people involved in betting,” he said. “Seventy-six percent of our young people are involved in one form of betting or the other.”
That figure, from a 2017 survey by U.S.-based GeoPoll, found that 76 percent of 1,130 Kenyan respondents said they had gambled at some point in the past, and more than half said they gamble once a week—a higher rate than the other countries surveyed, including Ghana, South Africa, Nigeria, Tanzania and Uganda.
Those polled use mobile phone apps, and GeoPoll said it “recognizes that the mobile population does not always perfectly match the national population.” However, according to AFP, Kenya now has more SIM cards than people, so surveying people via mobile phone is “a fairly effective method of surveying people in Kenya.” And an annual report for 2019 by Hootsuite and We Are Social showed that 11 of the top 20 Google search queries in Kenya last year were directly related to betting.
Aloyce Omondi of the Association of Gaming Operators Kenya said the ubiquity of gaming in the country could be tied to widespread frustration over joblessness.
“I can tell you it is because of unemployment,” he said. “Initially gambling was a leisure activity for the rich, but currently young people are viewing it as a way to make money quickly and become millionaires.”
Omondi suggested another reason for the high gambling rates: flexible regulations. “There is a lacunae (gap) in the law in regards to mobile gambling. If you have a phone and internet you can easily go online and gamble with no regulations at all. But there is need to regulate the industry,” he told AFP.
Ken Ouko, a sociologist at the University of Nairobi, agreed that there may be a link between high youth gambling rates and “the alarmingly high levels of youth idleness arising from either joblessness or transitory limbo as they wait to join colleges and universities.
“In Kenya the advertising frenzy by betting firms has also contributed to the trapping of the youth’s collective imagination,” he told AFP.
