If you are a Kenyan planning to take a job abroad, the National Employment Authority (NEA) is where your recruiter must be licensed, and the Ministry of Labour is where your foreign contract must be attested before you fly. This page collects what NEA, the Ministry, NITA, the State Department for Diaspora Affairs and KRA actually publish for outbound jobseekers — start with the agency-verification tool before you pay anyone.
The Ministry of Labour and Social Protection attests every foreign employment contract before departure, and reformed the process in September 2024 to shorten pre-departure training and standardise agency licence fees.
NEA's homepage (nea.go.ke) blocks automated fetch checking (robots/SSL); included because it is the correct official domain confirmed by matching title in search results, not because its content was directly loaded.
The National Employment Authority's NEAIMS system holds the register of licensed private employment agencies, and its public verification tool lets you check whether a specific agency is currently valid, suspended or expired by name, registration number or email.
The register listing page itself could not be confirmed rendering content on automated fetch during verification, but the linked public verification tool and the Authority's own agency-list PDF are confirmed live — use those two directly rather than assuming any third-party list is current. NEAIMS pages have repeatedly rendered blank on automated fetch during verification (a known JS-rendering limitation, not evidence the site is down); they are included because they are the National Employment Authority's own referenced tool, linked from diaspora.go.ke/verify.
NITA runs mandatory pre-departure training and trade testing, including a dedicated curriculum for domestic and other workers headed to Saudi Arabia; deployment to Gulf states continues under this reformed regime rather than any current outright ban.
The State Department for Diaspora Affairs runs emergency and consular assistance, the recruitment-agency verification tool, and the Diaspora Placement Agency for job placement abroad; the Directorate of Immigration Services issues the passport you need to travel.
As an EAC partner state, Kenya allows citizens of other EAC states to work under a Class R permit and reciprocally benefits from harmonised entry, work and residence procedures within the bloc, with a regional labour migration policy in development. The East African e-Passport, issued by Kenya since 2017, is the harmonised regional travel document supporting this free movement.
Kenya has signed and periodically renegotiated bilateral labour agreements covering domestic and other workers with Saudi Arabia (originally 2017, under review since), plus agreements with the UK, Poland, Oman, Jordan, Bahrain and Australia; the Ministry of Labour has also announced strengthened cooperation with Saudi Arabia specifically.
The Ministry of Labour's own page on the Saudi Arabia relationship blocked automated fetch (403 on verification) though it is the correct official domain and title match from search; Kenya News Agency's article on streamlining the Saudi agreement is a .go.ke government-agency domain but its official status could not be fully confirmed from page content alone.
The Kenya National Qualifications Authority (KNQA) runs the National Qualifications Database and related registration, recognition-of-prior-learning and qualification-alignment services that Kenyan employers and destination-country evaluators can reference.
KNQA's Certificate of Qualifications Equivalence is for bringing a foreign qualification into Kenya, not the reverse — it does not itself get a Kenyan qualification recognised abroad. Included for completeness on how KNQA operates, not as an outbound-recognition service.
Directory of official and semi-official sources, compiled 2026-08-26. Links are to the issuing body wherever one exists. This page states no eligibility, processing time or fee, and is not immigration advice — rules change, and the issuing authority is always the current source.
Every destination guide in this series, written from the arriving side: what work authorisation takes there, and who sponsors it.
Developed by Amit Jain at allfrontierglobal.com
Neighbouring profiles in the same UN M49 region.
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Travel and trade information — verify current entry rules and figures with official sources.
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