The number of Kenyans born in foreign countries rose 14.9 percent during the year ended last December to 5,694, signalling that more Kenyans are moving abroad either for work or studies.
This marked an increase from 4,954 in 2023, with most of the births in the United States (US) and the United Kingdom (UK), according to new data from the Kenya National Bureau of Statistics’ (KNBS’) Kenya Vital Statistics Report 2024.
The data accounts for the registration of births occurring outside the country by a Kenyan citizen upon request.
A person is a Kenyan citizen by birth if on the day of the person’s birth, whether or not the person is born in Kenya, either the mother or father of the person is a citizen.
The increase in foreign births came in a period that was laden with images of long queues at the immigration offices in Nairobi, as Kenyans sought vital travel documents to move to other counties in search of better opportunities, fleeing from an economy battered by lack of employment opportunities and high cost of living.
It was also during this period that the government heightened a campaign to send thousands of citizens overseas in a State-backed programme aimed at easing the unemployment pressure.
The data shows that the US accounted for the highest foreign-recorded births at 28.9 percent translating to 1,649 registrations, followed by the UK where 1,076 (18.9 percent) births were entered while the United Arabs Emirates accounted for 6.3 percent at 361 listings.
Other countries with high registrations of children of Kenyan descent included Australia (235), Canada (225), Uganda (197), Saudi Arabia (152), South Africa (151) and Tanzania (145).
Also in the list were Germany (130), Sweden (125), Qatar (104), Yemen (92), Finland (87) and Switzerland (77).
“Birth registration was highest, at 35.4 percent, for mothers aged between 30 and 34,” wrote KNBS.
A recent report by the Parliamentary Budget Office (PBO) estimated the number of Kenyans in the diaspora to be four million, 0.01 percent of whom are not registered as citizens by ancestry.
The report, published in April this year, was pursuant to a Bill seeking to enable diaspora dwellers with Kenyan roots to acquire citizenship in a development that would earn the government around Sh40 million in revenue annually.
“It is provided that the cost of citizenship application for dependents of children of Kenyan citizens is Sh100,000 as gazetted by the Cabinet Secretary responsible for immigration services. It is therefore estimated that the cost of such an application for their descendants will also be Sh100,000,” said the BPO.
The office projected at the time that the number of Kenyans in the diaspora will grow at two percent per annum.
