Kenya is targeting at least $500 million in new investment commitments from the United States at this year’s American Chamber of Commerce (AmCham) Business Summit 2026, as the business lobby pushes for a shift from investment announcements to actual project implementation.
- •Paul Muthaura, CEO of AmCham Kenya, says the target comes against a backdrop of more than $2 billion in investment announcements and moves towards implementation recorded across the first five editions of the summit.
- •But he says the real measure of success this year will not be the headline value of deals announced, but how much of the pledged capital eventually translates into operational businesses, jobs and economic activity.
- • The summit, which brings together American and Kenyan businesses, is seeking to deepen commercial ties at a time when the relationship between the two countries is increasingly shifting from development assistance towards trade and investment.
“The announcements sometimes are good to have, but until you see concrete operationalisation, implementation and real results delivery, we don’t feel that we’re really contributing to the right level on catalysing sustainable economic development,” Muthaura told The Kenyan Wall Street in an interview.
Muthaura says that the shifting relationship presents Kenya with an opportunity to be more deliberate about the type of trade and investment it attracts, particularly by ensuring more value is created locally before products enter international markets.
The AmCham Business Summit is slated for September 9-10 at Windsor Hotel
He adds that Kenya should focus on building manufacturing and technical capacity around sectors such as agriculture and critical minerals instead of exporting raw materials with limited domestic value addition
“There’s a complete shift from aid to trade,” Muthaura adds, arguing that trade, rather than aid, is what ultimately catalyses economies when structured around investment, capacity building and value addition.
Policy predictability key to investment
While Kenya is competing with other African markets for US capital, Muthaura identifies policy and tax predictability as one of the biggest issues affecting long-term investment decisions.
Investors can plan around high taxes or adverse fiscal measures if they understand the rules and can anticipate how the policy environment will evolve. The bigger problem, he says, is frequent and unpredictable changes to tax and regulatory frameworks.
“Even to a degree, adverse tax or fiscal arrangements, corporate entities can build strategies on how best to manage those. But it’s the lack of predictability and almost excessive changes without clarity or sufficient basis that makes it very challenging for a long-term investment decision-making to occur,” he says on the eve of the AmCham Summit 2026.
AmCham has been engaging the government on tax and policy measures, including the Finance Act 2026, where Muthaura says several proposals were dropped following feedback from its membership. The chamber’s membership comprises approximately 60 percent American companies and 40 percent Kenyan companies with links or networks in the US.
Muthaura says that the government should view tax policy through the lens of competitiveness, arguing that expanding economic activity could generate more sustainable revenue than simply increasing tax rates. “There are undoubted pressures on fiscal revenue levels, but far too often you have to realise that it is the scale of economic activity and not just the percentage rate of taxes that have the greatest impact on fiscal revenue and stability,” he said.
He also called for greater efficiency and responsiveness from public institutions to reduce the cost and complexity of doing business.
From Kenya to a five-country market
The AmCham Business Summit is also expanding its regional focus, bringing together American chambers in Kenya, Uganda, Tanzania, Rwanda and Ethiopia to push for greater integration and interoperability across East Africa and the wider region.
Muthaura says the regional approach could make African investment opportunities more attractive to US companies by offering scale beyond individual national markets. “Far too often, there’s a sentiment that investments in a single country can feel too small,” he explains. “But when you’re talking about opportunities cutting across five countries, then you’ve got undoubted scale.”
The push will cover not only policy and regulatory frameworks but also infrastructure connectivity, allowing companies to move goods and services across borders more efficiently.
For Kenya, the ambition is to strengthen its position as an investment and commercial hub serving the wider African market. According to Muthaura, Kenya has increasingly attracted companies relocating their African headquarters from Johannesburg to Nairobi, helped by its skilled workforce, established business ecosystem and relatively strong macroeconomic position.
Seven sectors in focus
The summit’s investment agenda is centred on seven high-growth sectors identified through an assessment of Kenya’s competitiveness alongside US policy and commercial priorities. They include manufacturing, the digital economy, health, critical minerals, agriculture, energy & infrastructure, and the creative economy.
Manufacturing is expected to be a major area of focus as Kenya seeks to move higher up global value chains.
In healthcare, Muthaura points to the opportunity to develop greater local capacity in areas ranging from drug development and production to medical tools and equipment.
Critical minerals also present an opportunity for Kenya to position itself not only as a source market but as a logistics and value-addition hub for minerals originating elsewhere on the continent. Kenya’s port and transport infrastructure could help connect mineral-producing countries in Central and Eastern Africa to global markets, he said.
Agriculture, however, remains one of the areas where Muthaura believes investors may be overlooking significant opportunities.
The sector accounts for between 30 percent of Kenya’s GDP, according to Muthaura, but remains fragmented by the large number of smallholder farmers. He said technology could help solve some of the scale and productivity constraints through better aggregation, agricultural technology, cold-storage infrastructure and improved transmission of products to markets.
“You don’t often enough talk about the role of technology in agriculture, but it can really have a huge impact in scaling not only productivity, but also quality,” he mulls.
Beyond AGOA
The future of Kenya-US market access is another issue expected to feature prominently in the discussions. Muthaura said Kenya should not approach the African Growth and Opportunity Act (AGOA) simply from the perspective of preserving existing access to the US market.
Instead, he said policymakers and businesses should use the changing global trade environment to build a longer-term strategy around manufacturing and investment. The objective, he said, should be to create more value in Kenya and Africa before products reach the US market.
This is particularly important for sectors such as textiles and agriculture, where exporting raw materials or undertaking limited processing leaves much of the potential value outside the continent.
Muthaura says that changes in US trade policy affecting third-country value addition could strengthen the case for deeper processing and manufacturing within Africa.
