Kenya is making another bid to crack Africa’s competitive Meetings, Incentives, Conferences and Exhibitions (MICE) market after the Cabinet approved the revival of the national convention bureau, a move aimed at accelerating growth in high-value business tourism.
The Kenya National Convention Bureau was first launched in 2019 under then Tourism Cabinet Secretary Najib Balala to spearhead the country’s MICE strategy. It was, however, short-lived, collapsing within a year after funding pressures intensified during the Covid-19 pandemic.
On Monday, Cabinet approved plans to operationalise the bureau once again, handing Kenya a second opportunity to challenge established regional heavyweights such as Kigali and Cape Town.
Tourism and Wildlife CS Rebecca Miano said the reconstituted bureau would play a central role in positioning Kenya as a serious global player in the MICE space.
“MICE tourism delivers high economic value and supports local livelihoods as well as conservation efforts,” Miano said after the decision.
The move aligns with the government’s ambition to achieve double-digit growth in MICE arrivals as part of a broader push to raise international tourist numbers to at least five million and tourism earnings to Sh800 billion by 2027.
Kenya recorded a strong rebound in tourism in 2024, with international arrivals rising to 2.4 million from 2.09 million the previous year. Business and conference travel accounted for 643,595 visitors, representing 26.9 percent of total arrivals, second only to leisure tourism, which drew over one million visitors. Travel to visit friends and relatives followed closely, while sports, education and medical travel made up the rest.
Industry figures show the country hosted more than 3,000 business events in 2023, injecting an estimated Sh11 billion into the economy. Nairobi dominated the segment, hosting 80 percent of these events, while Mombasa and Kisumu posted year-on-year growth of around 20 percent in conference bookings.
Despite this momentum, the sector’s growth has been held back by gaps in infrastructure, disjointed marketing efforts and underinvestment in event technology. These weaknesses have limited Kenya’s ability, and that of other African destinations, to fully tap into a sector that ranked second only to leisure travel as a motivation for visiting the country last year.
Globally, the MICE industry is projected to exceed $1.78 trillion by 2030, nearly double its 2019 value. Africa, however, commands less than three percent of this market, with only Cape Town and Kigali consistently appearing in the top 100 global MICE destinations tracked by the International Congress and Convention Association.
Data from the Africa Tourism Monitor indicates that MICE visitors generate three to five times more revenue per capita than leisure tourists, underscoring why governments are keen to grow the segment.
Kenyatta International Convention Centre CEO James Mwaura, who also chairs the ICCA Africa Chapter, said Kenya has already demonstrated its capacity to host large-scale international gatherings, citing events such as the WTO’s 13th Ministerial Conference, TICAD and the Africa Climate Summit.
Kenya recently hosted the COMESA Heads of State and Government Summit in Nairobi, and the revival of the convention bureau forms part of preparations for the fourth COMESA–EAC–SADC Tripartite Summit scheduled for mid-2026.
The bureau is expected to take a strategic approach, drawing lessons from Rwanda, where the Kigali Convention Centre hosted more than 110 international events in 2023 alone, contributing over Sh10 billion to the local economy. South Africa, through its national convention bureau, secured 66 international event bids in 2022 worth Sh588 million.
Across the continent, capacity remains limited, with only five convention centres able to host gatherings of more than 5,000 delegates, a constraint Kenya hopes to overcome as it sharpens its MICE ambitions.
