By This morning, Nairobi woke up to empty roads. Matatus that normally pack Thika Road before 6 AM were gone. Boda bodas that weave through traffic on Mombasa Road were parked. Major commuter saccos including Super Metro, Metro Trans, Latema Travellers, and Forward Travellers suspended operations entirely. Hundreds of thousands of Kenyans were left stranded, walking long distances to work, school, and hospital appointments. The Transport Sector Alliance, a coalition representing matatu owners, boda boda riders, digital taxi operators, truckers, tourist vehicle operators, and even borehole and generator operators, had declared a nationwide shutdown effective midnight on Sunday, May 17, 2026.
Their demand was straightforward: the government must reverse the fuel price increase announced by the Energy and Petroleum Regulatory Authority (EPRA) on May 14, reduce petrol and diesel prices to around KSh 152 per litre, restructure fuel procurement, and disband EPRA altogether. Matatu Owners Association President Albert Karakacha put it plainly: "On Monday, there will be strictly no movement of any vehicles. All the roads will be blocked until the government listens to our cry because we have been promised, but everything we are promised has not come to fulfilment."
This is not just a transport sector crisis. It is the loudest signal yet that Kenyans have run out of patience with a government that keeps raising costs while finding money for everything except its citizens.
To understand how we got here, we need to look honestly at what is driving fuel prices up, who is benefiting, what the government's actual options are, and why the contrast between State House renovation budgets and fuel relief is so infuriating to ordinary Kenyans.
What Are Fuel Prices Right Now, and How Did We Get Here?
Following EPRA's latest review, which took effect on May 15, 2026, super petrol in Nairobi now retails at KSh 214.25 per litre. Diesel has climbed to KSh 242.92 per litre, making it the highest diesel price ever recorded in Kenya's history. The increases over the previous cycle were sharp: petrol rose by KSh 16.65 per litre and diesel by a staggering KSh 46.29 per litre. That diesel jump is the largest single-month increase for any petroleum product in at least 21 years of pricing records, surpassing the previous record of KSh 25 set in September 2022 by 61%.
EPRA attributed the increase to rising global oil prices and higher landed costs for imported fuel. The average landed cost of super petrol rose 10% between March and April 2026, from $823.27 per cubic metre to $906.23. Diesel landed cost rose even more sharply, climbing over 20% in the same window. These are real numbers tied to real global events. International oil benchmark Brent crude surged past $100 per barrel in recent weeks, driven largely by the escalating US-Israel-Iran conflict, which has disrupted supply routes through the Strait of Hormuz and created enormous uncertainty in global energy markets.
Kenya imports 100% of its refined petroleum products, which means every spike in global oil prices and every weakening of the shilling lands directly at the pump. For the April 2026 pricing cycle, EPRA benchmarked the exchange rate at KSh 130.08 to the dollar. While the shilling has been relatively stable compared to past years, it still means every dollar of import cost translates directly into local price pain.
So yes, part of the problem is genuinely global. But global prices alone do not explain why Kenyans pay more per litre than their neighbours, including countries that have no coastline and no port of their own.
Why Is Kenya More Expensive Than Uganda and Ethiopia?
This is the question that has driven Kenyans to frustration for the past few months, and it deserves a careful, honest answer rather than political deflection.
The government's explanation
President William Ruto has offered a consistent justification: Kenya is a middle-income country that cannot be compared to its "least developed" East African neighbours. Speaking at a church in Karen in April 2026, he argued that a significant portion of Kenya's fuel price goes directly toward road construction and maintenance, and that Kenya maintains more tarmac roads than all other EAC member states combined. "Our fuel supports transport infrastructure. 20,000 km to maintain here in Kenya is actually the same for the other six or seven East African countries," he said.
What the facts actually say
Africa Check, which fact-checked these claims directly, found the road comparison to be inaccurate. Kenya has approximately 26,000 kilometres of paved roads, not 20,000 as Ruto claimed. More importantly, available data shows that neighbouring countries already exceed 20,000 kilometres of paved roads combined, even excluding the Democratic Republic of Congo and South Sudan. Tanzania's own Public Works Minister, Abdallah Ulega, publicly disputed Ruto's figures, calling them "incorrect" and saying they were being used to "belittle" Tanzania's economy. Tanzania, it should be noted, is also classified by the World Bank as a lower-middle-income country, the same classification as Kenya. Ruto's comparison simply does not hold up to scrutiny.
The real reason: a tax structure built to never come down
The honest answer lies in Kenya's fuel tax architecture, which is one of the most layered in the continent. Every litre of petrol sold in Kenya carries the following charges on top of the base import cost:
Value Added Tax (currently at 8% after being temporarily halved from 16% in April 2026)
Road Maintenance Levy of KSh 25 per litre (raised from KSh 18 in July 2024)
Anti-Adulteration Levy of KSh 18 per litre
Excise Duty (inflation-adjusted)
Import Declaration Fee of KSh 3.50
Railway Development Levy of KSh 2.10
Petroleum Regulatory Levy of KSh 0.75
Petroleum Development Levy of KSh 5.40
Merchant Shipping Levy
All in, the total tax burden on a litre of petrol comes to KSh 72.38, representing 36.6% of the pump price. Diesel carries taxes of KSh 62.91, or 32% of the price. Kenya charges seven levies and two separate taxes on every litre of fuel. By comparison, countries like Uganda maintain a lighter levy structure, which is a significant reason their petrol retails at around KSh 180 per litre against Kenya's KSh 214.
The Ethiopia story is more complicated than it looks
The comparison with Ethiopia requires context that often gets lost in the debate. For years, Ethiopia's cheaper fuel prices were not a reflection of better policy design or geography. They were the result of massive government subsidies that cost the state over 100 billion birr annually at peak levels. The Ethiopian government essentially absorbed the difference between global prices and what consumers paid at the pump.
That model has now collapsed. Ethiopia began phasing out its fuel subsidies in 2022 and officially ended them in mid-2025. The consequences have been severe. By early May 2026, kerosene and jet fuel prices in Ethiopia had more than doubled within a single month. Diesel rose nearly 40% between December 2025 and May 2026. Ethiopia's prices are still lower than Kenya's in absolute terms when converted to shillings, but they are rising fast, and Ethiopian consumers are facing their own version of this crisis.
The lesson from Ethiopia is not that subsidies are the solution. It is that artificially cheap fuel always has a cost, it just gets shifted to a different ledger. What matters is who absorbs it: the state, through subsidies, or the consumer, through taxes and unregulated market prices.
In Kenya's case, the consumer absorbs almost everything, through one of the heaviest fuel tax structures in the region, with very little protective buffer when global prices spike.
Why Won't the Government Just Reduce Fuel Taxes?
This is the question that cuts to the heart of the public's anger. Kenya collected enormous tax revenue throughout 2025 and into 2026. Kenyans pay income tax, VAT, excise duty, digital service levies, housing levies, and a growing list of other charges. If the government is collecting all of this revenue, why can it not reduce the tax burden on fuel, at least temporarily, when prices reach crisis levels?
The government's position, as articulated by Treasury Cabinet Secretary John Mbadi during the strike this morning, is that the fuel price increases are a global problem that cannot be solved by domestic measures. "Why are we trying to solve a global problem using domestic means? We have not caused the US-Iran war," he said on a morning TV programme.
That framing is politically convenient but fiscally incomplete. Other African governments have not accepted the same logic. South Africa suspended its fuel levy for one month when prices spiked. Namibia halved fuel taxes for three months. Zambia suspended excise duty and zero-rated VAT on petrol and diesel for three months, all effective April 1, 2026. Tanzania introduced a direct subsidy of TSh 259 per litre on diesel to protect its transport sector. These are not uniquely wealthy governments. They made political choices to protect their citizens.
Kenya has a Petroleum Development Levy Fund specifically designed as a cushioning mechanism. The government deployed approximately KSh 5 billion from this fund in the latest cycle, which helped keep kerosene prices unchanged and partially absorbed the diesel shock. A litre of kerosene, without the subsidy, would retail at approximately KSh 261 per litre. The fund is real and functional. The question is whether it is being deployed at a scale that reflects the depth of the crisis, and whether the government is willing to go further by cutting the levy rates themselves.
The Road Maintenance Levy alone, at KSh 25 per litre, adds KSh 25 to every single litre of fuel sold in the country. A temporary reduction of even KSh 10 per litre on that single levy would bring meaningful relief without dismantling any structural programme. The government has not proposed this. What it did propose, in April, was a temporary VAT cut from 16% to 8%, which helped, but was announced in response to a crisis that had already hit. The pattern is reactive rather than protective: prices spike, public anger builds, the government trims one lever, then prices spike again.
The deeper issue is debt. Kenya's debt service obligations are enormous, and fuel taxes are a reliable, non-negotiable source of revenue. Cutting them, even temporarily, creates a fiscal hole at a time when the Treasury is already projecting a KSh 253 billion revenue shortfall. The government is trapped between the real fiscal pressures of a heavily indebted state and the legitimate suffering of its citizens.
That tension is real. But it does not fully explain the priorities on display elsewhere in the budget.
State House Renovation vs. Fuel Relief: A Question of Priorities
In March 2026, State House Comptroller Katoo Ole Metito appeared before Parliament and announced that the State House was seeking a budgetary allocation of KSh 20 billion for the 2026/27 financial year. The Treasury had only approved KSh 11 billion. Metito was asking for more.
To contextualise this: State House expenditure has increased 157% since the 2013/14 financial year. In the 2025/26 financial year alone, State House started with an allocation of KSh 8.5 billion, which supplementary budgets pushed to KSh 17 billion. The renovation works have been ongoing since Ruto took office in 2022, and have included structural overhauls, a controversial redesign that removed the colonial-style roof and replaced it with a flat-roofed structure, and refurbishment of state lodges across the country including Eldoret, Mombasa, Nakuru, Sagana, Kisumu, Kakamega, Kisii, and Mtito Andei. The Architectural Association of Kenya has raised objections to the redesign. Critics have compared it to "building a new State House without public knowledge."
All of this is happening while the same government tells Kenyans that it cannot afford to reduce fuel taxes, that subsidies are fiscally irresponsible, and that there is no money to cushion households from the worst fuel price spike in over two decades.
Kisumu West MP Rozaah Buyu captured the contradiction bluntly: "Kenyans are suffering and are being told to tighten their belts. The first belt to be tightened should be at State House. These renovations can wait until the economy stabilises."
It is important to be precise here. The State House budget does not directly cause fuel prices to be high. The taxes that inflate fuel prices are separate line items serving different fiscal purposes. But the State House allocation matters as a signal. It tells citizens what the government treats as a priority when budgets are tight. When a government claims it cannot afford even a temporary reduction in fuel levies, while simultaneously finding KSh 17 billion for a presidential residence that has been under near-continuous renovation for four years, the credibility of the austerity argument collapses.
Governance is not just about numbers. It is about trust. And trust is built or destroyed by what leaders choose to do when they have limited resources.
What Needs to Change
The fuel crisis Kenya is experiencing right now is the product of overlapping pressures: a genuinely volatile global oil market, a structurally heavy domestic tax burden, a government-to-government fuel procurement deal that has not delivered the price stability it promised, and a regulatory system that operators increasingly accuse of serving cartel interests over consumer welfare.
The transport sector's demand to disband EPRA entirely may be too blunt an instrument, but the frustration behind it is legitimate. A 2025 analysis by the Institute of Economic Affairs Kenya found that oil marketing margins have been quietly rising, and some oil marketers were caught hoarding fuel in April 2026 to bet on price increases. If EPRA cannot or will not address that behaviour, then its credibility as a consumer regulator is genuinely in question.
The government has tools it is not fully using. It can temporarily reduce the Road Maintenance Levy. It can expand deployment of the Petroleum Development Levy Fund. It can review the anti-adulteration levy structure, which adds KSh 18 per litre, and consider whether alternative solutions to fuel adulteration might be more efficient. MP Ndindi Nyoro has already proposed a package of tax and levy reforms that would bring petrol to approximately KSh 187 per litre. Whether those proposals are fiscally sustainable long-term is debatable, but the debate deserves to happen in public, transparently, with real numbers.
What cannot continue is the current pattern: prices go up because of global factors, the government does the minimum required to avoid a political explosion, and then months later the cycle repeats. Kenya's inflation climbed from 4.4% in March 2026 to 5.6% in April, directly driven by transport and fuel costs. Every litre of diesel that becomes more expensive makes food more expensive, manufacturing more expensive, and small business survival harder.
The matatu operators parked their vehicles this morning not because they wanted to inconvenience commuters. They did it because they had no other lever. When people cannot afford to run their businesses, and when the government has made clear it will not act unless pushed, a shutdown becomes the only language left.
The question Kenyans are asking today is not complicated: does the government work for its citizens, or does it work for its own comfort? The answer has to come in the form of real, measurable relief at the pump, not promises, not deflection to global factors, and not another round of supplementary budgets for State House lodges.
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