Kenya’s total public debt stood at Sh11.49 trillion as of April 2025, and by December 2025 it had ballooned further to Sh12.29 trillion — equivalent to 67.8 per cent of GDP, well above Parliament’s approved threshold of 55 per cent. Kenya has not only approached the edge of the fiscal cliff, it has actually stepped over it.
Shockingly, President William Ruto’s administration is spending nearly 80 per cent of its tax revenue on debt repayment. That should shake every Kenyan awake. When a government commits four shillings out of every five collected from its citizens to paying off past borrowing, it leaves almost nothing for the present or the future. Schools go without desks. Hospitals run out of drugs and roads that should be built remain dirt tracks.
When President Mwai Kibaki completed his last term in 2013, the country owed Sh1.894 trillion, and daily debt servicing averaged Sh400 million, which was manageable. Mr Kibaki borrowed an average of Sh180 billion per year. He lived by a simple discipline; spend what you collect, borrow only what is necessary, and keep the creditors at arm’s length. Under his stewardship, Kenya’s debt-to-GDP ratio declined from 64.1 per cent in 2003 to 38.1 per cent by June 2012.
His successor, Uhuru Kenyatta, broke that discipline spectacularly. The Jubilee administration ballooned the public debt from the Sh1.89 trillion inherited from Kibaki to Sh8.7 trillion by the time Kenyatta left office. Kenyatta averaged Sh600 billion in borrowing annually. Much of it went into the SGR, a railway that remains a monument to expensive ambition and questionable returns.
Sh951 billion
Dr Ruto arrived promising to stop digging. He pledged that his administration would not borrow, yet in his first nine months he had already borrowed over Sh1.2 trillion — outpacing what Uhuru borrowed in his entire first year. Ruto’s administration accumulated Sh951 billion in less than a year, against Uhuru’s average of Sh600 billion annually. Daily debt servicing under Ruto now averages Sh3 billion, seven and a half times what it cost Kibaki each day. We are paying Sh3 billion every 24 hours simply to stand still.
This, no doubt, is reflective of poor fiscal management. The government is increasingly resorting to taking out new loans to repay older ones, both internationally and domestically. What suffers when a state devotes the bulk of its revenue to debt service is healthcare, education, agriculture, infrastructure, and the private sector — which is crowded out as the government gobbles up domestic credit.
Parliament’s own approved target is to bring the debt-to-GDP ratio back to 55 per cent by 2028. At current trajectory, that target is a wishful entry in a debt register nobody audits properly. Kenya’s leadership needs the courage to cut wasteful expenditure, seal corruption leakages, widen the tax base without strangling honest taxpayers, and tell Kenyans the hard truth. You cannot borrow your way to prosperity.
