East African-Arabian Gulf State-Sanctioned Slavery in the 21st Century

Young Kenyans and Ugandans working in the Arabian Gulf countries face conditions akin to slavery. They endure sexual abuse, physical violence, and poor working conditions, while some politicians in these countries profit from this misery.

Simon Chege Ndiritu

Modern Slave Trade

While the slave trade is generally seen as a practice that ended over a century ago, it continues today and is still characterized by violence, sexual exploitation, and murder of vulnerable Africans to enrich some powerful people in governments. In November 2025, some sources showed how high-ranking leaders and their associates in Saudi Arabia, Kenya, and Uganda partnered in operating staffing agencies that moved vulnerable East African women to Saudi Arabia to work under exploitative conditions, which profits these leaders. Notably, 274 Kenyan women taken to Saudi Arabia through staffing agencies, to work as househelps and nannies died over the last 5 years, despite these occupations being the safest elsewhere. Disturbingly, officials in Saudi Arabia recorded natural death in official documents despite the victims showing signs of trauma such as strangulation marks, cuts, and burns, which is a gravely untenable explanation. Meanwhile, the Kenyan and Ugandan governments are yet to demand a convincing explanation based on objective investigation into these deaths and other forms of abuse for reasons that need a deeper review.

When Leaders’ Talks and Actions Diverge

Nothing shows modern-day slavery more than a policy supposed to make the labor of vulnerable persons be sold abroad to benefit the country’s economy

A meeting held in Tororo on November 23, 2025, to celebrate the groundbreaking for the Devki Steel plant, reportedly worth $500 million, reveals how the Kenyan and Ugandan presidents, William Ruto and Yoweri Museveni, respectively, primarily view their citizens as laborers and not humans, an attitude that can allow slave trade. Giving credit where it is due, both leaders are increasingly recognizing the need for development, which was not the case many years back. In this event, Museveni said that the iron ore processing plant would provide local people with jobs but steered clear of whether the government would tax the foreign firm involved and collect royalties to build schools, hospitals, and other aspects of Human Development. The meeting steered towards appealing to Devki’s owner, who has attempted to capture the Kenyan state to an extent comparable to the Guptas in South Africa by using his power to obtain tax exemptions, irregularly gain strategic contracts, and threaten the staff of Kenya’s tax authority. While Kenya has thwarted some of his actions, only time will tell if the Ugandan system will withstand.

The practice of governments favoring transnational firms to exploit African’s resources will only leave citizens and landscapes exploited and exhausted in a few decades. If minerals from East Africa are not used to fuel human development of neighboring communities, their locations will become ghost towns and rust belts when these resources are exhausted in the medium term, like Detroit. Surprisingly, Museveni, explaining why Africa remains underdeveloped, mentioned slavery and explained how the continent lost its labor through this practice, which his generation of leaders is fueling. Therefore, Museveni and Ruto selectively forgot that their governments are facilitating the movement of young people to the Arabian Gulf, and hence denying East Africa this labor resource, hence condemning the region to further underdevelopment.

In late 2023, Kenya’s president announced that Saudi Arabia had agreed to employ 500,000 young Kenyans, adding that the UAE had agreed to hire others. Ruto, who had promised to industrialize Kenya and create employment for young people just a year before, seems to have shifted his goalposts, to negotiating to give Kenya’s human resources to work for other countries. His casting of sending away over half a million of his country’s young people to serve another one as success is surreal. It suggests that Kenya has no use for its labor resource and denies those affected an opportunity to build their future in their country. The action not only lowers Kenya’s productivity but also its fertility, which can lead to a demographic crisis in the future.

The slavery dimension comes to the fore because some in the political leadership in Kenya, Uganda, and Saudi Arabia have been benefiting through trading young Africans through their staffing agencies and insurance firms, as will be seen later. A report by the Business & Human Rights Resource Center (BHRRC) from March 2025 showed that a Saudi citizen believed he had bought a Kenyan worker after hiring her from staffing agents. Shockingly, this employer would confiscate her passport and regularly withhold food. While his belief that he could buy a person in this century deserves a special mention, the presence of a state-enabled system that allows citizens to get foreign workers without legal protection and for cheap could be fueling such a perception.

Maybe allowing job seekers and potential employers to meet and negotiate could help both parties to internalize that the transaction entails two humans with equal rights. Instead, staffing agencies linked to Saudi leadership on one hand and those linked to a committee member of the Kenyan Parliament and a recently retired police boss in Uganda on the other may make such employment appear like a state-sanctioned exchange of humans: slavery. For the political leaders involved, especially from Kenya and Ugandan, a conflict of interest emerges as they cannot legislate or establish policies that protect their citizens working in the Arabian Gulf. Instead, they are likely to ensure that legal protection remains loose and remuneration remains low for these politicians to maximize their profits. The case is depressing since a recent report shows that Kenya’s first family is involved.

Rot from the Very Top

According to BHRRC and an article from Kenya’s Standard Media published on November 19,  2025, the family of Kenya’s president is involved in moving vulnerable Kenyans to work in Saudi Arabia. BHRRC noted that a brother to Kenya’s presidential adviser owned a staffing agency that moves Kenyans to Saudi Arabia, while the president’s spokesman stated that labor migration was benefiting the country’s economy. Nothing shows modern-day slavery more than a policy supposed to make the labor of vulnerable persons be sold abroad to benefit the country’s economy. The justification of benefiting the economy is ironic, especially coming from an administration that has engaged in corruption that directly sabotages economic development. The standard article mentioned earlier reported that staffing agencies were required to take out insurance cover for emergency repatriation from a firm linked to Kenya’s first lady and first daughter, in which President Ruto was a significant shareholder in the past.

Also, this insurance firm has never paid any claim for Kenyans in distress who have needed emergency repatriation in the past. It seems that Kenya’s economic policy is skewed to ensure that the first family and selected politicians gain direct benefit whenever a Kenyan moves to an Arabian Gulf country to work under demeaning and potentially deadly conditions. Therefore, the government cannot formulate policies that provide employment to young people, as this would reduce customers for politician-owned staffing agencies and allied insurance firms. Young Kenyans remain in a tight position where the political class may prefer to have them unemployed at home and exposed to slave-like living conditions in the Arabian Gulf for the political class to benefit.

Simon Chege Ndiritu is a political observer and research analyst from Africa