About 993,000 international migrants were living in Kenya as of mid-2024, according to the latest UN estimate. That is roughly 1.8 percent of the population. The headcount has hardly moved since 2010, when it stood near 955,000. The share dropped from 2.3 percent simply because the population kept growing.
That UN figure covers everyone born abroad, refugees included. For a country-by-country breakdown, the most detailed source is UNHCR's registration data on refugees and asylum-seekers. As of 31 August 2026, it counted 871,568 people: 640,091 recognised refugees and 231,477 asylum-seekers still waiting for a decision on their claims.
Registered refugees and asylum-seekers, ranked by country of origin
| Rank | Country of origin | Refugees | Asylum-seekers | Total | Share |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Somalia | 330,452 | 151,349 | 481,801 | 55.3% |
| 2 | South Sudan | 213,122 | 123 | 213,245 | 24.5% |
| 3 | Democratic Republic of the Congo | 45,217 | 21,926 | 67,143 | 7.7% |
| 4 | Ethiopia | 29,115 | 14,241 | 43,356 | 5.0% |
| 5 | Burundi | 10,569 | 24,562 | 35,131 | 4.0% |
| 6 | Sudan | 7,665 | 6,110 | 13,775 | 1.6% |
| 7 | Uganda | 893 | 3,527 | 4,420 | 0.5% |
| 8 | Other countries | 3,058 | 9,639 | 12,697 | 1.5% |
| Total | 640,091 | 231,477 | 871,568 | 100% |
Data as at 31 August 2026. Totals and shares are calculated from UNHCR's separate refugee and asylum-seeker tables. "Other countries" covers smaller groups such as Eritreans and Rwandans.
Reading the ranking
Somalis account for more than half of all registered refugees and asylum-seekers, and together with South Sudanese they make up nearly 80 percent. Both are long-standing populations, and many families have lived in the camps for decades.
Burundi stands out for a different reason. Most of its nationals are still asylum-seekers rather than recognised refugees, about 24,600 of the 35,100 in total. That suggests more recent arrivals whose claims haven't been processed yet. Somalia shows the same pattern on a much larger scale, with over 151,000 asylum-seekers.
South Sudan is the opposite case. Nearly all of its 213,000 people are recognised refugees, and only 123 are asylum-seekers, which points to a settled and fully registered community.
Where they live
Registered refugees and asylum-seekers are concentrated in three places:
- Garissa County (Dadaab): 429,352, about 49 percent
- Turkana County (Kakuma and Kalobeyei): 323,662, about 37 percent
- Nairobi: 118,554, about 14 percent
Migrants who don't appear in refugee data
UN estimates from 2020 ranked Somalia, Uganda, South Sudan, the DRC and Tanzania as the top five origin countries for all international migrants. Uganda and Tanzania sit high on that list but low in the table above, and the gap says a lot. Most Ugandans and Tanzanians in the country appear to be workers, traders and families who arrived through ordinary immigration channels, so they never enter the asylum system and UNHCR's registers don't capture them. No published country-level count for these groups matches the refugee data in detail.
Entry rules also changed at the end of 2023, when visa-free travel was opened up to Africans. The general migrant picture may shift once newer figures are released.
Comparing the figures
The UN's roughly 993,000 and UNHCR's 871,568 come from different methods, and neither is a subset of the other, so they shouldn't be added together. The UN number is a modelled estimate of the foreign-born population. The UNHCR number is a registration count that is updated monthly.