Illegals in an invisible economy: Who is cashing in?

By Peter Ogallo Ochieng

In today’s Nairobi, every fifth kinyozi you find today in our estates seems to be ran by a foreign barber. Beggars on wheelchairs work the traffic lights and gambling continues.

At night, young men with baskets of mandazi and a very big flask of Kahawa moving through the CBD, a number of them selling socks without till number or Mpesa phones, while using mysterious woman’s number for payment.

And if you turn to South B and South C, high-rises funded from foreign capitals are transforming the skyline. This isn’t random. It’s a new, invisible economy. Who is cashing in? And why does it feel like the rest of us are being taken for a ride?

My biggest worry is this: who is cashing in?

Here’s what I see, every day. Walk around Nairobi’s estates, and you’ll find in every five or six kinyozis you visit, at least three if not all, are staffed by Burundians shaving and trimming, similar story in the back-streets of Nairobi. A few meters away, on the highways, a line of beggars in wheelchairs or being led from car to car in traffic. The script repeats in the CBD again.

When night falls, a different shift begins: young men carrying baskets of mandazi and flasks of kahawa, hooking revelers. Walk deeper into the CBD streets and you’ll find them selling socks. Buy a pair, and you’ll notice they have no Mpesa phone, nor M-Pesa Tills. They quickly give you a number often a woman’s to send the money, then demand to see the confirmation message.

Then turn your head, and look at the skyline. Drive into South B or South C. The rate at which high-rise apartments are coming up is meticulous. I believe the ministers for lands and planning are busy with approvals. But something is interesting is , ownership belongs to a common denominator.

Some are already in court battles, with owners whose leases are running out, seeking more time or renewal. Yet, the “Tumbocrats” are busy selling to the highest bidders a very good example is in the Parklands and Kilimani area.

All this activity. All this cash changing hands. All this property changing ownership.

So I ask again: Who is really cashing in?

Are we being taken for a ride? Is our economy hurting while a select few reap the benefits? Why is KRA consistently missing its revenue targets when Nairobi, including Kilimani, is one giant construction zone? What happened to the rules written clearly for immigrants who wish to do business in Kenya?

The invisible payroll

Let’s start with the barbers, the beggars, the mandazi sellers. This is the street-level economy, and it operates almost entirely outside the formal system.

The Kenya Citizenship and Immigration Act, 2011, is clear: Section 45 prohibits employing a foreign national without a valid work permit. But for the barber renting a chair for cash, this law is meaningless. There is no enforcement at this level.

Who is the employer? Is there a local “sponsor” who places these workers and takes a cut? The payment is cash, daily. No contracts, no records, no taxes. The entire operation is designed to be invisible. The young sock-seller without a phone is a perfect symbol of this a ghost in the economic machine, with funds being routed through a third-party number.

The high-stakes property game

Then we scale up to the construction. The land-buying angle is where this invisible economy becomes concrete and permanent.

The reported court battles over leases and the sale of land to the “highest bidders” raise urgent questions. Are these transactions using local fronts? Are multi-national investment licenses being exploited? The land registries seem either unable or unwilling to verify the ultimate beneficial ownership, creating a loophole that “Tumbocrats” are all too happy to exploit.

The collapsing guarantee

When an unregistered barber shaves a face, the state loses a little tax revenue. When a building is sold to a shadowy buyer, the community loses a piece of its future.

The core failure is a collapse of oversight. Immigration isn’t checking the kinyozi in Kayole. The counties aren’t verifying the business licenses of mandazi hawkers. The land registries and the Ministry of Lands are not effectively cross-referencing ownership with citizenship and residency status.

KRA misses its targets because this sprawling, vibrant economy is operating in the shadows, right under our noses.

The void we fear

For the average Kenyan, this isn’t abstract. It’s lower wages when local labor is undercut. It’s being priced out of neighborhoods by anonymous capital. It’s a growing sense that the rules don’t apply to everyone.

My biggest worry is not the individuals trying to make a living let’s get that straight. My worry is the system or the lack thereof that allows this to happen. The void of accountability. The failure of our institutions to register, monitor, and tax.

The reckoning

This is more than an observation; it is a symptom of a profound national drift. We are not just being taken for a ride; we are paying for the fare, while watching our national resources strain and snap under the weight of an unaccounted-for population.

Ask yourself: Why does our water and sewage system buckle under pressure? Why can’t we power the nation without rationing? It is because we are planning for 50 million known Kenyans, while carrying an invisible, unplanned-for multitude. Who pays when an unregistered mother gives birth in a public hospital? Who caters for that? Do we have enough food, enough water, enough electricity for our citizens plus this unknown number?

And let’s be clear: the money they earn here—untaxed, unregulated—does not stay here. It is sent home. They are reaping from our economy to bolster their own. This isn’t just a security or a jobs crisis; it is a silent, ongoing transfer of wealth, subsidized by our crumbling public services.

My biggest fear is not just economic. It is social. We are meticulously laying the groundwork for a future explosion. Look at the history of South Africa. Xenophobia does not emerge from a vacuum. It is born from the toxic combination of scarce jobs, strained resources, and a perception that the system favours outsiders over its own citizens. When a Kenyan youth is forced to compete with an unregistered foreign national willing to work for peanuts, resentment is not just inevitable—it is justified.

And what of our own safety and standards? Walk through Eastleigh and ask: where does all this merchandise come from? The Kenya Bureau of Standards seems to have no answer. We are consuming goods whose origins and safety are a mystery, sold in an economy that operates in the shadows.

Therefore, this is not just a story to read. It is a mirror to hold up to our institutions. We must demand a public reckoning that answers:

• To the State: Where is the integrated database between immigration, KRA, and the lands ministry? When will we see a public audit of high-value property transactions to trace the source of funds and the true beneficial owners? How are you planning for a population you refuse to count?
• To the Counties: What is the value of business licensing if it cannot distinguish between a local entrepreneur and an unregistered, untaxed foreign national? Why is KEBS absent from these massive, unregulated supply chains?
• To Ourselves: At what point does our silence become complicity? When do we stop accepting “that’s just how it is” and start demanding to know whose interests are being served?

The invisible economy thrives not because it is powerful, but because our demand for accountability is weak. It fills every vacuum of governance we leave open.

The final, unsettling truth is this: We are not losing control. We are giving it away. We are paying for the ride with our water, our power, our hospitals, and our children’s future. We must decide, now, whether we have the will to take it back before the price becomes a conflict we can no longer afford.

The author is a communication strategist, filmmaker, and investigative writer with a passion for exposing systemic injustices across Kenya and Africa.