Saudi recruitment firms have committed to 293,600 job opportunities for Kenyans, and technical teams from both countries are working to finalise a skilled-worker agreement within one month. The talks followed a meeting in Riyadh led by Labour Cabinet Secretary Alfred Mutua. Kenya and Saudi Arabia also signed a letter of intent for a three-month pilot programme on voluntary recruitment fees for domestic workers.
The commitments were signed by Saudi employment companies after Mutua met Saudi government officials and recruitment agencies in Riyadh. Kenya’s Ambassador to Saudi Arabia, Joseph Masila, attended the talks. The jobs cover a range of occupations, and Mutua thanked the companies for their confidence in Kenya’s workforce. The figure is a commitment from private firms, not a government quota.
Mutua said technical teams from both countries would work to finalise the skilled-worker agreement within a month. The aim is to create more opportunities for skilled Kenyan professionals in the Saudi labour market and to make recruitment more efficient and transparent.
The talks build on a framework signed earlier this year. On July 5, 2026, the two countries signed a Labour Recruitment and Employment Agreement in Riyadh, covering more than 350,000 Kenyans working in the kingdom. The deal was signed by the two labour ministries during the first Kenya-Saudi Arabia Political Consultations Meeting, which Prime Cabinet Secretary Musalia Mudavadi led.
A technical annex to the domestic workers’ recruitment agreement was also signed during the latest visit. It is designed to strengthen contracts, improve awareness of workers’ rights and obligations, and raise the quality of recruitment services.
The three-month pilot on voluntary recruitment fees is one of the more practical elements. Domestic workers often pay large sums to agencies to secure jobs, and the pilot will test whether a voluntary approach can reduce that burden while keeping recruitment regulated.
The reforms come against a long record of complaints. Kenyan domestic workers in Saudi Arabia have reported physical abuse, unpaid wages, confiscated travel documents, excessive working hours and restrictions on movement. Those complaints have been linked to the kafala system, under which a worker’s legal status is tied to a single employer. Critics argue that the new measures do not directly address violence or the denial of medical care in live-in domestic work.
Mudavadi said in November 2025 that Kenya was at an advanced stage of negotiations for a comprehensive agreement covering skilled and semi-skilled workers, with better wages and conditions. The commitments announced this week suggest that the broader deal is moving toward completion.
Kenya has signed similar deals before. A 2023 bilateral agreement opened Saudi jobs for specialised healthcare workers, offering qualified nurses one-year renewable contracts with a minimum monthly salary of more than Sh176,000. That agreement was described at the time as Kenya’s second government-to-government labour deal, after one with the United Kingdom.
The next signals will be whether the skilled-worker agreement is signed within the one-month timetable, how the pilot on recruitment fees is run and whether the 293,600 commitments become actual placements. Officials and workers’ groups will also watch enforcement against recruitment agencies that break the rules.
