Kenya annual leave entitlement

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What the law actually says

Section 28(1)(a) gives an employee not less than twenty-one working days of leave with full pay after every twelve consecutive months of service with the employer. At 4.2 weeks that is the most generous statutory floor of any African country in this table and sits above the European Union's four-week minimum. Section 28(2) lets the employer, with the employee's consent, divide the entitlement into parts taken at different intervals, but section 28(3) requires one of those parts to consist of at least two uninterrupted working weeks unless an individual or collective agreement provides otherwise.

What happens to unused leave in Kenya

Section 28(4) sets the deadlines. The uninterrupted part of the leave must be granted and taken during the twelve consecutive months of service in which it was earned, and the remainder no later than eighteen months from the end of that leave-earning period. Leave days above the statutory minimum fall outside those rules: section 28(5) lets employer and employee agree how contractual leave in excess of the minimum is used.

When employment ends, the untaken balance must be paid. This is the rule across the European Union and Australia, and it is the sharpest contrast with the United States, where whether unused time is paid out depends entirely on which state the employee works in.

If you run a team in Kenya

• Write the entitlement into every contract. At least 21 days; more is fine, less is void. Collective agreements may add to it.
• Track accrual and carryover to the day, with a record of every approval. When someone leaves, the untaken balance is money you owe, and you will need to show how you got to the number.
• Budget for the payout. Every unused day on the books is a liability at that person's current pay rate — it does not disappear at year end.

If you work in Kenya

• Check your contract gives at least 21 days. Anything less is unenforceable.
• Keep your own record of approved leave. Payroll systems get changed; your notes don't.
• When you leave, untaken statutory leave must be paid out. It cannot be forfeited.

Countries with the same 21-day minimum

Compare all 52 countries →

Calculating an employee's balance

Entitlement is the starting point; the working number is what an individual has actually accrued at a given date. Our accrual calculator converts an annual entitlement into a per-pay-period figure and a current balance.

Tracking Kenya leave correctly

Because untaken leave is money the employer owes, the balance has to be provable. Spreadsheets fail at exactly the moment they matter — when someone disputes what they were owed on their last day and nobody can reconstruct the record.

For a single-country team, Leavo handles Kenya accrual rules, carryover and approvals with a full audit trail. If you employ people in more than one country, statutory entitlements, carryover rules and payout obligations differ in every one — that is the case for a platform like Deel that handles multi-country employment rather than leave alone. We compare the options in our leave management software guide.

Source

Primary source: Employment Act, 2007 (Cap. 226), s.28. Statutory minimums change, and collective agreements frequently exceed them — confirm against the current text before acting. See our methodology.