Home / Guides / Zakat in East Africa
Covers Kenya, Tanzania, Uganda, Ethiopia, Somalia, Djibouti, Rwanda, Burundi, South Sudan and Eritrea. East Africa's distinctive feature is that moon sighting,
Covers Kenya, Tanzania, Uganda, Ethiopia, Somalia, Djibouti, Rwanda, Burundi, South Sudan and Eritrea. East Africa's distinctive feature is that moon sighting, not Zakat collection, is the thing with a formal national structure: Kenya's Chief Kadhi runs a public, multi-body sighting process, while Zakat itself stays in the hands of mosques and charities.
There is no East African equivalent of a national Zakat fund. Giving runs through mosques, community welfare committees and relief charities, and in coastal trading towns it has done so for generations without any state involvement. Kenya's umbrella bodies — the Supreme Council of Kenya Muslims (SUPKEM) and the Council of Imams and Preachers of Kenya (CIPK) — are real national structures, but their verified public role in this guide's sources is in the moon-sighting process, not in collecting Zakat. Honest note: no single central Zakat collection body or national collection figure was verifiable for any East African country in this guide's sources.
Kenya's process is unusually transparent. The Office of the Chief Kadhi, established under Article 170 of Kenya's constitution, convenes a National Moon Sighting Committee at the Kadhi's Court in Upper Hill, Nairobi, with SUPKEM, CIPK, the Jamia Mosque Committee, the Fatwa Council of Kenya and mosque representatives invited to take part and verify reports. In 2026 Kenya began Ramadan on 19 February on the basis of confirmed local sightings. The same committee system handles the end of Ramadan: in 2026 it confirmed the Shawwal crescent from sightings in Kwale County, including Ramisi, and declared Eid al-Fitr the next day. Tanzania works closely with the same regional effort: Kenya's Fatwa Council has described monitoring the crescent together with the Mufti of Tanzania and Zanzibar and a professional East Africa Moon Sighting team.
The silver Nisab is 612.36 grams, about US$968 at the 1 November 2026 silver price of US$1.58 per gram. In an economy where mobile money has made small transfers easy, the practical point is that Zakat can be paid in small, exact amounts to a known person or mosque fund; the threshold, not the payment method, is what decides whether anything is due.
Kenya's scholars have agreed on the measure even though no single cash figure is published: rice is the staple food, and the amount is 2.040 kilograms of rice per person, to be given before the Eid prayers. Honest note: no single official cash Fitrana figure was verifiable for Kenya or any other East African country in this guide's sources; a reader should convert the rice measure at their own town's price.
All prices and rates in this example are illustrative, not live rates.
A Nairobi shopkeeper holds KES 500,000 in savings and stock for a full lunar year, with no debts due. Using an illustrative rate of KES 130 per US dollar purely to make the arithmetic visible, the silver Nisab of about US$968 converts to roughly KES 125,840, so the wealth is above Nisab and Zakat is due on the whole amount: KES 500,000 × 2.5% = KES 12,500. Use the live exchange rate on the day of payment, not the illustrative rate used here. Separately, the household owes Fitrana of 2.040 kilograms of rice per person.
Figures are those published for the year stated; always recheck the issuing body's current figure before paying.