Kenya eTA: the Mandatory Electronic Travel Authorization Before a Self-Drive Road Trip

Since 5 January 2024, Kenya has scrapped the standard tourist visa and visa-on-arrival in favour of an Electronic Travel Authorization (eTA), a digital authorization to obtain before departure on the official site, etakenya.go.ke. The change followed a presidential directive and a notice published in the Kenya Gazette in early January 2024: it is no longer possible to arrive without prior arrangements and sort things out at the border, unlike the former visa-on-arrival system.

The application is done entirely online, with a passport and photo, for a cost of USD 30 per person — including children and infants, each requiring their own application and payment. Processing is usually advertised at 48 to 72 hours, but it's worth applying at least a week before departure: additional checks can be requested and extend the delay.

For a French national or any other non-African traveller, the answer is simple: the USD 30 eTA remains mandatory before departure, regardless of the length of stay or the purpose of the trip (tourism, transit, business). It authorises a single entry within 90 days of approval; beyond that, a new one has to be requested.

The situation has changed for African travellers, though: under a legal notice dated 30 May 2025, nationals of almost every African country — except Somalia and Libya — now enter Kenya on their passport alone, without an eTA, for a stay of up to two months. Citizens of East African Community countries (Uganda, Tanzania, Rwanda, Burundi, DRC, South Sudan) get an even broader regime, visa- and eTA-free, for up to six months. None of these exemptions apply to French travellers, but they explain why online accounts of the process sometimes contradict each other — it all depends on the nationality of whoever is telling the story.

Only one site is authoritative: etakenya.go.ke, the government portal. A quick search on the topic still turns up a string of professional-looking third-party sites (often with "kenya" and "visa" or "eta" in the domain name) that charge USD 15 to 40 more for the same process while presenting themselves as official or mandatory services. They aren't necessarily fraudulent — some genuinely forward the application — but they add a margin on a free procedure that takes about fifteen minutes to complete yourself.

Once approved, the authorization arrives by email as a PDF: it's worth printing it and also keeping an offline copy on your phone, since some check-in counters ask for it before even the boarding pass. The passport must remain valid for at least six months after the planned entry date, a standard requirement but a regular source of last-minute boarding refusals.

Contrary to a common assumption, a yellow fever vaccination certificate isn't automatically required to enter Kenya: it's only mandatory for travellers arriving from a country where the disease is endemic, or who have transited more than twelve hours through such a country. For a direct flight from France, it isn't normally requested at the border. The vaccine remains advisable for personal protection if the itinerary includes at-risk areas of the country, and it's worth discussing with a travel health clinic: protection only kicks in ten days after the injection, and the certificate is now valid for life.

A valid foreign driving licence is legally enough to drive in Kenya for up to 90 days, with no international permit required. In practice, an International Driving Permit is still advisable whenever the national licence isn't written in English — which is the case for the standard French format — to avoid any argument at a police checkpoint or with a rental company that insists on it. For crossing into Tanzania or Uganda with the rental vehicle, a written authorization from the rental company and regional insurance (often called a COMESA sticker, around USD 50 to 60) are essential on top of the licence.

Driving is on the left, on an uneven road network where potholes, free-roaming livestock and long distances between fuel stations demand constant vigilance. A study by Mohsin Ali Shaikh, Herbert Lule, Till Bärnighausen, Miles Lowery Wilson and Alexander Abio, published in 2022 in Health Science Reports, analysed data from a nationally representative survey on Kenyan adults' involvement in road traffic crashes: it found a markedly higher crash prevalence among men than women, and highlighted the weight of long journeys and after-dark driving among reported collisions (study available via Google Scholar: scholar.google.com/scholar?q=Shaikh+Lule+Barnighausen+Lowery+Wilson+Abio+road+traffic+crashes+Kenya). One more confirmation of a rule already applied on the site's other self-drive destinations: avoid driving after sunset outside major towns altogether.

It's no accident that entry requirements have moved so much in such a short time: the Kenyan government made simplifying entry a central plank of its post-Covid tourism recovery, alongside digital marketing and sector support measures. A study by Michael Kisilu, published in 2026 in the African Journal of Tourism and Hospitality Management, analyses the government interventions behind this recovery in Kenya and identifies e-visa facilitation among the levers that concretely supported the country's visitor-arrival trajectory (study available via Google Scholar: scholar.google.com/scholar?q=Kisilu+Reconfiguring+Tourism+Systems+after+Crisis+Kenya). Good news for independent travellers: once the eTA is sorted, the rest of the planning — 4x4 rental, the route between the Masai Mara and the Swahili coast, park budgets — is entirely up to you.

The "Kenya Self-Drive" guide details, park by park, the entry fees to budget for on top of rental and fuel costs, along with the practical layout of a self-drive safari between the Masai Mara, Amboseli and Laikipia. Enough to land in Nairobi with the eTA already approved and a costed route rather than improvising on the spot.