Kenya’s Capital Markets Authority (CMA) is seeking to procure a blockchain analytics platform to strengthen oversight of the country’s virtual asset market, marking one of the regulator’s first concrete enforcement steps since its new crypto law took effect.
The move follows the enactment of the Virtual Assets Service Providers Act, 2025, which authorizes the CMA to regulate virtual asset exchanges, brokers, asset managers, investment advisers, and other licensed participants operating in Kenya’s digital assets market.
According to tender documents, the regulator wants a system that can track blockchain transactions and screen wallets against sanctions lists, while also helping detect fraud and support investigations into suspicious cryptocurrency activities. The CMA described its objective in the tender as being “to supply, implement, integrate, operationalize, and maintain a secure, scalable and fit for purpose Virtual Assets Blockchain Analytics System to enhance CMA’s capacity to monitor, analyze, investigate, and respond to risks associated with virtual assets and virtual asset service providers.”
The platform is expected to monitor transactions across Bitcoin, Ethereum, and more than 20 blockchain networks, and will assign automated risk scores to wallets and transactions based on indicators such as money laundering, fraud, ransomware, terrorism financing and sanctions exposure, helping the regulator prioritize investigations. It will also screen transactions against international sanctions lists, including those maintained by the United Nations and the United States Office of Foreign Assets Control.
Beyond enforcement, the system is meant to help the CMA identify unlicensed offshore platforms serving the local market without authorization, a significant gap given that much of Kenya’s crypto activity runs through informal peer-to-peer channels.
Despite the framework being in place, not a single crypto platform has been licensed under it yet, and the National Treasury is still drafting implementing regulations. Existing operators have until November 2026 to comply.
The stakes are considerable: Kenyan residents received about $19 billion in crypto between July 2024 and June 2025, ranking the country fourth in Africa, with more than six million Kenyans estimated to use digital assets.
