President William Ruto has declared sweeping, immediate reforms across Kenya’s creative economy, music royalty distribution, and school talent competitions, aimed at protecting artists from middlemen and commercializing youth talent nationwide.
Speaking during state concerts hosting winners of the Kenya National Drama and Music Festivals, the Head of State outlined a radical blueprint to restructure how music, art, and school events are organized and funded.
All collection and payout of music royalties are moving directly to the government’s e-Citizen platform to eliminate cartels and brokers.
Collective Management Organisations (CMOs) must ensure at least 70% of royalties reach artists directly, with non-compliant licenses facing immediate revocation.
The Permanent Presidential Music Commission (PPMC) is being renamed the Permanent Creative Economy Commission (PCEA) to cover all visual, performing, and digital arts under a single umbrella.
National Drama and Music Festivals will now receive direct, predictable allocations as a dedicated line item in the Ministry of Education’s budget.
School events will no longer end at regional or national stages; student talent will be monetized, profiled, and bridged into professional careers.
President Ruto expressed frustration over long-standing complaints from musicians regarding opaque royalty distributions by third-party collective management organizations.
“For too long, royalty collection has lacked transparency. We have instances where millions were collected, but artists received a fraction while brokers walked away with the rest. This ends now. Royalty distribution is moving to e-Citizen so that every shilling collected is visible in real time.”
Under the new directives, enforcement by the Kenya Copyright Board (KECOBO) will track allocations digitally, ensuring maximum financial return for content creators.
Addressing the future of school-level arts, President Ruto emphasized that school
