The following telephone numbers in

Kenya Kenya, officially the Republic of Kenya, is a country located in East Africa. With an estimated population of more than 52.4 million as of mid-2024, Kenya is the 27th-most-populous country in the world and the 7th most populous in Africa. ...

are destination codes for international calls terminating in Kenya as well as the procedures for dialling internationally from within Kenya. Until 1999, Kenya shared its

telephone numbering plan A telephone numbering plan is a type of numbering scheme used in telecommunication to assign telephone numbers to subscriber telephones or other telephony endpoints. Telephone numbers are the addresses of participants in a telephone network, reach ...

with

Tanzania Tanzania, officially the United Republic of Tanzania, is a country in East Africa within the African Great Lakes region. It is bordered by Uganda to the northwest; Kenya to the northeast; the Indian Ocean to the east; Mozambique and Malawi to t ...

and

Uganda Uganda, officially the Republic of Uganda, is a landlocked country in East Africa. It is bordered to the east by Kenya, to the north by South Sudan, to the west by the Democratic Republic of the Congo, to the south-west by Rwanda, and to the ...

, meaning that to make calls between the three countries, subscribers needed only dial the area code and number, a legacy of the East African Post and Telecommunications Corporation (EAPTC) which was dissolved in 1977. As a result of the reorganisation of Tanzania's numbering plan in that year, direct dialling was discontinued, although calls between the three countries do not require international dialling, only a special three-digit code.

Land lines

Land line phone numbers in Kenya follow the format Area Code + Phone Number. To dial a number within an area or city, only the phone number needs to be dialled. When dialling from a different area or city, the telephone number is dialled in the format 0 + Area Code + Phone Number. When dialling from abroad, the 0 is omitted.

List of area codes in Kenya

Mobile operators

In Kenya there are four mobile network operators (MNO):

Safaricom Safaricom PLC is a listed Kenyan mobile network operator headquartered at Safaricom House in Nairobi, Kenya. It is the largest telecommunications provider in Kenya, and one of the most profitable companies in the East and Central Africa region. T ...

Airtel Bharti Airtel Limited is an Indian multinational telecommunications company based in New Delhi. It operates in 18 countries across South Asia and Africa, as well as the Channel Islands. Currently, Airtel provides 5G, 4G and LTE Advanced ...

(formerly Kencell, Celtel, and Zain), Equitel (MVNO) and

Telkom Kenya Telkom Kenya is an integrated telecommunications provider in Kenya. It was previously a part of the Kenya Posts and Telecommunications Corporation (KPTC) which was the sole provider of both postal and telecommunication services. The company wa ...

(Orange). The Communications Authority of Kenya (CAK) has assigned several Area Codes to each operator. All mobile Area Codes used the start with the digit 7. As of May 2019, the Communications authority introduced codes starting with the digit 1. Please note: Since April 2011 Mobile number portability (MNP) is implemented in Kenya. The phone number can be ported by the customer to another operator.

Non-geographic numbers

Calls to numbers starting 0800 are free.

Calls to and from Tanzania and Uganda

To call Kenya from Tanzania and Uganda, subscribers must dial 005, followed by the area code and number. To call Uganda from Kenya, subscribers must dial 006, followed by the area code and number, while calls to Tanzania require the prefix 007.

International dialling

To call Kenya from other countries, subscribers must dial their international access code e.g. 00 for most European countries, and 011 from North America, followed by the country code 254. The international access code for calls from Kenya is 000.

References

Communications in Kenya Kenya communications-related lists {{Telephonenumber-stub