Kenya bus crash kills at least 24 on deadly Mombasa highway
A Kenya bus crash near Mtito Andei killed at least 24 on Sunday. The toll so far, what officials promised and why the Nairobi-Mombasa highway is so deadly.
Why it matters
The Nairobi-Mombasa highway is the main road between Kenya's capital and its main port, and a key freight route for East Africa. Kenya's government now faces calls to treat road deaths as a national disaster.
Developing story: At least 24 people were killed on Sunday, October 25, when a church bus and a truck collided head-on on the Nairobi-Mombasa highway near Mtito Andei, in Kenya’s Makueni County, county health officials said. It was the road’s second mass-fatality crash in three weeks.
The bus belonged to the Power of the Word Church International, based in the coastal city of Mombasa. Its passengers were returning from a burial when it hit an oncoming truck at Kanga, just past Mtito Andei town, between about 7 a.m. and 8 a.m. local time (04:00 to 05:00 GMT).
How many people died in the Kenya bus crash?
| Who reported it | Deaths | When (Sunday, Oct 25) |
|---|---|---|
| Makueni County Commissioner Abdullahi Khalif; police, to AP | 22 | Morning |
| President William Ruto, in a statement | 23 | Afternoon |
| Alex Makau, Makueni County chief officer for medical services | 24 | Evening |
Source: Nairobi News, The Star, AP, People Daily, Citizen Digital.
Makau said four of the 15 patients admitted to Makindu Sub-County Hospital had died and four more were referred to Coast General Hospital in Mombasa, People Daily reported. Citizen Digital also put the toll at 24. Accounts differ on how many died at the scene (17 or 20). Officials had not released the names of the dead.
What officials say caused it
The cause is under investigation. Khalif said the bus was overtaking a line of vehicles when the driver lost control; it skidded off the road and came to rest on its right side on the opposite side. The National Transport and Safety Authority (NTSA), Kenya’s road safety regulator, said preliminary reports suggested “improper overtaking may have contributed to the crash.” One passenger gave AP a different account, saying the truck hit the bus from behind.
What Ruto, the ministry and NTSA have promised
President Ruto ordered thorough inspections of all public service vehicles, the buses and minibuses that carry paying passengers.
Transport Cabinet Secretary Davis Chirchir called repeated crashes unacceptable. “We cannot continue treating road safety as business as usual,” he said in a statement reported by Citizen Digital. His ministry said it would expand its program for fixing accident black spots, step up enforcement against reckless overtaking and speeding, and work with Parliament and the courts on problems implementing new commercial vehicle and vehicle inspection rules issued in 2026.
NTSA Director General Nashon Kondiwa asked for a national disaster declaration, saying Kenya records about 20,000 crashes and more than 5,000 deaths a year. A declaration would put road agencies, police, the health sector and county governments under one plan with shared targets, the agency said.
Key figure: 4,458 people died on Kenya’s roads in 2025 up to December 2, more than the 4,311 recorded in all of 2024, according to NTSA data reported by Citizen Digital and The Standard.
A road where overtaking means facing oncoming trucks
The highway links Kenya’s capital with its main seaport and is part of the Northern Corridor, the freight route to Uganda, Rwanda and beyond. Buses, minibuses known as matatus and heavy trucks share long stretches of single carriageway, so passing a slow truck means pulling into the opposing lane.
- 7 Jun 2026: Eight people die after a truck crosses into the path of an oncoming minibus, police said.
- 7 Jul 2026: Six die near Kapiti Plains, Machakos County, when an overtaking truck hits a Mombasa-bound Tahmeed bus head-on.
- 3 Oct 2026: 17 Catholic pilgrims from Mikindani parish in Mombasa die in a multi-vehicle crash on the Mlima Kiu-Salama stretch in Makueni County.
- 25 Oct 2026: At least 24 die at Kanga, near Mtito Andei.
Source: Capital FM, The Standard, Citizen Digital, People Daily, Kenyans.co.ke, AP.
Three of those four crashes were head-on collisions. Plans to widen the road have stalled for about a decade. In July 2025, the Treasury’s public-private partnership committee rejected the plan for the 468 billion shilling ($3.6 billion) Usahihi Expressway, a new toll road proposed by US-based Everstrong Capital, though it allowed the proposal to be resubmitted, and the government has since focused on upgrading the existing highway. The Motorists Association of Kenya, a road users’ lobby, wants heavy trucks separated from passenger buses and the road dualled, according to Kenyans.co.ke.
Kenya’s official death count is probably too low
Kenya’s official figures, around 4,500 deaths a year, sit far below outside estimates. The World Health Organization estimated 14,926 road deaths in Kenya in 2021, a rate of 28.2 per 100,000 people, while the official count for that year was 4,579. The gap, more than three to one, points to under-reporting. Medical Services Principal Secretary Harry Kimutai said in 2024 that poor data, including under-reporting and health and police records that do not match, meant much of the cost of crashes was never captured, The Star reported.
What has worked before
Kenya has seen a crackdown work before. In 2004 transport minister John Michuki required speed limiters and seat belts in public service vehicles and capped passenger numbers. Crashes fell sharply, The Star and VOA reported, but enforcement faded after Michuki moved ministries; Matatu Owners Association chairman Simon Kimutai later blamed police bribes, according to The Star. The government revived the “Michuki rules” in late 2018 after a bus crash at Fort Ternan in western Kenya killed 52 people.
Enforcement targets drivers and vehicles. Head-on crashes during overtaking are also a design problem, and some countries have used road design to cut them. Sweden began converting wide two-lane roads into “2+1” roads in the late 1990s: alternating overtaking lanes with a wire-rope barrier down the middle, so cars cannot cross into oncoming traffic. Between 1999 and 2016 it built about 2,900 kilometers, and deaths and serious injuries on those roads fell by 70 to 75 percent, according to a 2019 presentation by Trafikverket, the Swedish transport administration. A separate evaluation by Swedish researcher Anna Vadeby, cited by the International Road Assessment Programme, found a 50 percent fall, and 63 percent on stretches without junctions. Trafikverket put the cost at about £325,000 to £500,000 per kilometer (roughly $430,000 to $670,000) when upgrading a road already in good shape.
The measures announced on Sunday focus mainly on vehicles, drivers and enforcement. The ministry’s black-spot program promises engineering fixes, but it has not said whether that includes separating opposing traffic on this road.
What happens next: NTSA and police are investigating the Kanga crash, and the government has not yet said whether it will accept NTSA’s call for a national disaster declaration. Watch for when Ruto’s ordered vehicle inspections begin and whether the highway upgrade gets a funding decision.
