Experts warn that gambling addiction is emerging as a major public health concern in Kenya, particularly among young people.
From Nairobi’s Pipeline Estate, a low-income neighbourhood, a daughter sent us a scathing complaint about a gambling-addicted grandmother.
The daughter, LM, had got fed up with the fact that her mother, who is battling cancer, just won’t stop gambling.
In a recorded voice interview, she recalls a day she sent money to her mother to prepare lunch to feed her young child. To her surprise, LM got home in the evening, and there was no sign of a meal having been prepared that day. The mother had gambled away the money, leaving LM’s poor child starving.
LM details how she has been obtaining statements of her mother’s M-Pesa transactions and the shock she has felt after noting the amounts her parent has been losing to one of Kenya’s top gambling companies.
Lately, she says, her mother has been borrowing heavily to finance her habit.
At the house they share, LM added, the mother hardly buys a thing. She had been thinking that her mother, who mostly does laundry for pay [mama fua] – was facing genuine financial constraints. Through the transaction history, it shocked her to find out that her mother had been earning decent money but losing it all to gambling.
LM has decided to end her compassion for her mother because the gambling is draining her.
“I love you as my mum, but now I have decided to love you from a distance,” she says in the rant. “I just want peace.”
We contacted LM, who in turn connected us to her mother, WA, to get her side of the story.
The mother asked not to be named because there are people who have been financially assisting her as she manages her illness.
“If they hear about my gambling addiction, they may stop assisting me,” she told Nation Lifestyle.
WA says that she got into gambling out of curiosity in 2017. The curiosity was sown though her visits to a local betting shop where she would find people busy with betting odds, jackpots and whatnot.
She decided to give it a try.
“We could go, get odds picked for us, and we could bet,” she recalls. “The attendant would open an account for you, and you took it from there.”
By then, she did not have a smartphone. She would use the SMS and USSD systems on her feature phone to place bets on outcomes of sports matches.
“I would try the jackpots, and we would be told that a bonus would come if you got 12 predictions correct. I got into it in the hope that one day I will be a millionaire. But that has never happened,” says WA.
One day, however, she won Sh16,000 after predicting the outcome of “about 14 games”.
“All went through,” she remembers, adding that she placed bets on multiple gambling firms that day.
By then, she was still married.
“When my husband saw that I had won, he also supported me. He’d encourage me to bet. And that is how I got into this,” WA says.
Her husband deserted her when doctors told her she had cancer.
WA does not deny that she is a gambling addict. After years of predicting sports outcomes, she moved to Aviator, an imported crash game created eight years ago that many betting companies deploy on their platforms.
With Aviator, you don’t have to wait for matches to be played, which takes a great deal of time. It is all about timing, luck and sometimes experience. An “aeroplane” takes off every few seconds, and that means a person has a chance to multiply their money numerous times a minute.
If you have wagered Sh10 and the aeroplane “disappears” before you cash out, your Sh10 is lost. The system is made to “disappear” the aeroplane at random intervals. The higher it flies without disappearing, the more money a wager makes when they cash out. As such, it is possible to cash out a Sh10 bet when it is a significantly high amount. Some Kenyans have won millions from tiny bets of about Sh10, at least according to information publicised by betting firms.
From the first time she tried Aviator, WA has been dreaming of the day she will strike it rich. But it is ever so elusive.
“When Aviator came, I even forgot about sports. It’s been all about Aviator since,” she says. “I’ve been hoping to win a significant amount at a go.”
“When I get something little, I get this notion that I can use it to get more. I need lots of money because I am sick. Whenever I go to the hospital, I am required to conduct very many tests that need lots of money. So, whenever I get money, I decide to bet in the hope that I will win more to cater for my medication. However, the money just goes. I have never won,” adds WA.
She says that she typically wagers Sh10. If she wins, she increases the bet.
“You see yourself winning, and so you commit something like Sh90. Then you keep wagering on and on until eventually you refund [to the betting firm] the amount you’d won,” she says.
It is a classic case of the hackneyed phrase in betting: “The house always wins.”
WA, who hails from Western Kenya, is a “mama fua” in her estate, but owing to her disease, on some days it is too cold for her to venture out.
She has seen betting affect older Kenyans like her. In one case, the 52-year-old says, a woman who was heavily in debt fell into the temptation to bet using money she had been given to pay rent and school fees. She did so in the hope that the cash would multiply and help solve her problems.
“Her husband called me to intervene,” says WA, adding that the woman, consumed by shame and guilt, was contemplating jumping off a tall building.
“As the husband called me there, he didn’t know that I also gamble. The woman had wagered a high amount, and I told her, ‘People don’t bet with that much money.’ She wanted to jump off a tall building,” WA recalls.
The woman’s husband calmed down, and the incident passed without tragedy.
“Church people also came, and we spoke with the woman,” says WA. “I told her to keep off gambling, but she said she was addicted and didn’t know how to leave.”
The World Health Organisation (WHO) says that while there are no proper global betting statistics, “estimates suggest that 1.2 per cent of the world’s adult population has a gambling disorder”.
No official data captures how many Kenyans gamble. But the market’s expansion tells its own story. Regulatory data shows that by the end of 2024, Kenya had around 200 licensed betting firms, more than twice the number in operation just three years earlier.
“Gambling can threaten health, leading to increased incidence of mental illness and suicide. It can drive poverty by diverting household spending from essential goods and services,” says the WHO.
Gambling addiction cuts across gender and class lines, though patterns differ.
The agency notes that there are three signs of someone with a gambling disorder. The first is impaired control over gambling, while the second is increasing priority given to gambling, which “takes precedence over other life interests and daily activities”.
The third sign, WHO says, is the continuation of gambling despite negative consequences.
Like a typical addict, WA says that many are the times she has resolved to kick the habit, but she somehow gets herself back.
However, she notes, on March 11, she decided to take a 180-day break from the main betting platform she has been using. She hopes that by the time the 180 days elapse, she will have put the addiction behind her.
“I don’t think I’ll get back. I hope I will have forgotten about betting. God knows the problems I am facing. He will enable me not to get back into gambling. Sometimes I don’t even have money to give God because whatever little I get, rather than give it to the church as an offering, I bet with it. Maybe God will come in and give me something that can help me,” says WA.
She quit out of the guilt that followed gambling with the money she was to use as fare from upcountry.
“I was required to return to Nairobi to see a doctor, but I had no money. Whatever money I had been given to use as fare, I tried betting with it, hoping I could get more. But all went down the drain. I worked out that if what I am using to give me solace is giving me stress, I better leave,” she says.
However, WA’s daughter expresses her doubts about her really getting off betting.
“This is not the first time she’s speaking about quitting,” LM says. “I hope she won’t get back there because it’s draining me.”
WA replies that her children will hardly believe her because they know how deeply she has been into the habit.
“They don’t even believe me. They think I’m lying,” she says.
The Psychology Today online platform states that one of the signs of gambling addiction is when you have someone who “has made repeated unsuccessful efforts to control, cut back, or stop gambling”.
Asked whether she would consider seeing a counsellor to get over the habit, WA says she sees no need.
“It’s like I counselled myself and left,” she says, laughing. “Had I not quit, I would have considered the counselling.”
WA also confessed that she had only closed the account at the main betting firm she has been using, which means the other platforms are active.
Her advice to anyone who is considering gambling?
“Rather than get into gambling, just buy meat, eat and improve your health. That’s better than putting your money where you’ll come to regret later. Like in my case, I am regretting a lot,” she said.
Asked to approximate how much she has pumped into gambling, WA theorised that it can run into millions.
“It is a lot of money since 2017,” she says. “You might think you are only wagering Sh10 at a time, but eventually, you lose a lot.”
In her rant, her daughter described how she lost Sh1,600 in gradual bets in quick succession, so much so that she resorted to getting a mobile overdraft to continue.
Added WA: “I don’t know whether the people we hear being announced as winners are actually winners. That is because I have bet over all those years without winning, and I don’t think people ever win. It could be a ploy to draw us in.”
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Tomorrow: How betting shops lure first‑timers, then they become addicts
