East African Contemporary Art: How Nairobi and Kampala Galleries Attract International Buyers

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HEIN News reported in 2025 that Michael Armitage’s most expensive painting sold in New York, not in Nairobi, where he was born. On 15 May 2025, Mpeketoni fetched $2.37m at Sotheby’s, a record for the artist and a measure of how far East African contemporary art now travels.

Armitage sells through White Cube and David Zwirner, galleries headquartered in London and New York, not through a Kenyan dealer, as A That Spl noted. Collectors now pay serious money for work from Nairobi and Kampala, yet much of the margin and prestige lands elsewhere.

How Nairobi and Kampala Built a Market for East African Contemporary Art

Two gallerists carried the first push. Danda Jaroljmek launched Circle Art Agency in Nairobi in 2012. In , she started Art Auction East Africa to build a secondary market for artists who worked through independence and decolonisation, according to Kampala. In Kampala, artist Daudi Karungi founded Afriart Gallery in 2002 to close the gaps young African artists faced in mentorship and market access. He then launched the Kampala Art Biennale in 2014.

Jaroljmek judged that a gallery show running two or three weeks would not build a new audience, so she chose an auction and added city art tours and collectors to teach Kenyans the history of local artists.

Both answered one problem: talented artists with no route to buyers. Afriart now takes its artists to Art Basel Miami Beach, 1-54 in London and New York, Abu Dhabi Art and ARCO Lisbon, among other fairs. Nairobi’s auction shows the result. 

The November 2025 sale, run with South Africa’s Strauss & Co, raised $230,000 from 66 lots on offer, according to reports from The EastAfrican. A decade earlier, the Circle auction fetched more than ArtTactic reporting number is who bought: the 2025 sale attracted 45% new buyers, at price points between $2,000 and $27,000, according to an April 2026 report from ArtTactic.

The two cities play different roles. Nairobi built selling infrastructure: an auction, a secondary market and a growing collector base. Kampala built artist infrastructure: mentorship, a biennale and a gallery that places its artists in fairs abroad. Foreign buyers need both. Nairobi gives them a room to bid; Kampala provides an institutional record.

What International Buyers Look for in East African Contemporary Art

International buyers cluster in three markets. The US, UK, and China 2026 accounted for 76% of global art sales by value in 2025, out of an estimated $59.6bn, as noted by The Art Basel and UBS Global Art Market Report 2026 Galleries; therefore, they travel to the buyers. At 1-54 London in 2025, textile works and prints sold for between $400 and $30,000.

Southern Africa leads the continent’s auction market in sales and volumes, so East African artists compete hard too: Art X Lagos marked its tenth edition on 6 to 9 November 2025 at the Federal Palace Hotel.

Demand is rising. Global auction sales for modern and contemporary African artists reached $62.8m in 2025, up 42.6% from the market’s 2024 total and well ahead of the market’s 11.1% growth. The average price per lot rose 26.7% to $13,133. That figure shows a market of many mid-priced sales, not a handful of trophy lots, and East African artists compete inside it.

Price and proximity explain part of the pull. Buyers cite affordability, and th cantthe ability toty totists in their studios, AFP reported in 2015. AFP described Kuona Trust in Nairobi as a place where several dozen artists work in converted shipping containers, with their work shown in more than a dozen professional galleries across the city.

Institutions then supply credibility. Armitage founded the non-profit Nairobi Contemporary Art Institute in 2020, and the 61st Venice Biennale, open from 9 May to 22 November 2026, includes it. Curator Koyo Kouoh conceived that edition, titled “In Minor Keys”.

Biennales and auction houses do the work a tourist’s visit cannot: they certify an artist to buyers who never travel to Nairobi.

The buyer base has shifted too. Karungi told Africanews in 2023 that most collectors of contemporary African art were once expatriates working on the continent. Collectors such as Linda Mutesi now work to keep African art on the continent, after years in which valuable work left for global collections.

 The Tourism Trap in East African Contemporary Art

Governments count tourists; galleries chase them. Kenya recorded 2.7 million international arrivals and about Ksh500bn in earnings in 2025. Africa supplied 47% of those arrivals, Europe 25% and the Americas 14%.

Uganda logged 1,642,215 arrivals and UGX5.83 trillion ($1.62bn). We found no official figure for art purvisitors’ chases by visitor country. Only 13% of Uganda’s 2025 visitors came for leisure or holiday, a Daily Monitor commentary notes, which leaves little room for gallery-led travel.

History explains the habit. Nairobi’s early commercial galleries, many owned by non-Kenyans, rewarded paintings of ethnic groups, wildlife and lands, a pattern that a 19 ESCO Press study called a “hangover from colonial times.” Gallery Watatu, founded by three expatriates in 1969, closed in 2013, and its commercial drive priced work beyond most Kenyans, researcher Craig Halliday records. Kenyan painter Peterson Kamwathi said in 2011 that his generation no longer aims to serve the tourist market and engages more with social issues.

The lesson is plain. When the visitor sets the price and the subject, artists paint for the visitor. Halliday traces how a later wave of art centres, from Banana Hill to Kuona Trust, pulled artists away from tourist taste and towards local audiences. Those centres helped build the scene that foreign buyers now chase.

Kampala tried the opposite and hit a different wall. The Kampala Art Biennale aimed to become a preferred tourist destination. It drew more than 30,000 visitors across its 2014 and 2016 editions, yet it has staged no new edition since 2020. The ecosystem exists: the organisers list 32°East, Bayimba, Nyege Nyege, and the Laba Arts Festival; galleries such as AKA and Nommo; and an emerging, art-aware middle class. Residents, not passing visitors, will have to sustain it.

Its 2020 plan invited eight artists to set up studios in Kampala and tutor young artists, a model built on skills transfer, not footfall.

The trade flows outward, too. Dealers in Africa made only 30% of their 2025 sales by value within the region, the lowest share among 11 regions surveyed. Import duty on original artworks reaches 25% across the East African Community, while the US, UK and EU charge no customs duty.

So the tourism model has three flaws. It prices work for the visvisitorshe resresidentskes; sales depend on foreign fairs and passing trade. And it keeps the top-end secondary market, where reputations compound, mostly abroad.

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THE RCA Position

Fixing the Model: Six Recommendations

Galleries, tourism boards and governments can change the model without losing foreign buyers. Each step below answers a flaw named above.

1. End the customs duty on original artworks. The East African Community should match the US, UK, and EU, so collectors in Nairobi and Kampala can import art as freely as New Yorkers do—galleries as part of tourism products. The Kenya Tourism Board and Uganda Tourism Board should build bookable art circuits that link galleries, studios such as Kuona Trust and auctions to safari and city itineraries, and publish data on art spending. Kenya’s tourism ministry projects more than five million international arrivals by 2027/28. Extra arrivals will not buy art unless the product puts art in front of them.
2. Fund the biennale. Uganda’s tourism ministry should back the Kampala Art Biennale with multi-year funding; the funding gap since 2020 isn’t a problem. A funded biennale gives tourism boards a date to sell and gives collectors a reason to return.
3. Build resident collectors. Galleries should publish prices openly and expand instalment plans, corporate collections and collectors’ clubs, because the applied-demand-level work already exists.
4. Add a resale royalty. A small artist’s resale royalty would let artists share in gains when work resells at auction, as Armitage’s paintings do in New York.
5. Back public acquisition. Museums and corporate buyers should buy from living East African artists, so validation comes from home and not only from Venice. Public buying also puts a floor under prices when private demand dips.

None of this asks galleries to turn away visitors or foreign collectors. It asks them to stop treating those buyers as the whole market. Do that, and the intentional buyer market will have a floor, run by people who live there, own the work, and set the terms.

The question for Nairobi and Kampala is not whether foreigners will keep buying. They will. The question is whether residents, galleries, and governments will build a market strong enough for the work to sell. We argue that East African contemporary art will keep drawing international buyers only if Nairobi and Kampala galleries build resident collectors and public institutions rather than lean on visitors and foreign fairs, because a model that exports the work and imports the demand leaves the profit in London and New York.

What This Means for Africa’s and Nigeria’s Tourism Sector

Nigeria already runs the model East Africa is trying to build. Art X Lagos opened its tenth edition on 6 November 2025, in a week that also carried Lagos Fashion Week, Design Week Lagos, LagosPhoto and the Lagos Biennial.

That November season gives Lagos hotels, airlines and restaurants a reason to fill beds around a cultural calendar. East Africa’s lesson is that the calendar alone is not enough. Nigeria’s tourism authorities should track what visitors spend on art and track collectors, so Lagos doesn’t depend on arrivals.

Nigeria also carries a trade penalty. Import duty on original artworks reaches 20% in Nigeria, ArtTactic reports, compared with the US, UK, and EU.

Institution-building carries political risk, too. The MuseumProtests halted the West African Art’s planned November 2025 opening in Benin City after the state’s governor revoked the museum’s land licence, allAfrica reported on 28 December 2025. Readers should check the museum’s current status.

For Africa as a whole, the signal is clear. Dealers on the continent made only 30% of their 2025 sales within the region.Intra-African travel can close part of that gap. Africa already accounts for 4 accounts fornya’s international arrivals, and Nigerian collectors and the diaspora are a natural audience for Nairobi and Kampala art circuits.

Africa’s art story does not end at one gallery door. Read more RCA editorials on African culture, heritage and tourism today.

 

FAQs

1. Why do international buyers collect East African contemporary art?

Prices are accessible, buyers can meet artists in their studios, and museums and biennales now validate the work. Auction sales for modern and contemporary African artists reached $62.8m in 2025.

2. Which Nairobi and Kampala galleries lead the market?

Circle Art Gallery and Circle Art Agency lead in Nairobi, and Afriart Gallery leads in Kampala. The Nairobi Contemporary Art Institute is a non-profit space, not a dealer, but it shapes the scene’s reputation.

3. How much does East African contemporary art cost?

Entry prices at Nairobi’s 2025 auction ran from $2,000 to $27,000. The top end reaches seven figures: Michael Armitage’s record stands at $2.37m.

4. Can visitors buy art in Nairobi and Kampala?

Yes. Galleries, auctions and artist studios all sell to visitors. Ask for an invoice, provenance details and export paperwork, and check import rules in your home country before you ship.

5. What is wrong with the tourism model for East African art?

It treats visitors and foreign fairs as the market. That leaves local collectors, public buying and the secondary market underdeveloped, and it sends the largest sales abroad.