On 1 October 2024 Kenya retired the National Health Insurance Fund (NHIF) and switched on the Social Health Authority (SHA), created by the Social Health Insurance Act, 2023. SHA is not a single fund but three: the tax-funded Primary Healthcare Fund for community-level care, the contributory Social Health Insurance Fund (SHIF) that most people pay into, and the Emergency, Chronic and Critical Illness Fund that catches catastrophic costs. The whole scheme is marketed as Taifa Care, which is why you will see the names used interchangeably.
The number that matters for employees is simple: SHIF takes 2.75% of gross monthly salary, with a minimum of KES 300 and, crucially, no upper cap. The missing cap is the biggest change from NHIF, whose top band stopped at KES 1,700 per month — under SHIF a senior earner on KES 400,000 now pays KES 11,000. If you want to see exactly how this lands on a full payslip alongside PAYE, NSSF and the Housing Levy, run the figures through our payslip generator guide, and pair it with the KRA tax calculator guide to see your true take-home.
The self-employed and informal-sector households are handled differently. The rate is the same 2.75%, but it is applied to a household income figure the Ministry of Health estimates through means testing — looking at housing, assets and household composition — rather than a number you simply declare. The floor is still KES 300 a month, there is no ceiling, and non-salaried members pay annually. In practice you complete the means-testing questionnaire on the SHA portal or by dialling *147#, and SHA tells you the amount. Because that estimate is set by SHA and not by a fixed formula on your stated income, our calculator gives you an indicative figure and flags that the authority confirms the final one.
What you get for the money is broad on paper: outpatient and inpatient care, surgery, maternity under the Linda Mama package, specialist treatment at Level 4 to 6 hospitals, mental health, rehabilitation, and chronic or critical conditions such as dialysis, cancer and HIV at SHA-empanelled facilities. The detail to watch is that each condition has a benefit limit set in the SHA package, and those limits are revised from time to time — so the headline of full cover comes with per-condition caps you should check before a major procedure.
Registration is mandatory and re-registration was required even for people who had NHIF. You can register by USSD on *147#, online at sha.go.ke, or in person at a Huduma Centre with your National ID. Contributions fall due by the 9th of the following month — the employer remits for staff, the self-employed remit their own — and missing the deadline draws a 2% monthly penalty on the unpaid amount as well as a possible gap in cover. If your salary is a moving target, it is worth knowing your SHIF cost before you accept an offer; our salary negotiation guide for Kenya walks through how statutory deductions shape what a gross figure is really worth.