This page looks at Turkish company documents for Kenya: the trade register extract, signature circular, authorisation letter and power of attorney of a Turkish firm opening a branch in Nairobi, bidding in a tender or signing with a Kenyan counterpart. Kenya has no row in the HCCH status table, so these papers are prepared through a four-stamp legalisation chain rather than with an apostille. This page is for the Kenyan registrar or partner who receives such a file and for the Turkish company assembling it: where a company paper enters the chain, what the Ministry’s stamp attests on it, and the English or Swahili question.
East Africa without a shortcut: Kenya and the apostille table
No Kenya line exists in the status table, and Kenya is not among the Members of the Hague Conference. For the person preparing a company file, this makes one question disappear: the exclusion in article 1 of the Apostille Convention for administrative documents dealing directly with commercial or customs operations never comes up, because nothing on a Kenyan file travels by apostille. A company paper and a civil record run the same legalisation chain. Kenya has not acceded to ETS 063, CIEC 16 or CIEC 17, so no document type has a shorter route.
Trade register extracts and signature circulars: two notarial doors
Company papers enter the chain through two different notarial acts. A signature circular and a power of attorney are notarial documents already; nothing further is certified, and they pass to the second link on the notary’s own signature. A trade register extract, a certificate of activity or a chamber membership certificate is issued by the registry or the chamber; for these, either a notary draws up a certified true copy or a notary certifies the translation, and the chain starts from that act. The second link in every case is the governor’s office of the place of issue, which certifies the notary’s signature. This place rule comes from the undated information sheet of the Turkish Ministry of Foreign Affairs; whether the 2024 amendment of article 199 of the Notaries Law also covers this certification was not verified in this site’s survey.
The Ministry’s stamp on a Turkish company paper
The third link is the Legalisation Unit of the Turkish Ministry of Foreign Affairs, which certifies the governor’s signature. On a company paper that stamp speaks for the governor’s signature only; it says nothing about the company’s register entry or about the authority of the officers named in a signature circular. How an application is made at the Unit is set out on the Unit’s own page. The fourth link is the Kenyan mission, whose stamp the Ministry’s sheet does not list and the French MEAE table names double légalisation.
English or Swahili for a Kenyan office
Whether a Kenyan institution wants a Turkish document in English or in Swahili was not confirmed on this site, and the receiving institution is asked. The language is closed at the start because a translation made in Türkiye is the first link, and the governor’s office, the Ministry and the mission stack their stamps on the notary’s certification of it. If the Kenyan institution has the translation made on its own side, only the original or its notarised copy goes through the Turkish chain. What a sworn translator corresponds to in Kenyan practice was not researched here.
A Kenyan contract or power of attorney used by a Turkish company
A company document, contract or power of attorney issued in Kenya and needed in Türkiye follows one of the two methods in the Ministry’s sheet: legalisation at the Turkish mission in Kenya, or a stamp from the Kenyan mission in Türkiye certified afterwards by the Ministry of Foreign Affairs or by the governor’s office of the province where the mission sits. The city of the Kenyan mission was not confirmed on this site. A Turkish trade registry or notary takes the document after the chain has closed, with a notarised Turkish translation, whether the original is in English or Swahili; the stamps that translation must cover are for the receiving office to name.
Open points and one error to avoid on a Kenyan corporate file
The Kenyan mission’s procedure, processing time and fee were not researched for this page and are learned from the mission. How Kenyan institutions treat a Turkish notarial certification and a translation made in Türkiye was not confirmed. An apostille placed by mistake is an error to avoid on a Kenyan file, since the Legalisation Unit does not process an apostilled document. A translation office renders English or Swahili text; it offers no legal view on whether the contract will hold in Kenya and carries out none of the certifications.