Jomo Kenyatta Licensing Act of 1967 prohibited non-citizens from involvement in the rice, sugar, and maize trade. During the 1970s, this expanded to cover the trade in soap, cement, and textiles. Many Asians who had retained British citizenship were affected by these measures. Between late 1967 and early 1968, growing numbers of Kenyan Asians migrated to Britain; in February 1968 large numbers migrated quickly before a legal change revoked their right to do so. Kenyatta was not sympathetic to those leaving: "Kenya's identity as an African country is not going to be altered by the whims and malaises of groups of uncommitted
Jomo Kenyatta degraded black people. Appearing in the film also allowed him to meet and befriend its star, the African-American Paul Robeson. In 1935, Italy invaded Ethiopia (Abyssinia), incensing Kenyatta and other Africans in London; he became the honorary secretary of the International African Friends of Abyssinia, a group established by Padmore and C. L. R. James. When Ethiopia's monarch Haile Selassie fled to London in exile, Kenyatta personally welcomed him at Waterloo station. This group developed into a wider pan-Africanist organisation, the International African Service Bureau (IASB), of which Kenyatta became one of the vice chairs. Kenyatta began giving anti-colonial lectures