When Art Auction East Africa returns to Nairobi on 28 October 2026, its significance will extend beyond the prices achieved in the room. The sale, organised by Circle Art Agency in partnership with South African auction house Strauss & Co, is becoming part of a broader effort to build a more visible and better documented secondary market for East African modernism.
The partnership is entering its second year, but Art Auction East Africa itself has a longer history. Founded by Danda Jaroljmek in Nairobi in 2013, the auction has spent more than a decade bringing works by modern and contemporary artists from Kenya, Uganda, Tanzania and neighbouring regions back into circulation. The Strauss & Co collaboration, launched in 2025, has expanded that infrastructure through a larger digital bidding network and greater access to collectors elsewhere on the continent and internationally.
That distinction matters. While international demand for African art has expanded considerably over the past decade, the market has often concentrated on a relatively narrow group of contemporary names and established modernists from South and West Africa. East Africa’s post-independence histories remain less consistently represented at major international auctions, making the development of regional pricing, provenance research and scholarship particularly important.
The results of the 2025 Nairobi sale offered some evidence of changing demand. The auction generated KES 29.67 million (approximately US$229,700) from 52 sold lots, with a sell-through rate close to 80%. More than 70% of sold works reached or exceeded their high estimates, while bidders participated from 19 countries. Strauss & Co also reported that more than 45% of bidders were new to the joint auction.
Tanzanian modernists were among the strongest performers. K.F. Msangi’s Baobab Under the Red Moon (1968) sold for KES 3.522 million (US$27,271), more than twice its upper estimate, becoming the highest-priced work of the evening. Another early work, Lusiki (1961), made while Msangi was studying at Makerere University, realised KES 1.585 million.
Those results help explain why Msangi will receive particular attention in 2026. Works from the artist’s estate are expected to form a focused presentation tracing different stages of his career. Msangi studied at Makerere University, where he received the Trowell Prize, later taught in Nairobi and at Kenyatta University, and pursued further studies in California and at Stanford. His practice moved across painting, printmaking, education and writing, situating him within the intellectual as well as artistic networks that shaped post-independence East Africa.
The emphasis also points towards one of the auction’s more consequential functions: recovering artists whose historical importance has not always been matched by sustained market visibility. Rather than treating “African modernism” as a single movement, the sale creates opportunities to examine interconnected histories stretching through Makerere, Nairobi, Dar es Salaam and the wider Indian Ocean region.
For the October auction, Circle Art Agency and Strauss & Co say they will prioritise secondary-market works dating from the 1960s to the early 2000s, supplemented by selected contemporary pieces. The geographical scope extends beyond East Africa to the Indian Ocean region and other parts of the continent, continuing the cross-regional approach introduced in 2025, when artists from Sudan, Egypt and Zimbabwe appeared alongside East African names.
The model is significant because mature art markets require more than primary galleries and international art-fair exposure. They depend on resale mechanisms, credible estimates, documented provenance and recurring public transactions through which collectors and institutions can understand how artists are being valued over time. In that respect, Nairobi’s auction is gradually constructing an archive of prices alongside an archive of artistic histories.
There are already signs that the audience for these histories is becoming less geographically contained. The 2025 auction recorded purchases across regional boundaries, including interest from Kenyan collectors in Southern African art and demand for Sudanese artists. Strauss & Co has described the partnership as part of a wider strategy to operate as a continental rather than exclusively South African auction house.
For Jaroljmek, however, the ambition remains closely tied to East Africa. The auction is intended not simply to generate higher prices, but to reconnect historically important works with collectors and institutions while expanding knowledge around the artists and movements that shaped the region.
That may ultimately be the more important measure of the 2026 edition. As African modernisms are reassessed internationally, Nairobi is positioning itself not merely as another place where African art is sold, but as one of the places where the market — and the historical record supporting it — can increasingly be constructed from within the continent.
Art Auction East Africa | Strauss & Co takes place in Nairobi on 28 October 2026. Consignments are open until 31 August 2026, with works accepted in Nairobi, Johannesburg and Cape Town. A public preview at Circle Art Gallery is scheduled for the two weeks preceding the sale.
