Countries around the globe are liberalizing their trade policies because trade is considered as one of the primary tools to increase economic growth. The paper empirically analyzes the impact of trade openness on the economic growth in Kenya over the period 1970-2014. The empirical result shows that trade liberalization has positive and significant impact on economic growth. The coefficient of sum of total exports and total imports as a ratio of Gross Domestic Product which was used as a proxy

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... or openness was positive and statistically significant (β=.151853, p-value=0.0042).The regression coefficient (β) value of the scores of FDI was (0.077276) with a t-test of 1.530526 and was statistically significant with a (p-value=.0134).The log of portfolio investment as a ratio of Gross Domestic Product was positive (β=0.015372, p-value=0.6405), but statistically insignificant. On the other hand the coefficient of gross domestic capital formation as a ratio of Gross Domestic Product as the proxy for financial development was negative and statistically significant (β=-0.382785, p-value=0.0031).The coefficient of secondary and tertiary institutions enrolment as a ratio of the total population which was used as a proxy for human capital was negative and statistically significant (β=-0.513306, p-value=0.0039).The coefficient of inflation as a proxy for macroeconomic stability was negative and statistically significant (β=-.077303, p-value=0.0419). The paper recommends that Kenya should speed up the process of trade openness to accelerate the rate of economic growth and improve the living standard of the masses. The focus should be on imports of new technologies and capital goods instead of consumable items. Efforts are required to ensure stable © Abdillahi & Manini Licensed under Creative Common Page 110 macroeconomic environment which will encourage other stakeholders to play their part in the growth process. The country should invest both in physical and human capital for the growing labour force. This could be done using domestic sources as well as encouraging foreign direct investment.