NAIROBI - Kenya's consumer inflation rose to 8.5% year-on-year in August from 8.3% a month earlier, driven by increases in the price of food, transport and energy, the Kenya National Bureau of Statistics said on Wednesday.

The August figure was the highest rate of inflation seen in Kenya since June 2017, when it was at 9.2%.

Like in other parts of the world, Kenyan inflation has accelerated in recent months, from just above 5% at the start of 2022, mainly due to the knock-on effects of increases in the international prices of crude oil.

Month-on-month inflation was at 0.4% in August compared with 0.7% in July, the statistics office said.

(Reporting by Estelle Shirbon and George Obulutsa, Editing by James Macharia Chege)