Loan disbursements under affirmative action funds started the Kibaki and Uhuru Kenyatta era have dropped as President William Ruto’s digitally driven lending programmes expand their reach among youth and small traders.
Official disclosures show both the Uwezo Fund and the Women Enterprise Fund (WEF) missed lending targets by wide margins in the financial year ended June 2025, signalling the declining role of legacy State-backed credit schemes.
Disbursements under the Uwezo Fund fell to Sh431.4 million, below the Sh600 million target and down from Sh543.2 million in 2023/24.
The State Department for Micro, Small and Medium Enterprise Development blamed the decline on operational bottlenecks at constituency level.
‘The target for FY 2024/25 was not achieved as a result of 80 constituencies being dormant, and another 20 not having committees,’ the department said in budget proposals for the year starting July 2026.
The Uwezo Fund was established in 2013 under former President Uhuru Kenyatta to provide interest-free loans to women, youth and persons with disabilities through constituency structures.
The Women Enterprise Fund, launched in 2007 during former President Mwai Kibaki’s administration, also posted one of its weakest lending years.
WEF disbursed Sh457 million against a target of Sh2.7 billion in 2024/25, down from Sh941 million in 2023/24 and Sh1.72 billion in 2022/23.
The State Department for Gender and Affirmative Action linked the decline to suspension of WEF’s digital lending model following rising defaults and weak repayments.
Only 12,538 women entrepreneurs received funding during the year, far below the target of 200,000 beneficiaries.
In contrast, the Financial Inclusion Fund, popularly known as the Hustler Fund, has rapidly expanded to become the centrepiece of President Ruto’s bottom-up economic model.
Read: Kibaki, Uhuru-era funds falter as Hustler, Nyota rise
The fund had disbursed more than Sh72 billion to about 26 million Kenyans by June 2025, up from Sh52 billion in 2023/24 and Sh35 billion in 2022/23.
Alongside the Hustler Fund, the government has also rolled out the National Youth Opportunities Towards Advancement (Nyota) project targeting unemployed youth.
Under the programme’s first phase, each beneficiary aged between 18 and 19 receives Sh25,000, with Sh22,000 sent directly to mobile wallets for business activities while Sh3,000 is deposited into a ‘Haba na Haba’ savings account managed by the National Social Security Fund.