Author: user user

Imagine stepping into a restaurant where you cannot rely on your sight to walk to your table or pick up your fork or knife, and instead, the aroma of food and the feel of cutlery guide you.

That was the experience at Dining in the Dark at Nairobi’s Karen Country Club – an event that let diners experience what it is like to eat out as a blind person.

Does abnormal define the entrepreneurs and market leaders who refuse to play safe? Are the businesses that question every assumption unusual? Abnormal market leaders, don’t just think outside the box, they tear it apart.

Look around the Kenyan corporate scene – normal is overrated. Why? Because normal keeps companies stuck. Normal settles for slow growth, tired plans, predictable outcomes, responding to the easy stuff.

Abnormal is different, asking hard questions. Abnormal sparks new models, fresh markets, bold moves. Abnormal is where the future is built. Abnormal are the outliers at the refreshing edge of the normal curve. To stand out in a crowded market, should one take three steps to abnormal achievement with a focus on creating value by problem-solving, quick adapting and competing on time?

It’s a question of whether one is content with the status quo. There is a risk in hoping that an infusion of fluffy business jargon will be all that is required to survive another day. Not everyone is ready to break patterns, create new habits.

For those that are done with the average, hovering around the mean, to ignite real change requires a step into the abnormal. Normal solves yesterday’s problems. Abnormal creates tomorrow.

Your boss wants you focused, productive, not distracted. Business model of social media wants you scrolling, not thinking. And schools? They may be still busy preparing students for jobs that may no longer exist.

The world isn’t just changing. It’s accelerating. Blink, and you’re already behind. That’s why smart managers don’t spend their time glorifying stuff they learned back in the day.

Smart managers, at the edge of the normal curve, the abnormal, the outliers, are mastering a different set of skills that are much more likely to compound into unfair advantages.

We crave the Plato’s Cave of familiarity – believing the shadows on the wall are the reality. We don’t see the business world as it is, we see the events we want to see.

One – create value, solve a problem

At its essence, business is about creating and capturing value. It’s about noticing a problem, a need a customer has, and being able to solve it. Solving it with a product – service that they are ready to pay for. That’s the greater differentiator, ready to pay for.

Participants in Y Combinator, a legendary start-up incubation unit, are encouraged to sell their product, the customer solution, online to see if anyone is ready to pay for.

It may not even exist yet, they are taught to just test the waters to see if the market demand is there. After all, does it make sense to create a product that no one wants?

Wicked problem of university graduate unemployment is depressing. Parents have spent their hard-earned money, scrimping and saving, investing in four years of education that is designed to provide young Sarah with job that allows her to demonstrate her learned knowledge, skills and ‘can-do’ mindset.

Yet, the World Bank now reports that it can take up to five years for the typical Kenyan university graduate to obtain formal sector employment.

Reframe of the issue is asking: How can the young graduate obtain work experience the employer craves? How can they be taught to solve problems? If an applicant can demonstrate they can identify and come up a solution to a pressing problem an employer has, they would likely be hired on the spot.

Aim of education should be to inculcate a sense of curiosity, a love of learning, that allows the student to see the world through the eyes of their discipline.

The risk of AI is that it may stifle creativity, encouraging what has been described as ‘brain rot’. It shouldn’t be a replacement for critical thinking.

To be fair, research shows it’s a mistake to equate paper qualifications with intelligence. Some of the smartest, most productive Kenyan’s never attended university.

Two – adapt and evolve

Nothing stays constant. Even in business problem-solving, when one applies inductive logic, setting a [scientific method] hypothesis about what is happening, and goes about proving, or disproving, the best guess hypothesis shifts things, usually in unexpected ways.

Facts and figures one thought were true, often don’t turn out that way. Normal approach might be blame the data, saying this can’t be true.

Read: How do you see what others miss?

While some managers chase normal, the astute abnormal leader bends, twists and even breaks things – until something new emerges.

In fast adapting, they see possibility where others see problems. Ever-evolving, they ask questions that make people uncomfortable. They refuse to follow the linear because the future isn’t drawn in straight lines.

Three – time is the message

“The medium is the message” coined by Marshall McLuhan, means that the way information is delivered-the medium itself-has a greater impact than the content of the message. The properties of the medium, like the linear structure of print, or the visual nature of film, shape our thoughts.

Reality has at least two dimensions: physical space and time. Responding to a customer’s frustrating issue right away, sends a very different signal, in contrast to ignoring it.

Or, what may be for some, the ‘normal’ way of just letting something fall through the cracks, hoping that annoying problem may just evaporate.

Paying attention to responding, competing on the basis of time is the habit of market leaders. Conscientiousness remains a strong predictor of business success.

‘You can’t be normal and expect abnormal returns” advised Jeffrey Pfeffer.

For 15 years, the Magical Kenya Travel Expo has chronicled the aspirations of Africa’s tourism sector. Its evolution from a national showcase to a continental marketplace is a narrative of genuine progress.

However, ambition alone does not build infrastructure or fund the visionary enterprises needed to secure the continent’s economic future.

The expo, which took place from October 1-3 at the Uhuru Gardens National Monument and Museum, addressed this profound disconnect between Africa’s tourism ambitions and the actionable capital required to realise them.

The integration of the African Tourism and Investment Forum (ATIF) into this year’s Magical Kenya Travel Expo brought a strategic focus to closing this critical investment gap. The ATIF discussion and deliberations ignited the continent’s unlocking of its vast, yet undercapitalised, tourism potential.

Kenya’s tourism earnings grew by 31.5 percent in 2023. The sector contributes a significant 8.5 percent to our gross domestic product and, as the Tourism Research Institute notes, supports more than 1.6 million livelihoods. Yet, without continued investment, this momentum will stall and the promise of inclusive prosperity will fade.

Continentally, the African Development Bank projects that tourism could become a $260 billion industry by 2030, but this forecast faces an estimated $1.8 billion annual infrastructure investment gap. Bridging it requires a deliberate, multifaceted approach to building resilient, inclusive, and sustainable tourism ecosystems.

That was the reason we embedded ATIF within the 2025 Magical Kenya Travel Expo.

The expo has long proven its value as Africa’s premier tourism marketplace, historically connecting thousands of delegates, hundreds of exhibitors, and a broad spectrum of globally vetted buyers. It has perfected the art of the travel sale, but the time has come to move beyond transactions and tackle the sector’s foundational issues: policy, capital and innovation.

ATIF shifted the conversation to those pillars, asking not just ‘what can we sell?’ but ‘how do we collectively build the Africa we envision through tourism?’

The theme, Magical Kenya: Unlocking Africa’s Potential through Sustainable Tourism, must be understood in its truest sense. Sustainability is not just about environmental conservation but rather creating an industry that is financially self-sufficient, resilient and capable of long-term growth.

This is where the forum’s function became critical. ATIF was designed to directly confront the investment gap by connecting Africa’s market-ready opportunities from eco-lodges and cultural heritage sites to smart tourism technologies with the investors, development finance institutions, and venture capitalists searching for them.

The expo is just the turning point. We must challenge ourselves and each other. Governments must move forward ready with streamlined policies that prove their investment readiness.

Investors must look beyond traditional assets to the transformative potential of community models and technology. And as an industry, we must collectively demonstrate that we are a unified, strategic sector worthy of significant, long-term capital.

The World Travel and Tourism Council forecasts that the sector could create 8.5 million new jobs in Africa by 2033, but that number is entirely conditional on investment flowing where it is needed most.

The forum was also the arena for essential dialogue between policymakers and the private sector. True progress hinged on this collaboration to improve the investment climate and dismantle the regulatory hurdles that impede cross-border enterprise under the African Continental Free Trade Area (AfCFTA).

The power of this focused investment is its ability to ripple outwards, stimulating the broader economy in ways that a simple tourism transaction cannot.

Capital directed into tourism does not remain isolated within a hotel’s balance sheet. It is the very force that funds the preservation of our culture, the development of creative industries like film, arts, music, the scaling of African-born technology, and the construction of green infrastructure. It empowers community-owned ventures, ensuring that economic benefits are distributed equitably and that local populations become the primary guardians of their own assets.

The setting of MKTE at Uhuru Gardens National Monument and Museum is a monument to freedom and pan-African unity, is deeply symbolic. Just as this site stands for Kenya’s historic struggle for freedom and unity, MKTE 2025, powered by ATIF, embodied Africa’s determined effort to unlock its own economic destiny through tourism.

The vision, the talent, and the opportunities have always been here and will always be within our grasp. What has been missing is a concerted mechanism to finance them at scale.

The Court of Appeal has ordered APA Insurance to pay a manufacturing firm Sh58.6 million as compensation following a fire that gutted the firm’s premises, hardly two months after the insurance took effect.

The award is a 28.8 percent reduction from the Sh82.33 million that the High Court had awarded the manufacturer-Britind Industries Limited- in February 2023 before APA appealed the decision, claiming that the fire was ‘deliberately or wilfully’ started by the firm.

Increased importation of capital goods, including machinery and transport kits, pushed Kenya’s current account deficit to 2.1 percent of GDP at end of August 2025, compared to 1.6 percent a year earlier, indicating rising business activity and improving credit flows to the private sector.

The Central Bank of Kenya (CBK) says deficit widened to $2.84 billion (Sh367 billion) in August from $1.82 billion (Sh235 billion) a year earlier, but it is expected to moderate to $2.39 billion (Sh309 billion) or 1.7 percent of GDP by the end of the year.

Consumption of cheap electricity at night and weekends by industries dipped to a four year low in the period ended June 2025 with 180.1 Gigawatt-hours (GWh) used, signaling reduced economic activity by the businesses and exit of big firms from the special tariff.

Energy and Petroleum Regulatory Authority (Epra) data shows that this was a decline of 19.9 percent from the 225 GWh used a year earlier by industries and electric vehicles (EVs) under the special tariff, commonly referred to as the Time of Use (ToU).

‘Until the lion tells his side of the story, the tale of the hunt will always glorify the hunter.’ – African proverb

If the first ascent of the creative founder is survival, the second is recognition. It is when passion, once doubted, begins to attract attention, when resilience forged in scarcity is suddenly visible to the world.

The value of payments made through cards fell to Sh521.3 billion in the 12 months to June 2025, compared to Sh594.2 billion in a similar period last year, cementing a trend of slumps attributed to an increase in mobile banking.

The use of bank cards for purchasing goods and services has declined over the last six years, with consumers increasingly opting for alternative payment methods such as cash and mobile money wallets.

Kenya slipped out of the world’s top 100 most innovative economies, raising concerns about its ability to sustain a digital and knowledge-driven growth.

World Intellectual Property Organisation (WIPO) uses roughly 80 indicators to assemble its Global Innovation Index (GII). They cover innovation inputs such as spending on research and development, and outputs such as patents and high-tech exports.

Despite ongoing investments in technology and steady premium growth, insurance penetration in Kenya remains low, stuck between 2.3 and 2.4 percent of gross domestic product. These figures point to deeper structural issues that continue to hinder the sector’s development.

One of the most visible symptoms of these underlying problems is growing customer dissatisfaction.

Delayed or rejected claims are becoming increasingly common, often due to technicalities such as late premium payments or incomplete documentation. Even when claims are paid, policyholders frequently describe the process as slow, opaque, and difficult to navigate. As a result, many still view insurance as an expensive product that fails to deliver on its promises. If these patterns persist, the industry risks losing further ground, not only with consumers but also with regulators.

Addressing this challenge requires, for starters, a fundamental shift in how claims are handled.

The first step is to move away from manual, paper-based processes. In today’s environment, a modern insurance system must be digital by default. Claims should be submitted electronically, tracked in real time, and settled quickly whenever possible.

Technologies such as artificial intelligence and automation can play a critical role, streamlining fraud detection and verifying documentation, while allowing genuine claims to move through the system more efficiently. This kind of transformation reduces operational costs and enhances the customer experience, all without compromising due diligence.

But improving the process is also about clarity as well as speed.

Language remains a major barrier, with most policyholders not speaking the language of ‘indemnity clauses’ and ‘force majeure’ exclusions. To build trust, insurers must adopt plain, accessible communication that clearly explains terms, conditions, and procedures.

Where technical language is unavoidable, explanatory tools and responsive customer support should be readily available to guide users.

It is only when customers understand what they are buying and what to expect when something goes wrong that insurance can fulfil its promise of protection. Personalisation is another crucial piece of the puzzle as different customers have different needs, requiring the industry to adapt accordingly. Insurers should offer multiple channels for claims reporting and assistance, accommodating policyholders who prefer to interact through WhatsApp, mobile apps, or call centres. Data analytics can help tailor support to each situation.

For example, sending proactive messages following a rainstorm to check on the customer and offer help can act as empathetic outreach that builds long-term loyalty and strengthens the insurer-customer relationship.

Equally important is the need to reframe how the claims process itself is perceived. Too often, customers experience it as an adversarial negotiation rather than a collaborative engagement. This dynamic breeds mistrust and adds unnecessary friction. A better approach treats the process as a partnership.

Claims handlers should be trained in technical procedures as well as empathy and conflict resolution. Embedding the treating customers fairly framework, long championed by the regulator, into everyday operations is essential and must move from a theoretical ideal to a lived reality.

Of course, fraud detection remains critical, but it should not come at the expense of genuine claims. With the right technology, insurers can differentiate between high-risk and low-risk claims, allowing them to focus investigative resources where they are most needed.

A system that assumes dishonesty by default only alienates honest customers and delays legitimate settlements. Instead, balanced risk management can protect the insurer and insured, while fostering trust rather than suspicion.

Finally, inclusion must also be at the forefront of any strategy to revitalise the sector. Most informal workers and low-income households in Kenya remain uninsured, often perceiving insurance as a product designed for the wealthy or formal sector employees.

Changing this perception requires targeted innovation. Insurers should invest in community-based distribution channels and micro-insurance products tailored to underserved populations. Crucially, the associated claims processes must be just as accessible, because a product is only valuable if customers can use it when it matters most.

Ultimately, the future of insurance claims in Kenya will not be secured by introducing new jargon or complex tools. Instead, it depends on a renewed focus on simplicity, fairness, and accessibility.

If insurers can stop treating claims as battles to be won and begin viewing them as opportunities to deliver value, they can rebuild public trust and unlock meaningful growth.