Category: Business Daily

Word from a well-placed insider: the government is about to go shopping, again, for a strategic investor to run and refinance Telkom Kenya. It is the height of irony that a multibillion-shilling national security asset is being left to bleed out in a regulatory and ownership wasteland.

Privatised in 2007, Telkom Kenya’s ownership has been a game of pass-the-parcel – from France’s Orange to the private equity group Helios, to full renationalisation, and finally to a little-known Emirati entity called Infrastructure Corporation of Africa (ICA).

The Cabinet announced ICA’s entry on October 3, 2023. Nearly three years later, the deal still hasn’t closed. Insiders say the milestones agreed with ICA keep being quietly pushed back, and that threats to cancel the deal for non-performance have gone nowhere.

The company is functionally uninvestable: it cannot raise capital, restructure its balance sheet, or commit to a strategy while its ownership hangs in the air.

The backstory matters. In the twilight of Uhuru Kenyatta’s administration, the Treasury invoked Article 223 of the Constitution to spend Sh6 billion – without parliamentary approval – buying out Helios’ 60 per cent stake. By the time William Ruto took office, Telkom was 100 per cent taxpayer-owned. We paid for it.

Then, on October 3, 2023, the new Cabinet reversed course: it rescinded the Helios buyout, picked ICA as the incoming majority shareholder, and directed the government to work with Helios to transfer its stake directly to ICA. That handover has since stalled completely.

The EACC’s corruption case over the original transaction has gone nowhere either- the Director of Public Prosecutions found the evidence insufficient, twice. Whatever the courts eventually decide, the pattern speaks for itself: politicians got their headlines, investigators filed their reports, lawyers billed their fees, and the company kept bleeding.

This is not merely a third-place mobile operator losing ground to Safaricom and Airtel – that framing understates the stakes. Telkom Kenya manages the National Optical Fibre Backbone Infrastructure (NOFBI) on behalf of the Ministry of ICT, the terrestrial network linking government offices, hospitals, and public institutions across all 47 counties. It also holds Kenya’s stakes in the undersea cables connecting the country to the world: roughly 22.5 per cent of TEAMS, 10 per cent of LION2, and landing-partner status on EASSy, DARE1 and PEACE.

Leaving the custodian of that infrastructure in limbo – while American Tower Corporation (ATC) periodically switches off transmission masts over billions in unpaid lease debt – is not just a governance failure.

It’s a national security exposure dressed up as a shareholder dispute, made more absurd by a government simultaneously touting a National Broadband Strategy promising another 100,000 km of fibre by 2030, even as the custodian of its existing backbone teeters on insolvency.

If ICA is indeed on its way out, Kenya is about to run this experiment a third time. The problem was never that the government wants a new investor – Telkom genuinely needs fresh capital and competent management.

Deep-pocketed players

But without a rigorous, competitive bidding process to attract deep-pocketed players, the likely outcome isn’t a strategic investor at all. It’s another set of well-connected intermediaries extracting fees from a shrinking company, while the vultures circling Telkom’s genuinely profitable data and infrastructure business quietly wait their turn.

There’s a structural fix that keeps being discussed and never acted upon. A 2018 McKinsey study commissioned by Telkom found that its data and fibre infrastructure business – the cable stakes, the NOFBI contract, enterprise and wholesale data – was fundamentally sound and profitable, even as the mobile business was being structurally outcompeted.

If that finding still holds, the logic is obvious: stop rescuing Telkom as one bundled entity. Separate the profitable infrastructure business from the loss-making mobile arm so each can be run, valued, and – if necessary – recapitalised or sold on its own terms.

A profitable fibre operation shouldn’t have to subsidise a mobile business that has already lost the subscriber war. Any serious investor conversation should start from that separation, not with auctioning off the whole tangled company as one unit – a structure that favours opaque, insider-brokered deals over clean, competitive ones.

In hindsight, the government’s 2020 refusal to approve a Telkom-Airtel merger looks like the moment this mess became inevitable. Kenya has since lurched from one improvised ownership fix to the next – nationalisation, then an Emirati sale that still hasn’t closed, and now, apparently, an unwinding of that sale too. Kenya has run this experiment badly twice.

A third attempt conducted in the same way won’t save Telkom. It will simply hand the profitable half of a national asset to whoever has the best political connections, rather than the most capital.

Kenya has earned global recognition as Africa’s “Silicon Savannah”, building a reputation as a leader in innovation, entrepreneurship and digital transformation.

Digital platforms have played a significant role in that journey by connecting people, creating income opportunities and helping businesses reach more customers. Preserving this momentum requires a regulatory environment that is predictable, balanced and responsive to the realities of a fast-changing digital economy.

As ride-hailing and delivery platforms expand across East Africa, governments are understandably reviewing how best to regulate the sector. Discussions around pricing models, licensing requirements and operational standards are both necessary and timely.

The challenge is ensuring that new rules protect consumers and drivers without undermining the innovation and flexibility that have fuelled the industry’s growth.

One example is dynamic pricing, which adjusts fares according to real-time demand and supply. While often debated, it helps maintain service availability during peak periods, encourages more drivers onto the road when demand is high and improves reliability for passengers. Any regulatory approach should consider how such mechanisms contribute to a well-functioning transport ecosystem while safeguarding fairness for all users.

Similarly, discussions about the operation of digital platforms at transport hubs such as airports provide an opportunity to improve access, competition and the overall travel experience. As Kenya continues to position itself as a regional tourism and business destination, seamless mobility remains an important part of that experience.

Kenya’s success as a digital hub has been built on policies that encourage innovation and investment. Clear, practical and consistent regulations can reinforce that reputation by giving businesses the confidence to invest, expand and create jobs. Regulatory certainty benefits the entire ecosystem, from drivers and small businesses to consumers and investors.

The question is no longer whether digital platforms should be regulated, but how regulation can strike the right balance. Effective regulation promotes accountability, safety and consumer protection while preserving the flexibility that enables innovation and economic participation.

Digital platforms have become part of the infrastructure supporting modern economies. They facilitate transport, commerce and employment while creating opportunities for thousands of Kenyans. As policymakers shape the next phase of regulation, there is an opportunity to develop frameworks that encourage responsible innovation and inclusive growth rather than constrain it.

By adopting smart, forward-looking regulation, Kenya can strengthen its position as Africa’s digital leader and provide a model for the rest of the continent-one that delivers lasting benefits for drivers, passengers, businesses and the wider economy.

The birth of my first child in 2018 revealed how unreliable electricity can undermine healthcare in rural Kenya. Frequent power outages disrupted vaccine storage, forcing families to travel long distances only to discover vaccines were unavailable. While I could sometimes find alternatives, many mothers could not afford the extra transport costs or time away from caregiving.

My experience as a technical manager in a rural hospital had already exposed me to the challenges healthcare workers face in preserving vaccines and other temperature-sensitive medicines during blackouts. Many clinics lack refrigeration, requiring health workers to transport vaccines over long distances, often in extreme heat that threatens their effectiveness. It became clear that this was not just an energy problem but a healthcare access challenge that disproportionately affects women and rural communities.

That realisation inspired us to establish Drop Access in 2021, a Kenyan company developing locally manufactured technologies for underserved and off-grid communities. Our flagship innovation, VacciBox, is a portable solar-powered refrigerator that safely stores vaccines, blood, oxytocin and other temperature-sensitive medical supplies between 2°C and 8°C without relying on grid electricity. Its portability enables healthcare workers to take lifesaving services closer to remote communities.

Climate change is making these challenges even more urgent. Rising temperatures and extreme weather place additional strain on fragile healthcare systems, particularly in vulnerable settings such as Kakuma refugee camp, where reliable cooling is essential.

One lesson has shaped our journey: the best innovations come from the communities they are designed to serve. Healthcare workers and local residents continuously refined VacciBox, ensuring it addressed real-world needs rather than assumptions.

As governments seek cost-effective ways to strengthen healthcare systems, locally manufactured solutions offer a path to greater resilience. Africa has the talent and ingenuity to build technologies tailored to its own realities.

By investing in community-driven innovation and local manufacturing, the continent can expand healthcare access and ensure that quality care is no longer determined by geography or unreliable infrastructure.

The Kenya Revenue Authority (KRA) plans to overhaul the income tax return filing infrastructure by abandoning the Excel file download and adopting use of a web-based system as it seeks to streamline filing following changes brought about by Finance Act 2026.

The law has amended Section 52 of the Income Tax Act to introduce a staggered system for filing income tax returns, with natural persons expected to file by the end of the fourth month following the end of their year of income.

Non-natural persons will be expected to file by the close of the sixth month following the end of their year of income.

The change means that effective January 1, 2027, Kenyans relying on employment income, most of whom have a December year-end, will be expected to file their returns by April 30 while companies will still be expected to file returns by June 30. KRA now says to further buttress the changes brought about by staggered income tax return filing, it will switch to a web-based system which means that taxpayers will now file returns directly on a browser over the internet as opposed to having to download and populate an Excel file as they have been doing.

‘We have staggered returns in Finance Act 2026 so that individual returns will be due by April 30 and the non-natural persons’ returns will be due by June 30. Are we transferring the problem we had in June to April? Absolutely not because there are other things we are doing to ensure the system will be stable,” KRA’s Chief Manager in charge of Policy and Tax, Josephine Mugure, said at a townhall convened by the Institute of Certified Public Accountants (ICPAK).

‘The first thing is that we are introducing web-based returns so that we will not require taxpayers to fill the Excel file anymore. It will be web-based and significantly simplified,” Mugure said.

Web-based return filing, which is expected to be rolled out in the course of 2027, will be the latest among a number of measures that KRA has taken to streamline the income tax return filing process and widen visibility of the country’s taxable base.

On April 1, 2026, KRA introduced filing of Income Tax Returns via social media platform WhatsApp as it targeted boosting compliance amongst Kenyans whole income tax returns were not complicated.

KRA BY JULIANS AMBOKO

The taxman says the planned overhaul of the Income Return Filing System includes widening the scope of the filing that can be done via WhatsApp to accommodate more complex and voluminous returns.

The upgrade of WhatsApp Income Tax return filing includes equipping KRA’s AI-powered virtual assistant, Shuru, with stronger capabilities.

‘We want to expand what filing Kenyans will be able to do via WhatsApp so that it won’t just be what we have had for employees,” Mugure said.

“We will expand it such that you will be able to file a whole range of returns via WhatsApp. In 2027, Shuru will have been here for more than six months and whatever teething problems she encountered this year will have been resolved and she will be of better use.’

Kenya started Incomes and Expenses Validation on January 1, 2026 in a measure that was designed to set the stage for adoption of auto-population of Income Tax Returns by KRA.

Finance Act 2026 has since anchored auto-population of Income Tax Returns in law by amending Section 75 of the Tax Procedures Act to provide that KRA may use ICT systems including eTIMS invoices, Withholding Tax Certificate, Customs data and third-party data to generate an auto-populated Income Tax Return on behalf of a taxpayer.

I am not the loudest when it comes to football. Actually, I consider myself an orphaned silent CEO fan in football.I do not have a club tattooed on my heart. I do not wake up at 2am to watch Champions League. I do not argue about referees, club formations, or who should have been substituted.

People often ask me, ‘if you’re not loyal to any football club, then why do you watch the 2026 Fifa World Cup matches?’

The truth is, I do not watch football for loyalty. I watch football for leadership. I watch because football teaches me things that boardrooms, strategy documents, and leadership books cannot.

I watch because patterns reveal themselves in real time; patterns of winning, patterns of collapse, patterns of pressure, patterns of behaviour.

I watch because football is a mirror of a leadership lab. It exposes the truth about systems, psychology, and decision-making under pressure. It shows me how leaders behave or ought to behave when the world is watching and when the world is collapsing. It is like watching a live case study in leadership, exposing cognitive fatigue, emotional overload, tactical indiscipline, and behaviour under pressure.

The Fifa World Cup matches remind me of former Manchester United coach Sir Alex Ferguson’s book ‘Leading’, where he says that ‘the last minutes of a match are won not by muscles, but by mentality.’

I also watch to see how coaches behave: who panics, who stays calm, who argues with referees, who anticipates danger, who loses emotional control.

Just as Sir Alex said, just like many organisations, a leader’s behaviour becomes the team’s behaviour. And in this World Cup, African teams mirrored their leaders in the final stretch. From this World Cup, I have picked patterns on why some teams rise in the last 15 minutes and why others collapse.

I watched Côte d’Ivoire dominate Norway, then lose concentration for one second as striker Erling Haaland punished them at 86 minutes. I watched DR Congo hold out against England for 80 minutes until metabolic fatigue broke them. I watched South Africa protect the lead against Canada in the round of 32 stage, stop pressing, lose verticality and concede in the second minute of time added on in the second half. I watched Egypt survive the group stage through discipline, then collapse mentally when Argentina increased intensity.

These collapses are not football collapses; they are leadership collapses. Because football is not played only by 22 players. It is played by the emotional climate around them.

Think Morocco; their win is the result of European football culture embedded inside an African team.

In 2018, Morocco returned to the World Cup after 20 years. They played well but lacked finishing power and tactical maturity. They exited at the group stage. They already had a team with exposure in European football. In 2022, Morocco shocked the world with its historic run to the World Cup semi-finals.

First African and Arab team to reach the semifinals. Beat Spain (round of 16). Beat Portugal (quarterfinals). Finished fourth overall. That was the birth of Morocco’s mental system. And today, in 2026, they are back in the quarterfinals. Morocco proved 2022 was not a miracle; it was a system. Morocco’s squad is almost entirely Europe-based.

But teams like Kenya, Uganda, Tanzania, Zambia, DR Congo, South Africa, Namibia, Mozambique and Angola have far fewer players in top European leagues. But think of giants like Nigeria, Ghana, Cameroon, Côte d’Ivoire, they have Europe-based players, some of them not necessarily in the elite tactical environments such as the English Premier League, Spanish La Liga, or Italian Serie A ‘where mental systems are built.’

Most African teams often walk into stadiums carrying a heavier emotional load than their opponents. The issue is ‘mental exposure versus mental isolation.’

At least 40 Kenyan companies sought voluntary liquidation or bankruptcy protection in the nine months to March, up from 24 a year earlier, exposing mounting financial distress despite improving economic indicators and lower borrowing costs.

Business Registration Service (BRS) data shows companies entering voluntary liquidation rose by 55.6 per cent to 14 during the period, from nine a year earlier, while bankruptcy applications jumped by 73.3 percent to 26.

The filings indicate that lower inflation, a stronger shilling and successive interest-rate cuts have yet to ease cash flow pressures as weak consumer spending and delayed payments continue to squeeze businesses.

Voluntary liquidation allows directors and shareholders to wind up a company before creditors intervene, with assets sold to settle outstanding obligations before the business is formally dissolved.

Bankruptcy applications, on the other hand, are filed when companies acknowledge they can no longer meet their financial obligations and seek legal protection from creditors under insolvency laws.

The BRS records, however, show business formation remained resilient during the period, with 109,350 new entities registered, as business names and private companies accounted for the bulk of fresh listings, at 62,472 and 45,334 respectively.

The latest rise in business closures comes despite inflation easing to within the central bank’s preferred range, the shilling stabilising against major currencies, and interest rates falling steadily over the past year.

Although these improvements have strengthened the broader economic outlook, they have yet to translate into stronger sales and healthier cash flows for many businesses operating on thin margins.

BUSINESS CLOSURES BY KABUI MWANGI

Many firms continue grappling with subdued household demand, delayed settlement of invoices, and rising statutory obligations that have eroded profitability over successive quarters.

Business failures typically accelerate after companies exhaust internal restructuring measures and conclude they can no longer generate sufficient cash to meet their obligations to suppliers, employees and lenders.

Voluntary liquidation is often viewed as a controlled exit because shareholders retain responsibility for winding up the company instead of waiting for creditors or courts to trigger insolvency proceedings.

Bankruptcy, however, generally reflects deeper financial distress after directors determine that liabilities have exceeded the firm’s capacity to continue operating as a going concern.

The increase in both categories suggests more businesses are abandoning turnaround efforts in favour of orderly exits before their financial positions deteriorate even further.

The disclosures mirror concerns raised by chief executives over weakening business conditions despite improving macroeconomic fundamentals reported over the past year.

The central bank’s latest CEO survey shows businesses continued reporting weak demand, delayed customer payments and elevated operating costs as the biggest constraints to growth.

The survey found firms remained cautious about expansion plans, with many prioritising cost-cutting measures and liquidity preservation over new investments.

Reduced household purchasing power has continued weighing on sectors dependent on discretionary spending as consumers increasingly prioritise essential goods and services.

Smaller businesses remain particularly exposed because they generally operate with limited cash reserves and restricted access to affordable bank financing during periods of slowing economic activity.

Although commercial lending rates have started easing following successive Central Bank Rate cuts, banks have maintained relatively cautious lending standards amid concerns over rising defaults and the financial health of borrowers across several sectors of the economy.

The cumulative pre-tax profit for Kenya’s commercial banks in the four months ended April rose 13.8 percent, riding on loan book growth, signalling another lucrative year for the banking sector.

Data from the Central Bank of Kenya (CBK) shows that the lenders’ pre-tax earnings in the review period stood at Sh111.8 billion, rising from Sh98.2 billion a year earlier. The performance is limited to the banks’ operations in the Kenyan market.

The lenders’ loan book grew by 9.37 percent to Sh4.5 trillion from Sh4.1 trillion, allowing banks to record higher interest income.

This is the fastest credit growth recorded by the sector in the last two years following deliberate actions by the Central Bank of Kenya (CBK) pressurising banks to lower their lending rates.

‘Banks are really making the most of lower funding costs and benefiting from more income sources. They’re growing their balance sheets, too, thanks to growing private-sector credit and investments in government securities,’ said Melodie Ndanu, a research analyst at Standard Investment Bank.

Banks have been quick to cut the interest they pay for deposits at a faster pace than they are reducing the prices of loans to ensure they not only protect their margins but widen them resulting in higher profit.

In the three months to March, Kenya’s listed banks (including regional operations) cut their interest expenses by 12.8 percent while interest income grew by three percent, signalling a faster pace of cutting deposit rates than reducing lending rates.

The drop in lending rates has been accompanied by a decline in non-performing loans which were 15.4 percent of total loan book, standing at Sh693.9 billion at the end of the four months compared to 17.5 percent or Sh724.2 billion a year earlier.

The improved quality of the loan book has allowed banks to cut back on provisions for bad debts, further improving their profit levels. Provisions for bad loans are deductible expenses by banks.

BANKING SECTOR BY GEORGE NGIGI

The cleaner balance sheet follows aggressive collection including auction of collateral by banks, conclusion of court cases between bankers and large corporates regarding defaulted loans and a decision by lenders to write-off bad debts they didn’t expect to recover.

Customer savings with banks rose by 14 percent or Sh805.9 billion to Sh6.52 trillion which was faster than growth in lending. This means banks invested more in lending to the government over the review period than lending to the private sector.

Treasury bills and bonds have been a good investment option for banks in a period when they have been offering high single to double digit returns with no risk. Banks are also expected to reap from diversifying their business to other revenue streams such as bancassurance, wealth management and regional subsidiaries for those that have expanded beyond the Kenyan borders.

‘Income from diversified revenue streams such as wealth management has been growing while uptake of digital channels has lowered operating expenses,’ said Ms Ndanu.

The growth in the first four months signals another bumper year for Kenya’s commercial banks which posted a record Sh311.8 billion pre-tax profit last year despite reporting a 2.3 percent increase in the first four months in 2025 compared to 2024.

This performance has attracted investors to the banking counters on the Nairobi Securities Exchange resulting in huge gains with the 12 listed banks recording a 71 percent jump in overall valuation to Sh1.62 trillion in the last 12 months.

The growth has also triggered big-ticket deals in the sector such as the ongoing 66 percent acquisition of NCBA Group by South Africa’s Nedbank Group in a cash and stock deal valued at Sh110 billion.

Other transactions include the purchase of Paramount Bank by Nigeria’s Zenith Bank while Absa Group of South Africa intends to increase its shareholding in Absa Bank Kenya to 85 percent from current 68.5 percent at an estimated cost of Sh30.9 billion.

The unpredictability of the US-Iran war however casts a dark shadow on the sector with American President Donald Trump announcing the end of the ceasefire and launching missile attacks on the Middle East nation.

Resurgence of the war is likely to result in inflationary pressures from price of fuel which could force households to prioritize basic needs over loan repayments leading to rise in non-performing loans.

Rising inflation will also trigger interest rate hikes dampening CBKs efforts to push for growth of private sector credit.

Manish Sardana walked away from a lucrative corporate career at the height of the Covid-19 scourge, resigning from global advertising giant WPP after seven years in Kenya.

He had risen through the ranks of the WPP-Scangroup network to become managing director for Africa, earning what he describes as ‘expat-level salaries’ at a time when millions around the world were clinging to their jobs.

‘During Covid, I thought to myself, what am I doing with my life?’ he recalls asking himself. ‘I had all this experience and talent, and I felt like I was wasting my time building marketing campaigns for large organisations.’

So he quit, even without a business plan. ‘People kept asking me what I was going to do next. I told them I didn’t know. But if I waited until I had a perfect plan, I would never leave.’

The idea that would become Craydel emerged soon after, prompted by a suggestion from his wife. Sardana spent weeks researching startup opportunities in Africa until one day, while scrolling through lists of business ideas online, she told him: ‘Why don’t you go back to education? You’ve always been passionate about it.’

Growing up in a lower-middle-income family in India, Sardana enjoyed teaching mathematics and economics in his early working years. He later moved into technology, e-commerce and marketing, founding ventures and later joining WPP. However, he says that education remained his true passion.

So in 2021, Sardana launched Craydel, a Nairobi-based education technology start-up he describes as a ‘Booking.com for higher education.’ The company helps students find, compare and apply to universities worldwide, aiming to solve what Sardana calls ‘information asymmetry’ in admissions.

The problem, he argues, is not just about choice but trust. Fake study-abroad and overseas job agents remain a major issue in Kenya, with scammers conning desperate students and parents out of millions of shillings. The Commission for University Education has publicly blacklisted numerous illegal recruitment agencies. ‘The university admissions ecosystem is riddled with information asymmetry, fragmented guidance and incentives that often favour institutions over students,’ Sardana says.

Craydel was founded with former WPP-Scangroup colleague John Nguru and investment professional Shayne Premji, who has worked with various institutions, including the IFC.

The early years were far from smooth. Universities showed little willingness to pay for student leads. ‘Towards the end of 2022, we realised we didn’t really have a business,’ Sardana recalls. Their breakthrough came when the company pivoted to international university recruitment.

Unlike traditional agents, whose earnings depend on sending students to specific institutions, Craydel sought to build a student-first marketplace. ‘Our thesis was simple,’ he says. ‘If agents serve universities, who is serving students?’

Since then, the company says it has matched more than 25,000 students with universities and enrolled over 1,000 learners. Europe has emerged as one of the fastest-growing destinations among African students, with Germany attracting increasing interest. Nursing, engineering, computer science and business management are among the most sought-after courses.

Difficult adjustments

But the journey has come at a high personal cost. As savings dwindled, Sardana and his family were forced to make difficult adjustments. ‘My children were in fancy schools. We couldn’t afford them anymore,’ he says. ‘We had to completely lower our lifestyle.’ At one point, Craydel’s monthly operating costs reached about Sh1 million while revenues remained negligible. Ten months into the venture, the company had burned through nearly Sh13 million.

‘My wife watched our savings disappear and would ask me every month, ‘Are you sure you want to keep doing this?” Sardana recalls. By the time the startup secured its first major external funding at the end of 2021, he had invested more than $200,000 (Sh25.9 million) of his own money. ‘It’s a choice you have to make as an entrepreneur. Pocket that money or put it back into the business to scale it. Even now, my salary is 25 percent of what I earned in corporate life.’

Sardana insists the gamble was worth it. He believes the pandemic exposed the fragility of education systems worldwide and accelerated demand for transparency in admissions.

‘Going to school is not just an academic experience. It is also a social experience,’ he says.

‘My view was that eventually children would want to go back to physical classrooms.’

That conviction led him to focus on exploring opportunities for in-person higher education rather than online learning platforms.

To date, Craydel has raised about $3 million (Sh388.5 million) from venture capital firms and angel investors, according to Crunchbase. The company is not yet profitable, as much of its turnover has been reinvested in regional expansion. It has already spread to Uganda, Tanzania, Rwanda, Burundi, Nigeria, Zimbabwe, India and Saudi Arabia, with plans to enter Ghana this year.

Do leading-edge firms like Google or Tesla do traditional five-year plans? Then, label them with the buzzword ‘strategic’? Does agility matter more than predicting the future with precision? Is it better to consider ‘plans’ living documents, revised as conditions change, rather than fixed commitments?

What percentage of time do you think things go according to a plan? Not surprising that senior managers who sit on NSE boards, will say something like: ‘Well, maybe 5 to 10 percent of the time, that things go according to the plan.’

Companies like Google and Tesla do not manage the business through traditional, detailed five-year strategic plans in the way many more conventional businesses and development partners do. Instead, they combine having a vision, long-term direction with short planning cycles and constant experimentation.

Have a long-term ambition

Rather than a detailed five-year plan, trying to predict what will happen, global leaders have a vision that may extend 10-30 years. Consider these vision statements: “Organise the world’s information and make it universally accessible and useful” for Google. And, ‘Accelerate the world’s transition to sustainable energy’ for Tesla. These visions act as a strategic guiding ‘north star’.

Work backwards from the future

Instead of asking ‘What will we do over the next five years’ they ask ‘If we achieve our vision, what must be true’ This approach resembles the ‘working backwards’ philosophy popularised by Jeff Bezos at Amazon.

Strategy is treated as a portfolio of bets

Rather than producing one fixed strategic plan, market leaders continually allocate resources across initiatives with different time horizons. Constantly monitored, if an initiative isn’t working the approach is revised or it risks being cut. For instance, a simplified portfolio might look like: core business – 70 percent, emerging businesses – 20 percent, and radical innovations – 10 percent. This echoes the ’70-20-10′ innovation framework that has become associated with Google.

Planning happens continuously

Leading edge organisations still produce annual plans and multi-year financial projections for governance and investor communication, but the ‘nitty gritty’ operational strategy is revisited frequently. For market leaders, typical planning rhythms include: annual strategic themes, quarterly priorities, monthly business reviews, weekly management meetings and daily performance dashboards. Aim is to allow for rapid adjustment as markets, technology and customer needs constantly evolve, often unpredictably.

Objectives replace detailed plans

Many technology firms use frameworks likes Objectives and Key Results – OKR. Quite simply the objective is the what and the key results is the how it will be achieved. Key results need to be clear, do-able yet ambitious, measurable, with a timing. . Rather than specifying every activity years in advance, teams decide best path with a ‘test and learn’ approach.

Assume the strategy is incomplete

Traditional planning often assumes enough information exists to define the future. Somehow we fall prey to the seductive belief in the beauty of absolute certainty. However, leading innovators assume uncertainty taking into account, markets will change, competitors will surprise them, and technologies will evolve. And that, some of our assumptions will prove wrong. Strategy is treated more like an artist’s unfinished canvas, where insightful forecasting is more a process of testing assumptions.

Customer learning drives evolution

Customer sales and satisfaction power the business. Companies like Google and Tesla continuously gather signals from customer behavior including product usage, experiments, engineering progress, market data and AI-generated insights.

Resource allocation matters more than the written plan

Many top executives argue that strategy is best reflected most clearly where an organisation invests its people, time, and capital. Questions to are: Which products receive the top talent? Which markets receive investment? Which capabilities are built? Those decisions often reveal the real strategy far better than a planning document.

What would the business wizards say to this approach?

Guru of innovation, Clayton Christensen would stress — Build capabilities that prepare you for future disruption rather than optimizing only for today’s business. Steve Blank’s approach would be to — Treat strategy as a series of hypotheses that must be validated through customer discovery. Eric Ries would stress – Make small, measurable experiments part of everyday business execution.

In fast-changing markets like Kenya and East Africa — it might be better to move away from producing ‘hope for the best’ static plans, shifting towards creating more of an adaptive strategy system. Instead of delivering a document every five years, make sense to establish a cycle of continuous sensing, experimentation, quarterly OKRs, rapid learning and smart resource allocation. Now, that’s a strategy.

There was a time when the most trusted keeper of secrets was the local priest. People confessed their fears, failures and deepest regrets, confident that whatever was shared in confidence would remain protected. Doctors, lawyers and journalists later earned similar trust through professional ethics that placed confidentiality above all else.

Today, our most intimate confessions are no longer whispered across a wooden booth. They are typed into search engines, shared with AI assistants, stored in banking apps, recorded by fitness trackers and submitted through government portals. The modern-day priest is no longer a person but the digital systems we rely on every day.

Artificial intelligence has accelerated this transformation. Millions now seek career advice from AI, discuss health concerns with chatbots, manage finances through mobile apps and entrust smart devices with details of their daily routines.

These technologies know where we travel, what we buy, how we sleep, whom we communicate with and, increasingly, what we think. In many cases, they know more about us than our closest friends and family.

Kenya is no exception. From mobile banking and digital lending to eCitizen services, online learning and AI-powered customer support, digital platforms have become part of everyday life. Every convenience requires users to surrender another layer of personal information, creating an expanding network of trust.

Yet many digital products were built around a simple principle: collect as much data as possible, then decide later how to use or protect it. In the AI era, that approach is becoming increasingly difficult to defend. The real question is no longer whether organisations can collect personal data, but whether they should.

While laws such as Kenya’s Data Protection Act provide an essential legal framework, compliance alone does not inspire confidence. Trust is earned through responsible choices made long before an audit or regulatory inspection. That is why Privacy by Design is emerging as a strategic business advantage.

Organisations that collect only necessary data, build security into products from the outset and remain transparent about data use are more likely to earn lasting customer confidence.

As AI becomes our adviser, assistant and confidant, society must expect more than innovation. We must demand stewardship.

The organisations that will lead in the AI era will not simply be those with the smartest technology, but those that prove themselves worthy of safeguarding the trust people once reserved for their most trusted confidants.