Category: Business Daily

More than 50 containers of pharmaceutical raw materials are stranded at Mombasa and the Nairobi inland depot, and manufacturers are bleeding roughly Sh1 million a day in demurrage.

The cause is not a missing law but a missing signature: until the Ministry of Health issues its approval and the new tax framework in the Finance Act 2026 is gazetted, the Kenya Revenue Authority (KRA) keeps charging the standard 16 percent VAT on these imports.

Worse, under the framework that took effect on July 1, inputs for local manufacturing are now “exempt” rather than “zero-rated” – a distinction that sounds bureaucratic but determines whether a factory can claim back the VAT it pays, or must simply eat it.

That distinction is the whole argument. A zero-rated manufacturer charges no VAT on its output but reclaims every shilling of VAT paid on inputs – raw materials, packaging, electricity, lab services, repairs. An exempt manufacturer also charges no VAT on output, but forfeits the right to claim anything back. Every shilling of input VAT becomes a sunk cost, baked into the price of the tablet or the vial.

In an industry already running below efficient scale, that is not a marginal nudge upward. It compounds against firms already carrying high fixed costs over low output, and it lands, ultimately, in the pocket of a sick citizen buying medicine.

This is where the real policy question sits: when the exchequer’s arithmetic collides with the price of a child’s antibiotic, which one gives way? It should not be a hard question. But having swallowed the International Monetary Fund’s (IMF) blanket prescription of “tax expenditures,” Kenya’s policymakers have talked themselves into treating cheap medicine and Treasury revenue as a zero-sum trade-off. It is a false choice, and the rest of the world figured that out three decades ago.

During the Uruguay Round of GATT, concluded in 1994, the world’s largest pharmaceutical producers – the US, the EU, Japan, Canada, Switzerland, Norway – signed the “zero-for-zero initiative,” eliminating tariffs on medicines and the chemical intermediates used to make them, and committing not to replace those tariffs with other barriers.

The resulting Pharmaceutical Tariff Elimination Agreement, in force since January 1995, has grown from 22 countries to cover thousands of products across 34 signatories.

That was not sentimentality. It was a hard-nosed decision by the world’s most fiscally sophisticated economies that medicine is not a normal traded good to be milked for customs revenue – that health access trumps fiscal opportunism, even for governments perfectly capable of taxing trade if they chose to.

Kenya never signed that agreement – it was negotiated among producers seeking reciprocal market access – but the principle behind it has since surfaced in World Health Organisation guidance, in World Trade Organisation TRIPS (The Agreement on Trade-Related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights) flexibilities, and in the tax codes of most functioning health systems: essential medicines are merit goods, not revenue lines.

Governments that tax them anyway do so quietly, and pay for it later in worse health outcomes and higher out-of-pocket spending.

It is as if Kenyan tax policy has forgotten Covid-19 entirely. When global supply chains seized in 2020, the countries that suffered most were those with no domestic capacity to make even basic health commodities.

Kenya imports over 70 percent of the pharmaceuticals it consumes and more than 95 percent of active pharmaceutical ingredients, almost all from India and China. The obvious response should have been to build local capacity deliberately, through the tax code as much as industrial policy.

Instead, Kenya’s tax trajectory has run the other way – even as the government proclaims a 2023 presidential directive to produce 50 percent of essential medicines locally, and a 2026-2030 strategy to lift capacity utilisation to 70 percent.

A tax code working against those targets while industrial policy claims to chase them is not an oversight; it is incoherence dressed up as fiscal discipline. None of this makes the Treasury’s position baseless.

The fiscal deficit is real, and zero-rating regimes are, by Treasury’s own reckoning, costly and prone to abuse through fraudulent refund claims – a case the IMF and tax administrators make consistently.

A narrower toolkit of direct subsidies, tariff protection on APIs, or capital allowances might achieve the same industrial goal with less leakage.

These are legitimate technical debates.

What cannot be debated is the objective: a tax system that makes medicine costlier and local production less viable is moving in exactly the wrong direction, and every day of the delays the local pharmaceutical manufacturing industry is currently experiencing at the at the Mombasa port, is proof of it.

Not many invitations warrant clearing your calendar, but the chance to taste black truffles right here in Kenya is perhaps one that does.

These ‘diamonds of the kitchen,’ as they are sometimes called, are known to be among the world’s rarest and most expensive ingredients, capable of elevating even the simplest dish. So when Mandhari restaurant at Nairobi Serena Hotel extended an invitation to experience them firsthand, I was more than happy to accept.

Our dinner party was small and intimate, but anticipation hung thick in the air until the restaurant’s executive chef, Eshton Muthama, emerged carrying a plate on which rested a jet-black, knobbly sphere that was no bigger than a golf ball. It reminded me of a black-skinned avocado, only this was smaller.

Its aroma reminded me of an early morning walk through Karura Forest, when it is quiet and the dew still clings to the earth.

I had some questions. Where do truffles come from? How do they grow? And how do they get to Nairobi?

Flown in from Manjimup in Western Australia, the black truffle is a fungus that grows in a mutually beneficial relationship with the roots of oak and hazelnut trees. Black truffles can also be cultivated. But unlike typical mushrooms, truffles develop hidden beneath the soil and are available for only a short season each year. In Manjimup, that season is in July.

Once ripe, they are unearthed with the help of specially trained dogs, which sniff them out from above ground.

According to the dinner’s benefactor, who was generous with everything but his identity, the dogs are trained much like those used to detect drugs or explosives at airports. The black truffles we would be enjoying that evening, he added, were sniffed out by a golden Labrador named Millie.

Valuable as the truffles are (a kilo fetches about AUD 2,500 or Sh230,00), the dogs are never allowed to get too close to them, lest they devour thousands of dollars’ worth in a single bite. So once Millie had located the truffles, she was enticed away with a treat while the farmer lay flat on the ground and, using a small hand tool, carefully loosened the soil until the prized fungi emerged.

The entrée, which came in a rimmed soup plate, looked deceptively simple.

Dark greyish-brown in colour, the cream of woodland truffle soup presented demurely, topped with a paper-thin shaving of black truffle and an elegant drizzle of smoked truffle oil that caught the light. Accompanying it was a crisp crostini with ricotta and truffle lightly toasted onto its surface. I could smell its warm, earthy aroma even before the spoon reached my lips.

The first mouthful was rich, creamy, and beautifully balanced, layering the savoury flavours of woodland mushrooms with the truffle’s intoxicating perfume in a way that felt both luxurious and comforting.

By the time I looked up, my bowl had been scraped clean. I hadn’t even paused to taste the accompanying Chardonnay, whose rich, oaky notes, the sommelier explained, were chosen to complement the earthy depth of the truffles.

After such a strong opening, the second course had a lot to live up to, and it didn’t disappoint. Before us sat ribbons of tagliatelle crowned with delicate shavings of black truffle and a scattering of microgreens.

Chef Eshton offered us the option of a cheese sauce, which I gladly accepted, and thankfully so. It amplified the truffle without competing or overpowering it, allowing the ingredient we’d come to celebrate to remain firmly in the spotlight. This time, at least, I remembered to sip the Shiraz wine whose fruity and spicy notes proved an equally fitting partner for the dish.

Grilled lamb rack

The third course of the evening was a feast for the eyes before it was anything else. Colourful and artfully plated, the grilled lamb rack, served alongside a vibrant green garden pea purée, grilled portobello mushrooms, and a side of vegetables, was easily my highlight of the evening.

The lamb was tender and succulent, yielding effortlessly to the knife before melting in the mouth. The pea purée and grilled mushrooms more than held their own, but what tied the whole dish together was the chef’s generous drizzle of truffle jus, whose earthy richness elevated every element on the plate.

And after learning that so many commercially available truffle products rely on artificial flavourings, there was something especially satisfying about tasting a sauce that was made with the real thing.

The pan-seared salmon steak came next, resting in a bright yellow pool of truffle beurre blanc with charred fennel fondue and black olive crumb.

Another artistic presentation, it was almost a shame to dig into this dish, but any hesitation disappeared after the first bite. The moist, flaky salmon, drenched in the buttery sauce and enjoyed alongside the charred fennel, made for a deeply satisfying meal with a delicate balance of savoury richness and gentle sweetness.

But our generous benefactor still had an ace up his sleeve. As the sommelier emerged carrying the final wine pairing, the two exchanged a mischievous smile that immediately piqued our curiosity.

It was a sweet red blend of Grenache and Merlot, chosen to accompany the dessert. And while it did that well, it wasn’t the pairing that caught our attention. It was the name on the bottle: Sugar Daddy. The table erupted in laughter, making it a light-hearted ending to an evening defined by remarkable food and equally good company.

With Nairobi Serena Hotel preparing to unveil its Mediterranean restaurant, the black truffle dinner felt like more than a one-off experience. It felt like a preview of a kitchen eager to expand its culinary horizons.

Fresh data from the Retirement Benefits Authority (RBA) show that contributions to medical funds under Post-Retirement Medical Funds (PRMFs) rose by 646.9 percent to Sh1.86 billion in 2025, up from Sh249.1 million a year earlier.

‘Contributions to the Post-Retirement Medical Fund (PRMF) increased by 647 percent between 2024 and 2025, rising from Sh249.15 million in 2024 to Sh1.86 billion in 2025 as more schemes continued to set up PRMF funds,’ RBA said.

PRMFs are schemes that allow individuals to save specifically for their healthcare costs after retiring. Under the arrangement, workers have the option of saving through a medical fund without being required to be members of the sponsoring medical scheme.

The sharp growth in savings at PRMFs comes at a time when medical bills have become a major pain point for both employers and households amid rising healthcare costs. This has forced many to save for a future cushion as they go into retirement.

A recent World Bank study estimated that about 1 million to 1.1 million Kenyans fall into poverty each year because of costs related to health care, which mainly hurt households from disadvantaged socioeconomic backgrounds. Many households access healthcare through out-of-pocket(OOP) expenditure.

The elderly and people affected by chronic conditions are the worst hit by the OOP expenditure that has continued to rise over the years despite increased budgets by the State for healthcare.

‘This is a concerning trend, as paying at the point of care for services or drugs creates financial barriers and exposes households to catastrophic health spending,’ the World Bank said following its study.

The growth in savings in PRMFs also points to an increasing number of such schemes by employers seeking to strengthen employee welfare and long-term financial security.

The Treasury had in 2024 directed all pension schemes to amend their rules to allow members to contribute to PRMFs, in a move aimed at helping workers prepare for healthcare costs in old age.

The savings are used to finance medical cover after retirement, either by purchasing health insurance or generating annuity income to pay insurance premiums.

Contributions are typically set at a minimum of one percent of a member’s pensionable salary, helping retirees spread healthcare costs over their working lives, instead of relying solely on their pension benefits.

RBA data further shows that total pension contributions rose 29 percent to Sh309.3 billion in 2025, reflecting higher contributions from both employers and employees.

‘Between 2021 and 2025, total contributions grew from Sh135.51 billion to Sh309.26 billion, a 29 percent growth,’ added RBA.

Employer normal contributions increased 14.7 percent to Sh156.8 billion, accounting for just over half of all pension inflows.

Mandatory contributions from employers rose 17.8 percent to Sh137.6 billion, while their additional voluntary contributions grew 30.9 percent to Sh11.5 billion.

Through the adoption of global sustainability reporting standards, strong ESG governance, impactful community partnerships and award-winning corporate governance practices, Sanlam Allianz Holdings (Kenya) PLC is demonstrating how insurance can be a powerful force for sustainable development and economic resilience. With the insurance penetration rate in Kenya being less than 3%, there is need for insurers to leverage on the growing need of providing sustainable insurance in terms of products and services, customized to the need of Kenyans.

According to Dr. Nyamemba Patrick Tumbo, Group Chief Executive Officer, Sanlam Allianz Holdings (Kenya) Plc, sustainability is fundamental to the company’s purpose and long-term value creation. With the growing regulatory expectations in Kenya on how organizations embed Environmental, Social and Governance (ESG), Sanlam Allianz (Holdings) Kenya Plc has aligned its Sustainability Reports for every year from 2022 to 2025 progressively, in accordance with the Global Reporting Initiatives (GRI) and IFRS S1 S2 sustainability reporting standards from the 2025 Annual Sustainability report.

In Kenya, the insurance sector plays a critical role in how it integrates Sustainability into its Governance framework in areas like underwriting, investments, operations and stakeholder engagement not only for managing emerging risks but also for maintaining competitiveness and building resilience in an increasingly complex world.

Jacqueline Karasha, Chief Executive Officer, Sanlam Allianz Life Insurance (Kenya) Limited‚ confirms that ESG integration begins at the Governance level and the business has committed to implementing sustainable business practices in the product offering, transformation of processes, innovation and continuous improvement. Sanlam Allianz Life Insurance (Kenya) Limited will continue to embrace sustainable partnerships through shared value creation as we help to create a better future as strategic and sustainable partnerships play a pivotal role in advancing sustainability initiatives that contribute positively to our Environment, our communities and our stakeholders through shared values and a common purpose.

By embracing sustainability, insurance can remain resilient and future proof by not only looking at profits but also taking into consideration its impact to the environment, society and contribution to the economy in addition to its Governance considerations.

Margaret Kariuki, Regional Head of Sustainability in East Africa at SanlamAllianz states that as an insurer, our role extends beyond providing risk protection. We have a responsibility to support sustainable economic growth, strengthen community resilience and create shared value for our stakeholders. Through strong governance, responsible business practices and sustainability-led innovation, we are building a future where more people can live with confidence.

Sanlam Allianz Holdings (Kenya) Plc remains committed to continuous improvement while upholding the highest standards of ethical business conduct in our sustainability journey.

There is something deeply suspicious about grown African men throwing birthday parties. It sits in the same uncomfortable corner as telling another man, “Goodnight”. I learned that lesson the hard way one chilly evening after a long phone call with comedian Eddie Butita.

“Uniambiaje mwanaume mwenzako goodnight? We acha hizo bana, umeangusha gangster points.” (How do you tell another man goodnight? Come on, you’ve just lost your gangster points.)

That was the exact feeling that crept down my spine when John Christopher invited me to celebrate his 40th birthday at Red Ginger.

Red Ginger is Nairobi’s newest dining hotspot, the kind of place where every socialite seems duty-bound to take a hundred photos before ordering a drink, only to flood Instagram with its picture-perfect aesthetics.

I must admit, their posts had infected me with a serious case of FOMO [fear of missing out]. I had already promised myself that one day I’d take my woman there to find out whether Red Ginger truly deserved all the hype. From what I’d seen, the place was stunning. What I never imagined was that JC, as he proudly calls himself, would be the reason I’d finally walk through its doors.

I’ve known this brother for years, and I cannot remember the last time he booked 30 tables just to break bread with family and close friends. Certainly not at 40. At that age, I figured a man should be growing wiser, not louder.

I expected him to summon ‘the boys’ to his palatial home for marathon chess matches, glasses of his beloved Tennessee whiskey and enough laughter to keep the neighbourhood awake until dawn. JC has never struggled with volume. If anything, silence has always struggled with JC.

But here he was, inviting us to Red Ginger, ladies and gentlemen, for dinner, drinks and a birthday celebration. None of it made sense. Neither to me nor to several of the ‘brothers’.

Then someone reminded us of the world’s oldest cliché – love. JC had found someone new. He was smitten. And she wanted him happy.

“As African men, we don’t celebrate birthdays like this, unless it’s because of the Caucasian,” one of the boys muttered. “She is lovely though.”

John had sworn to us countless times that love had permanently been crossed off his life’s agenda. His new mission, he’d often declared, was to make more money, enjoy life and travel the world alone or with his sons. And we believed every word.

After watching him survive enough heartbreaks at the hands of Nairobi beauties who seemed more interested in his wallet than his heart, we had no reason to doubt him. Yet here he was.

Beer mug in hand, with a T-shirt struggling to maneuver his steadily expanding belly as he ushered every guest with an enthusiastic “Karibu! Karibu!” while constantly stealing shy glances at his Caucasian beau.

“I’m no longer convinced the way to a man’s heart is through his stomach,” another of the boys whispered, perhaps just as bewildered as I was.

Was this really the same man?

Still, bro code leaves very little room for public interrogation.

So we did what brothers do.

We grabbed our drinks, took our seats, and watched JC’s telenovela script develop.

The Employment and Labour Relations Court has upheld a decision by Safaricom Plc to dismiss its former Head of Regional Expansion, Brian Njoroge Wamatu, over allegations that he improperly accessed and shared confidential company and customer information.

The court ruled that Safaricom had both a valid reason and followed a fair disciplinary process before dismissing the employee in June 2019 in a dispute arising from allegations of unauthorised access to confidential subscriber information.

The court dismissed Mr Wamatu’s entire claim, including allegations of unfair termination, defamation and loss of employee share benefits.

The dispute arose after Mr Wamatu was arrested in June 2019 following investigations into allegations that Safaricom employees had conspired to illegally access, compile, share and sell confidential subscriber information.

He said six men accosted him while he was having dinner at a Nairobi eatery on June 7, 2019, assaulted him, forced him into a waiting car and took him to CID headquarters for interrogation without explaining the reason for his arrest.

He said he was later held at two other police stations until June 10, 2019, when he was arraigned on charges of computer fraud and demanding Sh300 million with menaces, before the charges were later amended to conspiracy to commit a felony.

Mr Wamatu maintained that the company orchestrated his arrest to make him a scapegoat for data losses and claimed the disciplinary process had been predetermined.

Safaricom denied the allegations, saying it merely reported suspected criminal conduct to investigators. The company denied that the report to the police was actuated by an ulterior motive.

It contended that after the police carried out investigations, they found the complaint justifiable and caused the claimant’s arrest and arraignment in court.

Other court proceedings also arose from the same alleged data breach, including civil proceedings by Safaricom seeking to restrain disclosure of confidential customer information.

The telco argued that its internal investigation linked Mr Wamatu to the unauthorized acquisition and proposed sale of confidential subscriber and internal corporate information, prompting both police reports and disciplinary action.

Court records showed Mr Wamatu joined Safaricom in November 2008 as a VAS Product Manager before rising to Head of Regional Expansion. His monthly salary had increased from Sh170,000 to Sh1.2 million by the time his employment ended.

Breach of confidentiality

Safaricom told the court its internal investigation concluded that Mr Wamatu had colluded with colleagues to obtain confidential subscriber data, internal security information and remuneration details of senior managers without authority.

The company argued the conduct breached confidentiality obligations under his employment contract and company policies.

The court accepted that position, saying the employer was entitled to rely on findings available during the disciplinary process.

‘In the court’s view, the Investigation Report provided sufficient material upon which the Disciplinary Committee and the respondent (Safaricom) were reasonably entitled, at the time, to entertain a genuine belief that the claimant had committed the infractions in question,’ the court said.

The court also rejected Mr Wamatu’s argument that he had been denied a fair hearing because he was attending a Directorate of Criminal Investigations meeting on the day scheduled for the disciplinary session.

It found evidence presented by Safaricom showed the DCI meeting ended around midday, leaving sufficient time for Mr Wamatu to attend the 4 p.m. disciplinary hearing.

“The claimant had no plausible explanation to account for his failure to turn up for the disciplinary hearing. As such, he cannot blame the respondent for having proceeded with the case against him in his absence,’ the court said.

The court further held that Safaricom had complied with its disciplinary procedures by issuing a show-cause letter, considering Mr Wamatu’s written responses, supplying him with investigation material and hearing his subsequent appeal before dismissing it.

The court said employment law does not require an employer to prove misconduct beyond reasonable doubt before dismissing an employee, provided the decision is based on a genuine belief supported by available evidence.

Mr Wamatu had also sought damages for defamation, arguing publicity surrounding his arrest damaged his reputation. The court dismissed that claim after finding it was filed outside the one-year statutory limitation period and was unsupported by independent evidence proving reputational harm.

“Defamation is deemed to have occurred only if it is demonstrated that the defamatory material was published to a third party,” the court said.

It also rejected his claim for employee share ownership plan (ESOP) shares, finding he had failed to produce sufficient evidence supporting the claim.

Nairobi-based budget carrier Jambojet has won a contract to maintain and repair the fleet of Ghanaian carrier Passion Air, its first client after venturing into the maintenance business as a new revenue stream.

The first aircraft under the contract is expected to arrive by Friday for a C-check-a comprehensive inspection carried out at intervals determined by an aircraft’s maintenance programme, typically every 18 to 24 months or after a specified number of flight hours and cycles.

The deal marks a major milestone in Jambojet’s bid to expand into the maintenance, repair, and overhaul (MRO) segment, which is dominated by established carriers like Kenya Airways and Ethiopian Airlines.

The International Air Transport Association estimates that the global MRO market is valued at nearly $97 billion-where service providers, OEMs, and airlines capture high-margin revenue.

Jambojet began developing its in-house maintenance capability several years ago, expanded into heavy maintenance in 2024, and is now commercialising the business after securing Ghana’s Passion Air as its first third-party MRO customer.

‘The aircraft is flying in on Thursday evening. For now, we will only be servicing the Dash 8 Q400, as it is what we are certified for,’ said a Jambojet spokesperson.

Passion Air is Ghana’s largest domestic carrier and has a fleet of 4 Bombardier DHC 8-300 and DHC 8-400s. It operates direct flights between Ghana’s capital, Accra, and inland cities of Kumasi, Tamale, Takoradi, Wa and Sunyani.

Previously, its maintenance and repairs were done by Nigerian airline Aero Contractors, which operates out of Lagos. It is not yet clear why it opted for Jambojet, which is much further from its base than Lagos.

In Africa, other than Aero Contractors and Jambojet, Ethiopian Airlines is the only other MRO operator certified by the Canadian original equipment manufacturer De Havilland, which makes the Bambadier Dash-8s (DHC-Q-300 and DHC-Q-400) to conduct overhauls and checks on its aircraft on the continent.

Growth and expansion

Heavy maintenance on Dash 8 aircraft requires approval from De Havilland and the relevant aviation regulators, limiting the number of facilities that can undertake the work.

With a fleet of 11 Bombardier DHC-Q-400s, Jambojet operates the second largest fleet of Dash-8s on the continent after Ethiopian Airlines, which currently has 30 of them for domestic and regional operations.

Jambojet is banking on the expansion of its MRO operations and expanded fleet to grow its route network and improve its revenue. Its parent firm, KQ, is also expanding its MRO operations and is already servicing jets owned by carriers like Air Tanzania and Precision Air.

Last year, the carrier saw a 5 percent growth in revenues to Sh14.4 billion from Sh13.6 billion in 2024, while passenger numbers stagnated at 1.2 million due to the prolonged grounding of one of its planes.

Aircraft maintenance generates relatively stable, dollar-denominated income that is less exposed to seasonal passenger demand, allowing airlines to better utilise engineering staff and hangar capacity.

The blockade of Strait of Hormuz has redrawn Kenya’s fuel supply map after Saudi Arabia overtook the United Arab Emirates (UAE) as the country’s largest source of petroleum imports with the help of pipelines bypassing the Strait of Hormuz.

Saudi Arabia unlike the UAE has managed to ship huge volumes of oil using pipelines without crossing the Strait of Hormuz, which Iran shut following the war.

Kenya imported Sh99.78 billion worth of goods from Saudi Arabia between March and May, more than double the Sh42.10 billion shipped from the UAE during the same period, Kenya National Bureau of Statistics (KNBS) data shows.

In the same period last year, the UAE was top with shipments worth Sh96.1 billion compared with Saudi Arabia’s Sh11.17 billion, reflecting the shift that rode on the back of bypassing the Strait of Hormuz via pipelines.

Saudi Arabia diverted a sizeable portion of the 20 million-plus barrels a day of crude that previously transited Hormuz by maxing out existing pipelines after Iran blocked the vital artery that carries a fifth of global oil.

The diversion made Saudi Arabia’s state-backed oil company, Aramco, the top supplier of fuel to Kenya in the middle of the Iran war, which started on February 28.

KNBS data shows Saudi imports jumped a staggering 793.4 percent from Sh11.17 billion in the March-May period, with fuel being the bulk of the cargo.

Saudi Arabia’s East-West pipeline to the Red Sea was built in the early 1980s and has become crucial since the start of the Iran war and the resulting halt to shipping through the Strait of Hormuz.

The pipeline, built during the Iran-Iraq War, can transport up to seven million barrels daily, giving Saudi Arabia a major advantage with the closure of Hormuz.

Kenya imports nearly all of its fuel products from the Middle East via government-to-government (G-to-G) deals with Gulf suppliers, including Saudi Aramco, Abu Dhabi’s ADNOC, and Emirates National ?Oil Company (ENOC).

The UAE, the only other Gulf state with meaningful Hormuz-bypass capacity, has completed half of a new West-East pipeline that will double crude capacity to Fujairah when it becomes operational next year. Its existing Abu Dhabi pipeline carries up ?to 1.8 million bpd.

Saudi Aramco said its ability to rely on the pipeline, storage facilities and export terminals allowed it to maintain business continuity despite unprecedented disruption through the strategic waterway.

Saudi Aramco President and CEO Amin Nasser said the company’s decades-long investment in strategic infrastructure enabled it to continue serving customers despite the disruption affecting commercial shipping in the region.

‘We continued to demonstrate our ability to maintain business continuity by capitalising on our diverse asset base and multi-decade planning, including strategic infrastructure such as the East-West Pipeline, storage capacity, and export terminals,’ Mr Nasser was quoted as saying by Gulf media outlets on Tuesday.

He made the remarks after the Saudi state-owned oil giant reported a 33 percent rise in second-quarter adjusted net income to $33.4 billion (about Sh4.32 trillion), explaining that higher energy prices during the conflict have lifted earnings while its infrastructure cushioned export disruptions.

The infrastructure advantage turned Saudi Aramco into the biggest beneficiary of Kenya’s G-to-G fuel import programme after the war, shifting the balance away from ADNOC and ENOC.

Before the conflict, the UAE’s ADNOC and ENOC had been major suppliers to Kenya under the G-to-G arrangement, with fuel deliveries largely sourced through Gulf export terminals.

The agreement, signed in March 2023, allows Kenya to import petrol, diesel and jet fuel from Saudi Aramco, ADNOC and ENOC on 180-day credit terms.

Saudi Arabia’s East-West Pipeline provided a direct advantage by allowing Aramco to continue supplying international customers while reducing dependence on the vulnerable shipping corridor.

The UAE’s smaller pipeline that carries fuel to the Port of Fujairah outside Hormuz has curtailed its ability to match Saudi Arabia’s export flexibility during periods of disruption.

This is largely because Saudi Arabia has direct coastlines on both the Persian Gulf and the Red Sea, giving it a physical overland bridge that the UAE lacks on a similar scale. The biggest portion of the UAE’s shipping infrastructure, trade networks, and export terminals rely on routes through the Strait of Hormuz.

Kenya’s import data shows how quickly the shift occurred, with the UAE maintaining a firm lead over Saudi Arabia before the war.

Kenya imported Sh22.99 billion worth of goods from the Emirates in January and Sh30.75 billion in February, compared with Sh13.50 billion and Sh11.35 billion from Saudi Arabia.

The trend reversed after the conflict began, with Saudi Arabia overtaking the UAE in March and widening the gap each month through May.

Saudi exports to Kenya rose to Sh24.60 billion in March, Sh31.50 billion in April and Sh43.69 billion in May, according to KNBS figures.

Meanwhile, UAE exports fell from Sh19.15 billion in March to Sh15.97 billion in April before dropping steeply to Sh6.98 billion in May.

The three-month reversal transformed the rankings, after Kenya imported Sh124.63 billion worth of goods from Saudi Arabia compared with Sh95.83 billion from the UAE by May.

KNBS data shows Saudi imports jumped a staggering 793.4 percent from Sh11.17 billion in the March-May period last year to Sh99.78 billion this year.

Over the same period, imports from the UAE declined 56.2 percent from Sh96.12 billion to Sh42.10 billion, highlighting the scale of the supply chain shift.

This means Saudi Arabia supplied more than twice the value of imports shipped from the UAE during the conflict, overturning a long-established trade pattern in which the Emirates overwhelmingly dominated Kenya’s petroleum supplies.

Petroleum products account for more than three-quarters of Kenya’s imports from Saudi Arabia, with fertilisers and plastics making up much of the remainder.

Kenya’s imports from the UAE are also dominated by refined fuels, alongside industrial goods such as plastics, copper and aluminium.

Energy Cabinet Secretary Opiyo Wandayi said the G-to-G agreement does not restrict where the three companies source petroleum products, provided they meet Kenya’s standards.

‘There is nothing in the agreement that we signed as a country and the three international oil companies from sourcing oil products from any part of the world,’ Mr Wandayi said.

The shift in supply coincided with a sharp rise in Kenya’s fuel bill. Spending on fuel and lubricants increased 46.02 percent to Sh334.24 billion in the first five months, according to the KNBS data.

Petroleum imports alone reached a record Sh122.35 billion in May, overtaking industrial supplies as Kenya’s largest monthly import category for the first time in recent history, going back many years.

The increase came as Kenya’s petroleum sector faced renewed scrutiny following the resignation of three senior energy officials over allegations involving fuel stock data and procurement.

Principal Secretary for Petroleum Mohamed Liban, Kenya Pipeline Company Managing Director Joe Sang and Energy and Petroleum Regulatory Authority Director-General Daniel Kiptoo Bargoria stepped down after being implicated in investigations into the management of petroleum supplies.

Much of the debate about artificial intelligence (AI) is about chatbots and automation. That matters for individual firms, but the bigger opportunity is national. AI is not primarily a technology story. It is an economic one.

In 1965, financier Michael Milken sketched a formula for prosperity that still holds: P = Ft × (HC + SC + RA).

Prosperity is Financial Technology multiplying Human Capital, Social Capital and Real Assets-the skills of our people, the trust in our institutions, and the farms, factories, power and digital infrastructure they depend on.

Kenya’s own history proves the point. In the 1960s and 70s, the cooperative movement was our first great financial multiplier-mobilising rural savings, financing inputs, turning subsistence farming into commercial enterprise.

The second arrived in 2007. M-Pesa cut the cost of moving money and pulled millions into the formal economy; today more than 38 million users transact over Sh40 trillion a year. The technology multiplied a cash economy Kenya already had.

The next multiplier will not simply be AI. It will be an AI-powered financial ecosystem. A multiplier only works on what it can reach-and AI reaches all three terms. It sharpens human capital, giving a farmer or a graduate sharper information and sounder decisions.

It strengthens social capital, replacing collateral and paperwork with verified records that make trust cheap and fraud costly. And it lifts the return on real assets-more harvest from the same land, more output from the same factory.

That is not hypothetical. Consider Apollo Agriculture, founded in Kenya in 2016. Using satellite imagery, soil data, machine learning and mobile-money histories, it underwrites smallholder farmers who have no collateral and no credit record-the customers banks will not touch. It has financed more than 350,000 farmers, who produce on average 2.6 times more than their neighbours.

Kenya is full of such success: M-Kopa lends against device-payment histories, banks and digital lenders against their own data. But each builds its private system alone-Apollo had to write its own credit models because none existed-and none of it is portable. A spotless M-Kopa record cannot follow you to a bank.

The engines are built; what is missing is the shared track they can all run on, so a farmer’s or a shopkeeper’s verified record is credit everywhere, not just inside one company’s app.

India built exactly this: identity, instant payments and consented data-sharing that let any lender assess a loan from verified records in minutes.

The same holds for the hardware beneath the algorithms. When Microsoft and G42 from UAE proposed a $1 billion AI data centre at Olkaria, the plan stalled: at full build-out it would have drawn close to a gigawatt-about a third of the national grid-and President Ruto warned Kenya could not switch off homes to power servers. But that constraint is the opportunity in disguise.

Kenya’s grid is already more than 90 percent renewable, and geothermal is its single largest source.

The Rift Valley holds an estimated 10 gigawatts of geothermal potential-five times today’s peak demand-and only a fraction is tapped. Cheap, clean, round-the-clock power is exactly what AI computing needs and few countries can offer. Build that steam, and Kenya will not merely host the AI economy-it can power it.

A fair question is what this means for jobs, especially the middle-level knowledge work-loan officers, assessors, analysts-that automation touches first. Some roles will change, and retraining is a real obligation we should fund, not gloss over. But Kenya’s problem has never been a surplus of such workers; it is that too few people are reached by them.

AI multiplies scarce expertise rather than replacing saturated labour: one skilled assessor can oversee a system serving thousands, extending credit and advice to the smallholder and the trader who had neither. In a mature economy AI substitutes for people.

In ours, it extends them.

The task now is to connect what exists into shared rails: interoperable public databases, secure consented data-sharing, a widened sandbox for AI-driven lending, and the clean energy to match.

Kenya is not starting from zero-a National AI Strategy, digital identity and digitised tax collection are already under way. But the obvious objection is trust: Kenyans have seen State data projects stall, and know how easily access becomes a toll booth.

That is the argument for building this the M-Pesa way-government setting open, consented standards, the market building and competing on top. A rail anyone accredited can join on published terms has no gate to guard and no middleman to pay.

Cooperatives did it for agriculture. M-Pesa did it for inclusion. AI can drive the next-not by replacing people, but by turning their daily work into credit a bank can price fairly and competitively, then release with speed.

The Great Repair exhibition unfurls across Nairobi like a living thing. The exhibition is anchored in the basement of The Mall in Westlands, spilling onto a mezzanine floor, and echoing through walks, talks, and satellite shows scattered across the city.

With more than 30 participating artists and over 400 guests at its opening, it is easily the biggest art event of the year.

Yet its magnitude lies not only in size but in its theme: Repair. Hosted by ARCH+, the exhibition asks audiences to consider repair as both process and product, a creative act that transforms brokenness into continuity.

Here, repair is not simply restoration but a philosophy-visible in the artefacts, embedded in preparation, and alive in the narratives that shape each work. From architectural preservation to ecological reimagining, the show insists that repair is as much about the unseen labour of creating as it is about the finished form.

Artefacts in the exhibition traverse continents, with Bas Princen’s photographs spotlighting repair at one of Africa’s most iconic architectural landmarks: the Mosque of Djenné in Mali.

His work underscores how climate change has disrupted socio-economic cycles along the Niger Delta, forcing communities to rely on less sustainable building materials. Yet in his images, grandeur gives way to the quiet resilience of maintenance-the annual mixing of mud and rice husks that has preserved the mosque’s stature for centuries.

Cave Bureau’s Maasai Cow Corridor Part II, also known as Ngombe Soft Life, is a sisal, medium-density fiberboard, and stainless-steel installation that recreates a small living room adorned with cow-related paraphernalia-from bells to sisal ropes-where a film plays across embedded screens.

Conceived as a reverse future documentary, it reimagines Nairobi through the eyes of its earliest inhabitants, the Maasai pastoralists, envisioning a city where cattle can once again move, graze, and coexist.

The work proposes Nairobi as an adaptive landscape-capable of responding to climate change and ecological exhaustion while confronting the historical injustices of Maasai displacement.

Built in the spirit of a Manyatta, the installation mirrors its ambiance and structure, designed to be assembled and dismantled with ease, echoing the nomadic rhythm of pastoral life.

Ugandan visual artist Sheila Nakitende’s work stands out not for its finished form but for how it embraces the process.

Her installation resembles a traditional utensil rack set upon earthen ground, yet it departs from the familiar Kenyan versions made of wooden sticks and mesh wire. Instead, Nakitende constructs hers from bark cloth, stretched scoby from kombucha-often referred to as vegan leather-and fiber, materials that have become central to her evolving practice.

Although she started as a painter, she has always experimented with different materials. Initially, she used waste paper.

‘Through research, I realised that paper was made from fibers. Remember, although Uganda is a highly fibrous country, I hadn’t seen any paper produced in Uganda. I’d seen recycled paper, but not produced from scratch. I started looking for unique fibers to work with,’ she says.

She began with banana fiber and the bark of the Mutuba tree, but soon realised her knowledge of fibers was limited. To deepen her practice, she undertook a residency in Upstate New York in 2017, at a studio where artists harvested plants and produced paper directly from the farm.

Returning to Uganda, she had to adapt to the modest conditions of her own studio, improvising with simple tools. Bark was soaked, boiled, and beaten with a mallet, then pounded with a pestle and mortar into pulp, stretched by hand, and transformed into sheets of paper that became the foundation of her art.

With her new medium, she began experimenting with a range of techniques, from pulp painting to drawing directly on the paper with fire.

She even sculpted the material into face masks, marking the moment her practice shifted into an evolving process rather than a fixed form.

‘Now I am more focused on understanding the cycle of my practice-where the material comes from, how it is nurtured, and the relationships behind it,’ she explains. ‘I don’t make the bark myself; farmers harvest and prepare it, and I transform it. Even when I produce paper from bark, I sell it to other artists and photographers who continue to experiment with it.’

Currently, she runs her production like a small- scale factory. ‘I don’t want it to become commercial and lose that authenticity. Every paper produced is unique, not replicated,’ she adds.

Nakitende’s installation is intended to be as evocative as it is commemorative of our traditions. The shredding, boiling and beating of bark into paper is meant to simulate the process of repair itself.

‘With repair, you have to respect time-the incubation, the slow building of process. In that preparation lies lessons in maintenance, resilience and the ability to manage when crisis comes,’ she reflects.

‘I have created my installation as a place of thought, a work in progress where ideas are shared in their evolving state, reminding us that meaningful work takes time.’

The beauty of Nakitende’s installation lies in her audacity to stretch imagination. Her rack is fashioned from bark skin and vegan leather made by stretching the scoby of kombucha-another of her inventive experiments that transforms humble materials into vessels of tradition and innovation.

‘People have been experimenting with kombucha as a form of leather-vegan leather, as opposed to the animal hide we are accustomed to,’ she explains.

‘I am trying to merge these ideas to see how they can coexist. What you notice, however, is that every process of achieving these materials requires time. The technology is not in the result, but in the preparation itself.

‘I am passionate about evolving our tradition and our indigenous technology because there are things we are forgetting that are relevant to our communities. For me, it is more rewarding that I get to contribute to that knowledge, move it forward so that someone can take it up and make it better. It is a journey.’