Category: Business Daily

Kenya’s policymakers have long looked to Singapore as a model for economic transformation, drawing inspiration from its financial services, infrastructure and regulation. But if Kenya wants to become an industrial powerhouse, it should look to Taiwan, a global leader in semiconductor manufacturing.

While leaders celebrate the country’s ‘Silicon Savannah’ and fintech innovations, software alone cannot industrialise Kenya. Every application, AI algorithm and mobile money transaction relies on physical hardware. Without domestic manufacturing capacity, Kenya risks remaining a service provider at the bottom of the global technology value chain.

Kenyan universities produce talented mechanical, electronic and mechatronic engineers, but limited hardware manufacturing opportunities leave many underemployed or working outside their specialisations. The problem is not a shortage of talent, but a lack of industrial infrastructure connecting university laboratories to factory floors.

Taiwan offers valuable lessons. According to the Semiconductor Industry Association, it accounts for about 90 percent of advanced chip manufacturing capacity. Its success reflects close collaboration between universities, government and technology companies.

Through university industry cooperation, Taiwan has established semiconductor academies that connect academic training with industry needs. Companies help shape curricula, support training and expose students to commercial manufacturing environments. Competitive remuneration also helps universities attract experienced industry professionals.

Kenya should adapt this model. Dedan Kimathi University of Technology, which hosts semiconductor training initiatives, could anchor a national programme involving the University of Nairobi, Jomo Kenyatta University of Agriculture and Technology and Strathmore University. Partnerships with technology firms would provide practical training, research funding and pathways into manufacturing.

The opportunity is increasingly strategic. Global chipmakers are seeking to diversify production beyond East Asia amid geopolitical tensions surrounding Taiwan. Kenya could position itself to attract investment by developing reliable infrastructure, skilled labour and supportive legislation.

This transformation will require substantial investment and long term planning. But unless Kenya moves beyond software and builds hardware capabilities, its industrial ambitions will remain largely rhetorical.

Kenya Pipeline Company (KPC) cut its dividend marginally to Sh5.81 billion or Sh0.32 per share despite its net profit growing 13.08 percent to Sh11.58 billion in the year to June 2026.

The firm, which listed on the Nairobi Securities Exchange (NSE) in March, had in the prior year paid a dividend of Sh5.9 billion to the National Treasury which was its sole shareholder at the time. The new dividend will be paid to shareholders who will be on record as of November 2026. The dividend payment date is yet to be fixed.

KPC’s net profit rose from Sh10.2 billion a year earlier, helped by higher sales. Turnover grew 8.78 percent to Sh42.98 billion in the review period, mainly on increased fuel throughput in Kenya and the East African region.

The new dividend represents a payout of 50.1 percent of the net income reported in the review period, down from a distribution rate of 57.6 percent the year before.

‘We are reserving cash for some of the key critical infrastructure projects that we are set to undertake,’ Pius Mwendwa, the acting CEO of KPC said on Wednesday.

Top shareholders led by the Kenya and Uganda governments will pocket the bulk of the dividends.

Uganda will receive Sh1.17 billion on its 3.662 billion shares while Kenya through the National Treasury will get Sh2.035 billion on its 6.36 billion shares.

Among the key projects that KPC is undertaking include increasing its storage capacity of its tanks at an estimated cost of Sh5 billion and also extending the pipeline to Kampala and later to Kigali, Rwanda.

KPC is also set to splash Sh600 million to enter the fixed internet market. KPC currently leases wholesale dark fibre along its petroleum pipeline corridors to telcos but the firm targets to enter the fixed internet market by February 2026.

The firm’s decision to cut the dividend pay comes at a time its share price at the Nairobi bourse has remained largely unchanged since its listing in March this year.

KPC’s shares closed at Sh9.04 on Tuesday, compared to the Sh9 that the government of Kenya offered to investors at the Initial Public Offering (IPO).

The government of Kenya reduced its ownership to 35 percent from 65 percent with Uganda and other local government institutions taking up ownership in KPC, in line with the IPO that ended decades of government’s sole ownership of KPC.

Kenya’s National Social Security Fund (NSSF) is the second biggest shareholder in KPC with a stake of 22.2 percent while the Unclaimed Financial Assets Authority (UFAA) bought a stake of 3.06 percent.

KPC said the Sh5.81 billion dividend will be paid to shareholders who will be on the company’s register as at close of business on November 30, 2026.

The company has significantly reduced dividend payouts in the last five years with the highest payout being a Sh8 billion that it paid shareholders for the year ended June 2022.

KPC froze dividends for the year to June 2023 but then resumed the following with a total payout of Sh7 billion to the National Treasury.

The latest decision to reduce the payout to shareholders comes at a time that KPC is seeking to ward off competition from Tanzania in the race to be the preferred importation point for refined fuel in the East African region.

KPC is the single biggest player in East Africa’s petroleum sector, storing and transporting fuel destined for Uganda, Rwanda and South Sudan, all of whom are importing fuel under Government-to-Government (G-to-G) deals.

Rwanda had relied on Tanzania for the importation of refined fuel before switching to KPC through a deal that was signed in June this year.

A ready made suit can be picked off the rack in minutes, in a standard size, at a price that local workshops struggle to match. Yet a growing number of Kenyan tailors are betting that buyers will pay more for what imports cannot offer: a garment cut to their own measurements, in a fabric and design of their choosing.

Two Nairobi businesses, SAO Sartorial and Logical City, show what that wager looks like in practice. Their owners say the competition is not only about price, and that some customers will pay more for a suit made to their specifications.

At SAO Sartorial, creative director Sydney Owino has watched the cost of making a suit climb since he started.

‘The first suit I did was costing Sh5,500. But right now we’re at a level where the cheapest suit we’re doing on made-to-measure is Sh58,500, and on bespoke, it is $1,850 (about Sh239,000),’ Mr Owino says.

The business began with about Sh100,000, which paid the initial rent and bought a cutting table and a sewing machine. In 2015, it operated from a stall in Nairobi’s central business district, with Mr Owino and one tailor. It now employs 14 people, with separate roles for cutting, trousers and jacket production, administration, logistics, accounting and social media.

‘You can never have all these things at once. It takes time to understand that you can’t do it all by yourself,’ he says.

That growth followed several difficult years. Before SAO became what it is today, Mr Owino tried three brands: a jeans business, a suit business and a ready-to-wear line. The last nearly undermined his custom-tailoring work. Running it pushed his rent to about 10 times what he had been paying.

When he approached a bank for financing, he found he was listed with the Credit Reference Bureau (CRB) over an unpaid Higher Education Loans Board loan from his university days, which had grown substantially. He settled the debt, returned to SAO and rebuilt by contacting clients directly.

‘That is how we got out of the mud,’ he says.

The episode taught him that an entrepreneur’s personal financial obligations can decide whether the enterprise survives. It also exposed gaps in his business knowledge.

‘I had not learned accounting. I had not learned marketing. I had not learned simple things like production management,’ he says.

Turning profitable

He introduced a detailed costing system. Instead of guessing what a garment should cost, he began accounting for every expense.

‘I found an accountant who created a document for me. It listed my shop’s rent, fabric prices, tailor’s labour, electricity, airtime, transportation, consumables, everything that I did not have a view of,’ he says.

The exercise showed him how sales volume affects pricing.

‘If you’re selling 20 suits in a month, you must sell them at this price. If you want to sell 50 suits, then you can reduce this price,’ he says.

He multiplies production cost by 2.25 to reach a selling price meant to cover expenses, make a profit and pay him, though he stresses this is his own method and not an industry standard.

The business turned profitable after about a year, and he has recovered his initial investment. ‘I’ve been able to pay back the money and save,’ he says.

SAO specialises in made-to-measure and bespoke garments, producing about two suits and two shirts a day. Made-to-measure adapts a garment to a customer’s measurements, while bespoke typically involves a more individually developed pattern and greater customisation.

Mr Owino later studied anthropometry, the study of human body measurements, which helped him see why standard sizing can fail some African customers.

‘Many of us are a little short and stout, with thicker thighs, and standard sizing doesn’t account for our stature,’ he says.

Rather than having one tailor handle every stage, SAO uses specialists for components such as trousers and jackets. It does not hire tailors with fewer than six years of experience, and newcomers can spend a year or more in training. The emphasis on experience has a cost, since developing and retaining such a team takes time.

‘I have been in this industry for about 17 years, and it has not been a straight line,’ Mr Owino says.

Some days he wonders whether the business might fail. ‘I sit in my shop and wonder, what if it all fails? Then I pick myself up and remember I have 14 families to feed. Giving up is not an option,’ he says.

Quality control reaches small details. Everyone in the atelier, from Mr Owino to an intern still learning the trade, uses the same brand and type of tape measure. ‘I like to say: measure twice, cut once,’ he says.

He also meets each client before the team begins work, using that first conversation to understand their preferences.

From Gikomba to UK, Canada, US

For Onyango Nelson Mandela, founder of Logical City, the journey began with Sh500 and a series of small ventures, including selling shoes sourced from Gikomba. He recals buying one pair for Sh250 and selling it for Sh4,500. The proceeds helped him buy his first sewing machine.

He became a sole proprietor in 2018, starting from a small store in Nairobi CBD with two sewing machines and two tailors. Logical City now has 13 tailors and four support staff, with a private office and a production line.

At one point, the business closed its physical locations for about one and a half years. Mr Mandela sees that period as a pause rather than an end.

‘It is all about closing the physical locations but not closing the purpose, the vision and the dream,’ he says.

Logical City suits range from about $200 (Sh25,900) to $1,500 (Sh194,250), depending on fabric, accessories, design, colour, construction method, turnaround time and order volume.

Mr Mandela says that a customer once expected a pair of trousers to cost about Sh7,000, but the design requested came to roughly Sh13,500, even with entry-level fabric.

The business positions itself around consultation. Mr Mandela says his team seeks to understand a customer’s profession, the people they deal with and the image they want to project before advising on the garment. Persuading more consumers to pay for local tailoring remains difficult, particularly when they compare prices with cheaper imports.

‘Bit by bit, with patience, with consistency, you get to have people who get to start appreciating, get to start understanding,’ he says.

Although the garments are made locally, Logical City relies heavily on imported fabric. Its suppliers are in South Africa, Italy and India: Indian cottons and linens for shirts, Italian, British and American cloth for suiting, and linen from Turkey and the Netherlands.

Kenya’s limited textile-manufacturing base makes it hard to source materials locally, and importing adds to costs.

Mr Mandela also cites difficulty accessing quality fabric, dealing with workers he considers unethical, and customers who do not always understand why a locally tailored garment costs what it does.

His advice to entrepreneurs is to reinvest in their people, stay disciplined and build a customer base through referrals and repeat business.

‘Ensuring that your market base largely comes from referrals and return clients works better for his business than relying on social media advertising and influencers,’ he says.

Mr Mandela does not disclose revenue, margins or total investment, saying profitability varies, but notes that the business continues to meet its bills and improve its quality. He believes the market for local tailoring is growing, though it needs stronger domestic textile production and more support from policymakers and consumers.

‘We need to shun this mentality of foreign is quality,’ he says.

Logical City already serves clients in the United Kingdom, the United States and Canada, and hopes to expand across Africa and eventually onto recognised international fashion platforms.

Advisors and regulators are set to earn total fees of Sh575.5 million from Quickmart’s initial public offering (IPO), marking the latest windfall from a company going public.

Quickmart’s advisors, including SBG Securities, Stanbic Bank, Dyer and Blair Investment Bank and Coulson Harney LLP, will share Sh476.2 million according to the IPO’s estimated expenses

The retailer will spend Sh70 million in marketing and advertising costs and Sh24 million as regulatory fees to the Capital Markets Authority (CMA) and the Nairobi Securities Exchange (NSE).

Quickmart will also incur Sh5.3 million in miscellaneous costs.

SBG Securities is the lead transaction advisor, sponsoring broker, and lead placing agent. Stanbic Bank is a lead transaction advisor and receiving bank while Dyer and Blair is a co-placing agent.

Coulson Harney, trading as Bowmans in Kenya, is the legal advisor. Ernst and Young LLP are the reporting accountants while Image Registrars Limited is acting as the data processing agent and share registrar.

Creide Limited is handling public relations and Adili Corporate Services Kenya LLP is the corporate governance advisor.

‘The issuer [Quickmart] estimates that the total costs and expenses associated with the offer will amount to approximately Sh575.6 million and will be borne by the selling shareholder [founders],’ Quickmart said.

‘The estimated expenses of the offer are equivalent to approximately 3.8 percent of the gross proceeds of the offer, or Sh0.29 per offer share.’

The company’s founders will receive net proceeds of Sh14.4 billion after footing the professional and regulatory fees.

Current owners of Quickmart are selling two billion shares in the company at an offer price of Sh7.5, placing the gross value of their partial exit at Sh15 billion. The IPO opened on Monday last week and closes on October 30, 2026.

Regulators and business advisory firms have reaped major windfalls this year on the back of more listings on the NSE.

The IPO of Kenya Pipeline Company (KPC) was the most lucrative, handing regulators and advisors including Faida Investment Bank a total of Sh2.99 billion.

The National Treasury raised gross proceeds of Sh106.3 billion from the sale of a 65 percent stake in the transaction. The March IPO was priced at Sh9 per share.

Family Bank paid total fees of Sh77.2 million when it listed on the NSE in June through introduction -without selling shares to the public.

Standard Investment Bank (SIB) and PricewaterhouseCoopers LLP were among the firms that were paid professional fees in the bank’s listing at a price of Sh18 per share.

Quickmart is betting on its earnings and dividend growth to attract investors to its IPO.

The retailer, which has favourable terms with its suppliers, reported a net profit of Sh1.5 billion last year, rising from Sh1.1 billion in 2024.

Sales increased to Sh50.4 billion from Sh46.7 billion on the back of opening more stores and increased shopping at existing outlets. Once listed on the Nairobi Securities Exchange (NSE), Quickmart will be the second publicly-traded retailer after Uchumi Supermarkets. Uchumi went into insolvency, with the company’s diminished operations prioritized to repay creditors.

Every year, we see many universities in Kenya and other parts of Africa graduating hundreds of graduates and postgraduates’ students especially in business courses which includes MBA.

But as they walk across the stage, taking photographs and celebrating their achievements with their families, a fundamental question always emerges from the market: How will these graduates, who are already equipped with profound knowledge, make an impact on the various sectors in the marketplace?

And what is really coming out is how every year we see how knowledge of the graduands is simply disappearing from the public arena and are locked within university’s libraries where dissertations are being bound, catalogued, and shelved away.

For an economy that desperately needs new engines of growth like Africa, this is really strange, especially in ways graduates’ best work is treated. Time has come that we should start asking ourselves, is academia working closely with private sector or are they working in silos trying to meet its own goals, irrespective of what happens to the public and others?

This is because, as we try to look at the dissertations for example an MBA or MSc thesis it typically involves a year or more focused research into a significant business problem where they try to look into how supply chains break down, how consumer behaviour is shifting, how family businesses fail to survive succession. In the end students gather data most companies would never bother to collect and are pushed by supervisors to defend every claim with evidence.

The result is often a genuinely useful piece of applied research. But this is usually filed away in university libraries across the region. Most of them never read outside the examination room.

For example, research into the impact of M-Pesa on small-scale entrepreneurs in Kenya has demonstrated how the platform has transformed small enterprises by providing fast, accessible, and secure digital financial services.

However, despite the valuable research, the country is yet to develop a large, distributed research function that enables the Kenyan private sector to access and apply research findings across the country. Trying to analyse the situation, part of the problem is structural. Dissertations are normally written to satisfy examiners, not executives.

And are always long, technical, and hedged in academic language that does not travel well into a boardroom.

Picture three professionals: Mary, a marketing manager at an agribusiness; Mark, an IT manager at a bank; and Sheila, a finance manager at a hotel. None of them has the capital or the full skill set to acquire and run a mid-sized company.

Together, they work in their own area of expertise. But if Mary can be able to use some of the research work within academic to understand better the agribusiness where she works for, from its customers to its operational weaknesses, she and her two colleagues could pool resources, potentially with outside investors, to buy that same business from its founder.

On the other hand, Mark brings the systems and technology discipline which the business lacks.

And Sheila brings financial rigour to a firm. Over a ten-year horizon, with professional management replacing founder intuition, their business could become a credible candidate for listing on the Nairobi Securities Exchange’s SME market segment.

The incentives here are unusually well aligned.

The existing founder gets liquidity and a legacy. The buying trio gets ownership of a functioning business rather than the higher failure risk of a start-up, plus the considerable upside of an eventual public listing. And the economy gets another mid-sized, professionally run, potentially listed firm, exactly the kind of company Kenya needs if SMEs are to graduate into larger, more resilient enterprises.

However, shelved dissertation captures the smaller half of the story. The larger part that also requires more urgent question is what happens to the knowledge and experience carried inside many business postgraduates themselves once they finish the degree.

While a significant number of these graduates already hold demanding jobs in marketing, finance, operations, or technology on what they do daily, but the knowledge itself and years of learning on how a business actually works, rarely gets redeployed or used within boardrooms is still something new.

This is where the private sector’s growth problem and the graduate’s career problem intersect. And where a specific opportunity is now being left on the table, especially the growth through acquisition of existing small and medium enterprises. And rather than looking at growth through new emerging start-ups, Kenya has no shortage of well-run but capital-starved SMEs whose founders are approaching retirement or simply want to exit and try something else.

At the same time, it has a growing pool of MBA-trained managers with sector experience, professional networks, and often severance capital of their own, who are individually too small to buy a company outright but collectively are not. Therefore, there is need for the academia and private sector to work together and create a properly channeled, which can be used for the redirection of this knowledge.

This can be meaningfully in accelerating the growth of Kenya’s private sector.

The High Court has cleared the way for a Spanish company, C.A. Infraestructuras T and I SLU, to pursue liquidation of Kenya Electricity Transmission Company (Ketraco) over an unpaid Sh10 billion award, rejecting the State agency’s attempt to stop the case.

The court dismissed Ketraco’s preliminary objection, ruling that government ownership does not automatically exempt the electricity transmission company from insolvency proceedings or require Cabinet approval before a creditor files a liquidation petition.

The dispute stems from two contracts awarded in April 2013 to Spanish contractor Instalaciones Inabensa SA for construction of the 400-kilovolt Lessos-Tororo transmission line and extension of the Lessos substation.

The projects were intended to support electricity trade between Kenya and neighbouring countries.

Ketraco terminated the contracts on April 25, 2016, after a dispute over payments and performance. Inabensa challenged the termination through arbitration, where the tribunal found Ketraco in breach and awarded the contractor pound 37.37 million (Sh5.4 billion), plus interest, in 2019. The company was also awarded costs of Sh102 million in legal fees, Sh83.5 million in arbitral costs and Sh2 million in administrative expenses.

The award was recognised and enforced by the High Court in February 2021. Ketraco challenged it through the courts, including the Court of Appeal and the Supreme Court, but failed to overturn the decision.

The claim subsequently grew to pound 62.67 million (Sh10 billion) and Sh195.31 million as at February 2024, excluding further interest, according to a November 2025 High Court ruling.

The current liquidation petition was filed on May 8, 2024, by C.A. Infraestructuras T and I SLU, which says it acquired the rights to the award from Inabensa through a deed of subrogation dated July 28, 2023.

Right creditor contest

But the identity of the rightful creditor remains contested, exposing a complication in a dispute over who should receive the money and whether payment to one claimant could trigger further claims.

In its objection, Ketraco argued that the liquidation petition was sub judice because a separate case concerning enforcement of the same award remained pending. It also challenged the Spanish company’s standing and said liquidation required Cabinet approval under laws governing State corporations and public finances.

“The creditor lacks locus standi under section 974 of the Companies Act and the Fifth Schedule to the Insolvency Act that as a State Corporation, the Debtor cannot be liquidated without Cabinet approval under sections 27(b) and 28 of the State Corporations Act and section 86(1) of the Public Finance Management Act,” the government lawyers argued.

The court declined to resolve the overlap between the proceedings at this stage, saying the parties disputed both the subject matter and the identity of the creditor.

‘The record discloses deep contestation over both the subject matter of the two proceedings and the identity of the parties, particularly the creditor,’ the judge said.

The court also rejected Ketraco’s argument that a foreign company must be registered locally to sue in Kenya. Justice Mugambi said the question was whether the claimant had a genuine stake in the dispute, rather than whether it was registered to conduct business locally.

No insolvency immunity

On Ketraco’s public status, the court found that the company remained subject to the Companies Act and Insolvency Act because no law expressly exempted it from the general insolvency regime.

‘This court cannot create by implication an immunity that Parliament chose not to enact,’ the judge said, leaving the liquidation petition alive.

The court also found that section 86(1) of the Public Finance Management Act did not make Cabinet approval a precondition.

‘It neither ousts the court’s jurisdiction nor makes Cabinet approval a precondition to a creditor’s petition,” said the judge.

The court noted that the original decree holder was Instalaciones Inabensa SA, while C.A. Infraestructuras claimed to have succeeded to its rights through a July 28, 2023 deed, a Spanish court order dated April 18, 2023, and recognition of that order by Justice Rutto on June 25, 2026.

Ketraco had also argued that the company is a stranger to the award whose claim has never been recognised.

But the court said the competing positions could not be reconciled without evidence and left the questions for determination at the hearing.

‘These positions cannot be reconciled without evidence,” said the judge. She further held that the disputed questions remained open for determination at the hearing.

The judge added that the provisions cited by Ketraco did not make Cabinet approval a precondition to a creditor’s petition. Public interest and the company’s role in providing an essential service, however, could be considered when deciding whether liquidation was appropriate.

‘Those considerations go to the outcome of the Petition, not to the competence of the Court to hear it.’

Inabensa was declared bankrupt and dissolved in Spain, while its insolvency administrator, Ernst and Young Abogados, could assert rights over the award on behalf of creditors.

The Attorney-General has warned of a risk that Kenya could face competing claims to the same debt.

Earlier Inabensa had obtained orders affecting 17 Ketraco accounts, while C.A. Infraestructuras pursued liquidation separately. The competing proceedings raised questions over the legal authority of each claimant and the safeguards needed to prevent duplicate recovery.

In a separate ruling delivered in November 2025, the High Court dismissed Ketraco’s application for Sh185.3 million in security for legal costs, describing the decree as final, binding and enforceable.

Kenya Electricity Generating Company (KenGen) risks losing control of strategic geothermal wells and infrastructure at Olkaria after a licensing error left parts of the field outside its legally designated area.

The latest Auditor-General report has revealed that the Ministry of Energy and Petroleum mis-recorded the coordinates on the geothermal licence it issued to KenGen on September 19, 2008, eight years after the company applied for it on February 7, 2000.

The errors altered the boundaries of the licensed area, turning a rectangular field into a triangular shape. The State then later allocated part of the original area to another geothermal developer.

The Ministry acknowledged the error in 2017 but has not corrected it as at the time of the audit in August 2026 despite reminders from KenGen. This has left the company exposed to uncertainty over its rights to exploit the geothermal resources and protect its investments.

‘Despite several requests to the Ministry by [KenGen] management seeking rectification of the coordinates error and restoration of the excised licence area, no corrective action had been undertaken by the Ministry as at the time of audit,’ said the audit.

‘In the circumstances, the company is exposed to the risk of loss of rights over strategic and investments made on geothermal infrastructure.’

The blunder arose from an error in the coordinates defining the four corners of the licensed area, marked A, B, C and D. One of the coordinates was recorded as 21,000 instead of 192,000, distorting the boundaries of the 204-square-kilometre licence.

The report notes the error distorted the boundaries of the licensed area, excluding parts of the geothermal domes and leaving some of KenGen’s wells and steam infrastructure outside its licensed territory.

The Auditor-General office has revealed that the issue was compounded in 2018 when part of the affected area was excised and allocated to another geothermal developer. This has potentially complicated KenGen’s operations in a field where it has invested heavily in drilling wells and developing power-generation infrastructure.

‘Part of the affected licenced area was excised from the company’s licence in 2018, and allocated to another geothermal developer. As a result, geothermal wells, steam infrastructure and other assets developed by the company are outside the company’s licensed area, thereby restricting control and access to strategic geothermal resources and already developed infrastructure,’ says the audit.

Olkaria is central to KenGen’s business and the country’s energy security. The company operates several geothermal power stations and wellhead plants in the area, with its wider Olkaria portfolio accounting for 88.2 percent or 663.7 gigawatt hours (GWh) of the 752.25 GWh installed capacity of geothermal sources as at end of June 2026.

The scale of the operations raises the stakes in resolving the licensing dispute, especially if the affected boundaries overlap with productive wells, steam-gathering systems or other infrastructure required to sustain electricity generation.

However, the precise value of the assets located within the disputed area, and the amount of generating capacity directly affected by the error, could not be established from the available information.

The Business Daily reached out to the company for a comment on the value of assets excluded from the licensed territory due to the Ministry’s error but had not responded by the time of going to press.

The number of electrocution cases linked to Kenya Power rose by 10.4 percent to 132 in the year ended June 2026, defying an intensified safety drive by the electricity distributor.

The utility firm recorded 127 public electrocutions alongside five staff fatalities. This marked a rise from the previous year, when there were 115 public electrocutions, five employee fatalities and two contractor fatalities.

Electrocutions had declined from 130 in the year ended June 2023 to 118 in 2024 before falling further to 115 in 2025.

The firm lists electrical injuries and deaths associated with electricity distribution or consumption, and the associated legal, reputational and financial exposures, among its principal risks.

The latest toll comes despite Kenya Power conducting 686 public electrical safety campaigns, up from 648 a year earlier, according to its annual report. The company also carried out 249 safety inspections, held 195 staff safety training and awareness sessions and convened 176 safety committee meetings.

It assessed 320 employees and contractors for competency and authorisation, initiated procurement of 28,534 items of personal protective equipment and revised its safety, health and environment policy.

The utility firm’s interventions have yet to prevent a fresh rise in public electrocutions, even as it identified illegal connections, substandard wiring and encroachment on powerline wayleaves among the leading risks.

‘The company continued to implement its safety programmes, including campaigns, inspections, training and assessments. However, despite these initiatives, the company recorded five staff fatalities and 127 public electrocutions during the year,’ the firm said in its annual report.

The latest annual report does not break down the 127 public electrocutions by cause or indicate how many cases resulted in compensation claims.

Kenya Power has in recent years faced mounting lawsuits as families of people who have been electrocuted seek justice, arguing that the deaths and injuries resulted from the company’s negligence.

Section 166(2) of the Energy Act, 2019, provides for appropriate compensation where a person suffers property damage, financial loss or loss of life due to negligence or avoidable default by an electricity licensee.

‘The licensee shall be liable to pay appropriate compensation to a person if due to failure, poor quality or irregularity of electricity supply, the person incurs damage to his or her property, financial loss, loss of life due to negligence or avoidable default by the licensee,’ the law states.

The law, however, excludes compensation under this provision where a supply failure, poor quality or irregularity is caused by third-party interference, an inevitable accident or force majeure.

Dependants of people killed in electrocution incidents are also entitled to seek damages under the Fatal Accidents Act, while the Law Reform Act provides for claims on behalf of a deceased person’s estate.

The company connected 411,710 new customers to the grid in the year to June 2026, taking the total number of connections to 10.43 million.

Across the country, farmers are reading the sky the way their grandparents did. Vuli now. Then the dry months of kiangazi. Then masika, the long rains, in March. No farmer asks whether the season is fair. He asks a better question: what is this season for?

Founders have forgotten how to ask it. We borrowed our sense of time from elsewhere. Roadmaps. Hockey-stick charts. Five-year plans that climb in a straight line toward an exit.

John Mbiti, the Kenyan philosopher, argued half a century ago that many African traditions never lived in that kind of time at all. Time was not a road to a distant future. It was the lived present, what he called sasa, flowing steadily into zamani, the deep past. You did not chase time.

You stood inside it and attended to it. There is a founder’s lesson buried in that idea. The line is a lie we tell investors. The season is the truth we live.

This month Quickmart opened its shares to the public, ahead of a Nairobi Securities Exchange listing on November 12. Read its story as a line and you see a supermarket that grew to 72 stores and Sh50.4 billion in revenue. Read it as seasons and you see something truer.

John Kinuthia and his wife Zipporah started small in Nakuru in 2006. He died in 2016. Private capital arrived in 2019, a merger with Tumaini in 2020, and now a public offer. Start, survival, loss, rebuilding, transition. Each season asked a different thing of the people inside it.

Now walk the same aisles a decade back. In 2015 Nakumatt ran 65 stores across four countries. By 2017 it could not pay rent or wages. Its last branches were sold in 2019. Its failure was not that it broke. Every enterprise breaks. Its failure was that it tried to live in one season forever, scaling through a drought that demanded pruning.

Ecclesiastes put it more than two thousand years ago: a time to plant, and a time to pluck up that which is planted. The tragedy of most founders is not that they meet the wrong season. It is that they keep performing the last one.

Which brings us to the fourth season, the break. It is the one many founders never walk out of, and almost never because of the break itself. They die of stuckness.

Stillness and stuckness look alike from a distance. They are opposites. Stillness is chosen. It is the farmer resting the land so it can bear again. Stuckness is imposed by fear. It is the founder standing in the ruins of last year, waiting for the world to rewind. Stillness is presence. Stuckness is absence wearing a founder’s suit.

Albert Einstein wrote to his son in 1930 that life is like riding a bicycle: to keep your balance, you must keep moving. Founders take that to mean speed. It means presence. You can pedal slowly. You cannot stop pedalling and expect to stay upright.

Naivas tells the founder’s version. Peter Mukuha Kago started it in Rongai in 1990 and died in 2010.

Three years later his family was in court, divided over a proposal to sell control to a foreign retailer. It was the kind of break that ends family businesses. Instead the company kept moving. It walked into the spaces Nakumatt left behind, brought in new partners in 2020, and last October opened its 110th store. The break was real. So was the walking.

Every dimension of a founder’s life has to keep moving with the season.

The mind has to accept which season it is in, instead of insisting on the one it prefers. The heart has to grieve what the last season took, or the grief will make tomorrow’s decisions.

Strategy has to change its posture: plant in one season, prune in the next. The circle around you has to be renewed, because the people who carried you through the planting may not be the people who can carry you through the drought.

And the spirit has to hold the one question that survives every season: why did I begin, and is that reason still alive? The founder who can answer that does not need the season to be kind. Only to be faced.

Walk present. Walk slowly if you must. Rest when the land asks it. But do not stand still in the ruins and call it waiting. The season is not yours to choose. The walking is.

The listing of the first dollar denominated instruments on the Nairobi bourse and the boom in the equities and fixed income market have helped lift Kenya to fifth place in the ranking of how African countries easily raise and move capital.

The 2026 Africa Financial Markets Index, compiled by Absa bank and think tank OMFIF, moved Kenyan’s ranking from seventh behind South Africa, Mauritius, Namibia and Uganda.

The Nairobi Securities Exchange (NSE) marked the first listings of dollar denominated instruments earlier this year, following the addition of real estate investment trusts from African Logistics Properties (ALP) and Centum’s TRIFIC property fund which improved the market’s currency diversification.

Falling interest rates on government bonds and rising prices for the securities at the NSE helped boost trading as share prices surged amid increased activity at the bourse.

‘The country’s first dollar-denominated security was listed and recorded its highest-ever bond trading volumes during a broad market rally,’ the index report noted.

The index measures how easily countries can raise and move capital, examining stock and bond markets, access to foreign currency, pension ?savings, economic conditions and regulation.

Developing these markets can help businesses access financing beyond traditional bank loans and channel savings into infrastructure and other long-term investments.

Now in its 10th year, the index introduced a revised methodology measuring countries against fixed benchmarks of good practice rather than against one another. Historical scores were recalculated to allow comparisons.

Kenya raked in the most points on market transparency, tax and regulatory environment, scoring 100 points to tie with South Africa.

The market however trailed in depth and pension fund development with scores of 43 and 30 respectively.

The high score in transparency was attributed to strengthened credit-rating coverage, financial, monetary, fiscal and macroeconomic openness.

‘Kenya’s strength is the institutionalisation of transparency. The Public Finance Management Act anchors a predictable fiscal calendar, including the budget policy statement, quarterly budget reviews and debt management publications,’ the report notes.

‘Kenya also maintains structured engagements with Moody’s, S and P and Fitch, helping ensure rating agencies receive consistent and current sovereign information. The impact is visible in Kenya’s capital market resurgence as market capitalisation rose 27.8 percent in the first half of 2026.’

The Nairobi Securities Exchange (NSE) listed the US denominated ALP Industrial real estate investment trust (Reit) on March 11.

The property fund raised Sh3.81 billion ($29.5 million) from a restricted offer in 2025 ahead of the listing.

Centum’s TRIFIC raised Sh3.87 billion ($29.83 million) for the construction of an environmentally friendly commercial property in its special economic zone and listed the vehicle on the NSE at the end of June.

The two listings are first foreign currency instruments on the NSE and will pay dividends to shareholders in US dollars.

Activity on the NSE has further solidified Kenya’s financial market standing with market capitalisation rising past the Sh4 trillion mark for the first time on the back of increased share purchases and additional listings.

The Nairobi bourse got its first initial public offering in more than a decade from the listing of Kenya Pipeline Company (KPC) shares in March while additional listings have included the introduction of Family Bank.

Equity turnover in six months to June 2026 surpassed the entire 2025’s tally of Sh145.4 billion to stand at Sh322.2 billion on 9.5 billion shares traded.

Bonds market turnover has equally remained buoyant, having topped Sh1.7 trillion in June this year and is in line to surpass last year’s record of Sh2.71 trillion worth of trades.

Kenya’s scoring on the Absa Africa Financial Markets Index averaged 65 points out of 100, surpassing its mean score of 59 points from a decade earlier when the ranking started.

South Africa retained the top spot, followed by Mauritius and Namibia.

Cape Verde was the biggest mover, climbing six places to 13th on stronger foreign exchange reserves and new sustainable finance initiatives.

Ghana rose four places to sixth as falling inflation, stronger stock ?activity and improving economic conditions aided its recovery from a debt crisis.

Botswana and Nigeria each slipped two places to seventh and eighth respectively. Nigeria was hurt by weaker foreign exchange access and transparency scores, while Botswana suffered from rising inflation.