Category: Business Daily

There was a time when football fans would troop to Avenida Restaurant on Nairobi’s Moi Avenue to watch live matches on the screens as we moisturised our throats. The last time I was there, my team got a mighty drubbing and I got some excoriating, choice-reconsidering banter from rival fans.

I was partly to blame, though, as I had donned the team’s jersey on a match day. Red and proud. Others think it jinxes your team but I am brave like that. I will still wear my team’s jersey on any match day because, hey, am I the one playing? Am I the one earning, every week, an equivalent of a county’s payroll just to lose matches ad infinitum?

Anyway, at Avenida, if you were lucky you could get a space at the balcony. That offered a double view of the screens and the street underneath, judging Nairobi people and with their rushed walks, begging sprees, and motorcyclists doing everything to paint the city red – and not in a good way.

The design of Avenida was the epitome of a Nairobi club in its day. All clubs needed a street they were ‘looking down’ upon, with a fancy balcony to facilitate that, and sometimes another noisy club next door for good measure. Avenida had all this.

We have five senses, so they say, and whenever you were at Avenida, your ears got a treat of music from a deejay who typically mixed all the genres to cater to all audiences. Your eyes followed the live match or judged the people going about their business on the street. Your tongue would by that time have been treated to a drink, and they came in twos for whatever reason. Food was available, though I often found it a tad pricey.

The nose had little to do, but if it was sharper, you could smell scandals from the discussions here and there and catch copious whiffs of unfaithfulness because this is Nairobi.

Avenida logged out without much of a warning, fuelling speculation on social media. Its last post on social media was made in April. In the first week of October, the building that housed it was fenced off, ostensibly for redevelopment. Will Avenida return? Will something else come up?

I attended an event in Nairobi on Thursday convened by the Kenya Sugar Board and billed as a ‘consultative stakeholder meeting’ on the availability and use of locally refined white sugar.

I expected a routine discussion on agricultural policy. Instead, I found what looked like an attempt to legitimise a glaring contradiction: a punitive tax regime that shields one private enterprise while imposing crippling costs on Kenya’s wider food and beverage manufacturing sector.

For months, manufacturers that employ tens of thousands of Kenyans, buy from local farmers and compete in regional markets have been absorbing a massive fiscal shock.

The government has imposed a Sh40 per kilogramme levy on imported refined sugar used as an industrial input. Add the Import Declaration Fee, Railway Development Levy and import duty, and the total burden approaches 70 percent.

The consequences will eventually reach consumers through the price of bread, beverages, confectionery and dairy products. For manufacturers, however, this is not an abstract tax issue. It is a question of competitiveness and, ultimately, survival.

Yet one company appears to stand apart from this regime: Mombasa Sugar Refinery Limited (MSRL), owned by the Chatte family and based at Kibos, Kisumu County.

Let us be clear about what the Kibos refinery is.

Its advantage does not come from processing Kenyan cane. Nor does it come from some superior technological breakthrough. Kenya has a structural cane deficit and simply does not produce enough brown sugar to sustain industrial-scale production of refined sugar from local raw material.

Kibos imports raw bulk sugar, typically from surplus-producing countries such as Brazil and South Africa, refines it locally and sells it under government-granted excise exemptions.

Calling this ‘local sourcing’ stretches the meaning of the term beyond recognition. The raw material is imported. What happens locally is refining. So why should heavily invested Kenyan manufacturers pay a tax burden approaching 70 percent while one relatively new refinery enjoys bespoke fiscal privileges?

That is not how you build a domestic agricultural value chain. It is how you redistribute market power and financial rents from established, tax-paying manufacturers to a protected processor.

And not a single additional shilling of this arrangement goes to a cane farmer. Nor does the refinery appear to be operating anywhere close to the capacity for which it was built.

Kibos told Thursday’s meeting that in its first four months of operation it had sold only 7,700 metric tons against an annual capacity of 150,000 tonnes.

That translates to roughly 15 percent of the capacity theoretically available during those four months.

This raises a basic question: if an industry requires exceptional tax protection to compete, what happens when that protection fails to translate into meaningful market uptake?

The conduct of the Sugar Board was even more troubling. Much of the discussion revolved around ‘uptake’, ‘volume’ and ‘quality specifications’. But the regulator appeared to move from neutral referee to advocate, openly appealing to established manufacturers to demonstrate patriotism by buying from Kibos.

Patriotism is not a procurement specification. Industrial manufacturing does not run on patriotic appeals. It runs on consistent quality, strict ICUMSA specifications, reliable supply and competitive pricing.

A manufacturer supplying regional markets cannot simply gamble with product quality or production schedules because a regulator wants a particular supplier to gain market share.

And if that supplier’s price competitiveness depends on selective tax exemptions, the government is no longer simply facilitating competition. It is distorting it.

There is a straightforward way out.

The Kenya Sugar Board and the Kenya Revenue Authority have administered controlled industrial-use arrangements for years. The machinery for distinguishing sugar consumed as an industrial input from sugar intended for ordinary consumption already exists.

What is missing is equal treatment.

Registered food and beverage manufacturers should immediately receive equivalent relief from excise duty on refined sugar used strictly as an industrial input.

If Kibos can receive an exemption because it refines sugar locally, then established, compliant manufacturers that employ thousands of Kenyans and generate substantial industrial output should not be treated as tax targets.

If the government genuinely wants to protect Kenya’s domestic value chains, it should begin where the chain actually starts: in the cane fields.

Raise yields. Pay farmers on time. Improve cane productivity. Expand irrigation. Fix the dysfunctional sugar-milling system.

The issues raised at Ole Sereni therefore goes beyond sugar. Do we create a predictable, rules-based environment in which businesses compete on a broadly level playing field?

Or do we create islands of privilege in which selected investors receive fiscal advantages while established manufacturers carry the cost?

Equity Group chief executive James Mwangi has joined a 20-member global commission that will help craft a new global development roadmap to succeed the United Nations’ Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) that expire in 2030.

Mr Mwangi is the only African private-sector representative on the South-North Commission on Development, giving Kenya a seat on a panel whose recommendations are intended to influence the global development agenda after 2030.

The new outfit brings together World Bank president Ajay Banga, World Trade Organisation director-general Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala, Nobel Peace laureate Denis Mukwege and former political leaders from Africa, Europe, Asia and Latin America.

The commission, unveiled on June 30, 2026, will lay out a sweeping vision for improving the lives of people all over the world for decades.

Its input will craft a new development plan meant to replace and expand on the United Nations’ current road map, the Sustainable Development Goals that were adopted in 2015.

The 17 Sustainable Development Goals are focused on ending poverty around the world, while protecting the planet and ensuring a new prosperity for everyone.

The commission is co-chaired by former German Chancellor Olaf Scholz and former Costa Rican president Laura Chinchilla, giving the panel political leadership from Europe and Latin America.

Its first meeting is scheduled for Bangkok on October 16 and 17 alongside the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and World Bank annual meetings, with interim findings due in 2027 and a final report at the end of 2028.

In his new role, Mr Mwangi is expected to bring his experience from Equity, which has built a large regional banking business around lending to households, small enterprises and agriculture across East and Central Africa.

‘Africa should no longer be seen through the lens of aid. It is a source of growth, talent, innovation and investment. I am honoured to join the Co-Chairs and my fellow Commissioners,’ said the Equity Bank boss following the appointment.

‘I will bring what Equity has learned about mobilising domestic and global capital, backing entrepreneurs and small businesses, and making financial and economic inclusion a platform for jobs and shared prosperity.’

The new global commission is modelled partly on the North-South Commission, which was chaired by former German Chancellor Willy Brandt from 1977 to 1983 and whose term lapsed.

It examined economic inequality between developed and developing countries. The fresh elite global team will propose new forms of international cooperation.

Germany says the new commission will build on that legacy while responding to a fundamentally changed global environment, with regular meetings and regional consultations over the next two years before its final report in 2028.

Its recommendations are expected to feed into the global development agenda after the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals expire in 2030.

The SDGs, adopted by all UN member states in 2015, set 17 global goals covering poverty, hunger, health, education, jobs, inequality, climate change, peace and other development priorities, giving countries a common blueprint for improving living standards by 2030.

But the goals are falling short of targets, with the latest UN assessment showing only 36 percent of measurable goals are on track or making moderate progress, while 49 percent are advancing too slowly as 15 percent fall below their 2015 baseline.

An heir of supermarket chain Naivas Limited, Peter Mukuha Kago, has won a Sh777 million tax dispute against the Kenya Revenue Authority (KRA) over the financial operations of a firm that provides staffing and recruitment services to the giant retailer.

The High Court ruled in favour of HR consultancy firm Achievo Limited, associated with Mr Mukuha, arguing that the bulk of the cash it received from Naivas was not taxable income because it was for salaries and other staff costs.

The dispute followed an audit of Achievo’s financial books between 2019 and 2023, which triggered a demand of Sh777 million in value-added tax (VAT) and Sh102 million in income tax.

Court papers show that the KRA had initially asked for a sum of Sh962.7 million, but it revised the figure downwards to Sh777 million following an objection by the consultancy firm.

The court ruled that money Achievo received from Naivas to pay staff was a disbursement and therefore not subject to VAT and income tax.

‘The court is satisfied that the staff costs answer the description of a disbursement made by the appellant, as agent of Naivas Limited, to a third party (the deployed employees), and are accordingly excluded from the taxable value of the appellant’s supply by the proviso to section 13(5) of the VAT Act,’ said the judge.

The judge also overturned a May 2025 Tax Appeals Tribunal decision that had upheld KRA’s demand from the audit against Achievo.

‘I do not agree with the Tribunal’s reasoning and conclusions contained in the impugned judgment, which elevated the failure by the appellant to avail bank statements as a decisive factor in the circumstances of the case,’ he added.

Achievo was incorporated in 2013 and is linked to Naivas’ heir Peter Mukuha Kago, a member of the family of the retailer’s founder who died in 2010, leaving a vast estate. The founder shares the name with the heir.

Court papers show Achievo provided workers to Naivas Limited, with which it is associated by common directorship. Mr Kago is Deputy Managing Director and Chief of Operations of the retailer.

Under a Service Level Agreement between it and Naivas, it was mandated to hire staff and deploy them to work for Naivas supermarket stores.

The court ruled that money Achievo received from Naivas to pay staff was a disbursement and therefore not subject to VAT and income tax.

It said that the money was reimbursements, not income earned by the company, and therefore was not subject to VAT.

KRA had treated amounts paid by Naivas to Achievo, including salaries and statutory deductions for workers deployed to Naivas stores, as taxable value for VAT.

The authority said the salary costs were part of Achievo’s own costs in providing labour services and should be included in the taxable amount.

But Achievo contended that it received and disbursed the money, described as the staff costs, without mark-up, as agent of Naivas Limited, separately from the agency or management fee on which it duly accounted for VAT.

The dispute centred on Section 13(5) of the VAT Act, which generally includes costs incurred by a supplier when providing services, but excludes payments made by an agent for a client.

KRA’s original objection decision confirmed Sh962.7 million as due, but a partial consent recorded on November 29, 2024 reduced the amount under dispute to Sh777 million.

Achievo appealed to the Tax Appeals Tribunal, which dismissed the case on May 2, 2025.

The Tribunal accepted that the service agreement described Achievo as Naivas’s agent for some purposes, but found that the company had not proved that the staff-cost reimbursements were fully passed to employees.

It relied partly on Achievo’s failure to produce bank statements showing the movement of the money.

Achievo challenged that finding at the High Court, arguing that KRA had never asked for bank statements during the objection process.

Allowing the second appeal, the court found that KRA had only asked Achievo for seven categories of documents, including invoices, payroll records, NSSF remittances, employee contracts, service agreements and proof of payments.

‘Notably, bank statements did not form part of the documents requested,’ the court said in the judgment dated September 22, 2026.

‘Had the respondent considered those statements critical to the determination of the VAT dispute, nothing would have been easier than expressly requiring their production together with the other documents sought,’ it added.

The court held that the tax assessment and objection process did not require Achievo to prove that every shilling received for staff costs had been paid to employees.

‘By elevating the absence of bank statements into a decisive factor,’ the judge said, ‘the Tribunal, in my view, conflated the burden of proof with a requirement to produce documents whose relevance to the dispute had not been demonstrated.’

He found that staff payments and amounts involved were not disputed during the audit or objection stages.

‘The dispute between the parties-as evidenced by the letters of audit assessment, the Notice of Objection, and the Objection Decision-was purely legal,’ the court said.

It upheld the Tribunal’s finding that Achievo and Naivas had an agency relationship under their agreement and addendum.

The court found that the direct staff costs matched the payroll records and that KRA had not alleged that Achievo retained any part of the money or added a profit margin.

It rejected KRA’s argument that Achievo’s status as the workers’ legal employer prevented the payments from being treated as disbursements.

‘The proper question for consideration for purposes of section 13(5) of the VAT Act ought to have been whether the appellant merely administered and paid over the employment costs for and on behalf of Naivas,’ the court said.

It concluded that the staff costs were payments made for Naivas and were excluded from the taxable value under Section 13(5).

The court also referred to changes made by the Finance Act 2026, which expressly excluded employee costs, salaries, statutory deductions and other employment-related costs in labour outsourcing arrangements from VAT.

The judge stressed that the amendments did not apply to Achievo’s disputed period, but said they were consistent with what he considered a clarification of the existing position.

In June 2025, Fitch downgraded African Export-Import Bank (Afreximbank) from BBB to BBB minus. On January 28, 2026 it downgraded Afreximbank again, to BB+, which is junk. That came after the bank announced it was ending its rating relationship with Fitch, and the credit rating agency then withdrew its ratings altogether. Since then, GCR confirmed Afreximbank at A in March 2026.

The concerns Fitch raised were the performance of Afreximbank’s loan book. Fitch calculated that non-performing loans had risen to 7.1 percent, partly because it classified exposures to Ghana, South Sudan and Zambia as non-performing. Afreximbank reported a non-performing loan ratio of 2.44 percent. This difference reflected more than accounting treatment.

Afreximbank argued that Fitch had not adequately incorporated the bank’s treaty-based structure, its establishment agreement and the preferred creditor treatment it enjoys among member states. Within the AU, the African Peer Review Mechanism (APRM) raised similar concerns, arguing that sovereign exposures within an African multilateral institution should be assessed with a full understanding of the legal and institutional protections around those exposures.

An institution, serving the same markets, with access to broadly the same pool of public information, received materially different assessments. That divergence shows how much credit analysis depends on classification, context and the strength of the underlying evidence.

It is against this backdrop that the launch of the Africa Credit Rating Agency (AfCRA) on October 7 is both timely and necessary.

For years, African governments, institutions and market participants have questioned whether the global credit rating system fully reflects the realities of African economies.

Concerns have also centred on methodology, interpretation of sovereign risk, treatment of institutional structures and quality of information available to analysts making those assessments.

AfCRA gives the continent an opportunity to improve that process.

The African Union has positioned the agency as an independent, private sector-driven institution that will assess sovereigns, sub-sovereigns and corporates using African data, expertise and context. It will sit alongside established global agencies while adding greater depth to the assessment of African credit risk.

That ambition is important because its success largely depends on the quality of the information available to support those assessments.

The recent experience of Afreximbank offers a useful test case for AfCRA. The value of Afreximbank’s preferred creditor status to a credit assessment depends on a clear body of evidence showing how that status has been treated during periods of sovereign stress, how consistently governments have honoured it, what it means for recoveries and how much protection it provides relative to ordinary commercial lending.

While the institutional argument matters, the data demonstrating its effect matters just as much. AfCRA will, therefore, need to establish credibility through the rigour of its evidence.

An African rating agency will naturally bring deeper familiarity with the continent’s institutions, political economy and development structures. That understanding can improve the quality of analysis, particularly where conventional models fail to capture the way African institutions are designed or how economic activity takes place.

Investors will still expect the conclusions to be measurable, comparable and defensible. This is why the data question should sit at the centre of AfCRA’s work.

AfCRA’s inputs should be independently produced and open to inspection, so an investor can check the evidence and not only the conclusion. This way, the agency can help raise the standard of disclosure across the continent.

AfCRA’s success will ultimately depend on the quality of the information it brings to market and the confidence investors place in its analysis, giving Africa a stronger basis on which its risk is understood, priced and financed.

Yes, beyond cars, engineering, and football, Germany has wine too, and it hopes Kenyan consumers will make room for it.

That was the message at the first-ever German wine tasting event, hosted by the German Embassy in collaboration with the Ministry of Agriculture, Viticulture, Environment, and Forestry of Rhineland-Palatinate in Westlands, Nairobi.

The event brought together key players in the wine industry, including importers, sommeliers and distributors, alongside wine producers and representatives from Rhineland-Palatinate (Rheinland-Pfalz), one of Germany’s major wine-producing regions.

According to Joachim Binz, Managing Director and founder of Wineconsale, an export house for German wines, the timing is right.

‘German wines were extremely expensive and sought after about 100 years ago. We have menus from top restaurants at the time where a bottle of German Riesling was double or triple the price of a bottle of Ch Steau Latour, Ch Steau Lafite, or Ch Steau Mouton Rothschild,’ he says.

German wine production later went through a difficult period, particularly between the 1950s and 1980s, when producers leaned heavily into sweeter styles. As demand for sweeter wines grew, some producers used added sugar to achieve the desired sweetness. Then, in late 1980s, consumer tastes shifted toward drier wines, forcing producers to adapt again.

Now, Joachim believes, the younger generation of German winemakers is opening a new chapter.

‘They have been learning a lot about international markets and wine styles and are now introducing German wines in newer styles and with more focus on quality,’ he says. ‘Now is the right time because it is always easier to showcase something great rather than something that’s just nice.’

And if Germany is making a case for its wines, it might as well start with Riesling. Arguably the country’s best-known wine export, the grape produces everything from bone-dry to sweet wines, known for their bright acidity, aromatic fruit flavours, and ageing potential.

‘I would say Riesling is the business card for German wines,’ says Joachim, adding that Germany is the world’s largest producer of the grape. ‘It is a very old grape variety, with more than 400 synonyms, and the more names a grape variety has, the older it is. We actually celebrate its birthday in March every year.’

According to Victoria Mulu-Munywoki, a wine consultant, the combination of Riesling’s pronounced fruit flavours and residual sweetness could appeal to Kenyan wine drinkers, who may appreciate some sweetness but tend to pay more attention to a wine’s fruitiness than its sugar levels.

Its high acidity could also make some styles a good match for Kenyan food, particularly dishes that are fried, fatty, or carry a little heat.

‘We in Kenya love a little bit of heat in our food. Pili pili kidogo, some oil, and everything in between,’ she says.

‘So you need acidity to cut through the fattiness in deep-fried and fatty food, but at the same time, that fruit quality tempers down the heat.’

But Riesling is not the only grape putting German wine on the map. ‘Germany is also Pinot paradise,’ says Joachim.

Germany, he adds, is the world’s largest producer of Pinot Blanc, locally known as Weißburgunder, the second-largest producer of Pinot Gris, also known as Grauburgunder, and the third-largest producer of Pinot Noir, which goes by the name Spätburgunder in Germany.

And there is plenty more beyond the Pinot family. Germany grows more than 100 grape varieties, including Chardonnay and Sauvignon Blanc, which were among those featured at the Nairobi tasting.

Those varieties are grown across roughly 100,000 hectares of vineyards, spread across the country’s wine-growing regions. And one of the most important is Rhineland-Palatinate, where the wines presented at the event come from.

‘It is one of the warmest areas in Germany,’ says Stefan Sander, from Sander Winery. ‘Its climate is almost Mediterranean-like.’

The combination of warm days and cool nights works particularly well for grape growing, including Riesling.

‘The grapes ripen in the sun during the day, developing those delicious flavours, and then the cool night breeze helps preserve their acidity,’ says Victoria. ‘And acidity gives the wine structure, helps it age and gives it that refreshing quality that makes it so good for pairing with food.’

But producing the wine is only part of the equation. For the German producers hoping to enter Kenya, the next challenge is finding the right local partners to get the bottles into the market.

‘We are looking for people who are legally able to import and have introductions to the market for the long term,’ says Joachim.

For now, he sees the wines finding their way into bars, good restaurants and hotels rather than supermarket shelves.

‘No one knows German wine here so far,’ he says. ‘It needs to go through the gastronomic route first, where people can find it on the menu or get a recommendation from the waiter or sommelier. And maybe then, in a few years, we can find our way onto the shelves.’

And the producers aren’t only looking at consumers who want traditional wine. Dealcoholised (non-alcoholic) options are also part of the German offering, allowing people who choose not to drink alcohol to still enjoy something of the wine experience.

And while the exact price point is still difficult to pin down, Stefan says they will not be among the cheapest wines on the market.

With the Germans ready to make their case, the bigger question is whether Kenya is ready to listen.

According to Wanjiru Mureithi, President of the Sommeliers of Kenya Association and founder of Winenjiru, German wine is not entirely new to Kenya. However, its presence so far has been relatively small.

‘There are some Kenyan importers who have German wines, but the exposure has been very limited,’ she says.

But Wanjiru is optimistic that consumption will grow as awareness increases.

China has given Kenya Sh129.5 million ($1 million) to strengthen preparedness for Ebola following the confirmation of the country’s first imported case of the disease.

The funding is part of a $2 million (Sh259.5 million) cash grant handed over to the National Treasury on Thursday by Chinese Ambassador to Kenya Guo Haiyan. Of the grant, Sh129.5 million will support Ebola preparedness, while a similar amount will go towards drought response.

‘At the request of the Kenyan government, the Chinese government is providing a cash grant of $1 million to support the Kenyan government in strengthening infrastructure for preparing for Ebola virus disease in the counties identified as being at very high and high risk,’ said Ms Guo.

‘China is willing to continue strengthening development cooperation with Kenya under the frameworks of the Forum on China-Africa Cooperation and the Global Development Initiative.’

The grant comes as Kenya steps up surveillance and preparedness following the death of its first confirmed Ebola (Bundibugyo virus) disease patient. The patient, a Kenyan national, had travelled from the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) through Uganda before arriving in Nairobi.

Health Cabinet Secretary Aden Duale said the case was imported and that Kenya was not experiencing widespread transmission.

‘Kenya is not experiencing an Ebola outbreak but is dealing with an isolated imported case,’ said Mr Duale.

The government said it has intensified screening at points of entry, contact tracing and surveillance, with 66 people currently in quarantine as health authorities monitor them for possible Ebola infection.

As of October 6, the Ministry of Health said 652,000 travellers had been screened and 267 samples tested. A total of 4,971 healthcare workers had also been trained in Ebola prevention and management.

The International Finance Corporation (IFC) is set to lend $10 million (Sh1.3 billion) to Mombasa-based medical device manufacturer Revital Healthcare (EPZ) Limited to aid its expansion.

The company, in which the founder Rajnikant Chandulal Vora holds a 64 percent stake, is investing a total of $23.4 million (Sh3 billion) in the project. Dr Vora and his family hold a total of 73 percent of the company, with other shareholders holding the remaining 27 percent.

Additional funding is coming from internally generated cash and financing from a joint venture partner. The proposed IFC loan is a 10-year senior facility.

‘The investment will finance additional kitting and cold-chain infrastructure at the existing Kikambala facility, as well as the development of a new logistics and warehousing hub on a 20-acre parcel within the Dongo Kundu Special Economic Zone (SEZ) in Mombasa County, Kenya,’ IFC said in its investment disclosures.

‘The project is expected to strengthen the company’s ability to serve regional healthcare markets and support employment creation.’

Healthcare kitting and fulfilment involves assembling, packaging and distributing healthcare-related products as complete kits to patients, providers, clinics, research sites and healthcare facilities.

The benefits of kitting in healthcare logistics include increased consistency and accuracy, stronger regulatory compliance, and simplified inventory management.

IFC says its long-term financing will support Revital Healthcare’s expansion without putting pressure on the company’s cash flows.

‘In the prevailing market, most banks offer manufacturing companies funding tenors of up to 3-5 years. Such shorter-term financing could put strain on Revital’s debt profile, which includes short-term facilities,’ the global financier said.

Revital Healthcare was established in 2006 and produces medical consumables and devices including syringes, needles, diagnostic products, neonatal care products, catheters and personal protective equipment (PPE).

The company exports its medical products to more than 60 countries worldwide through partnerships with leading global health organisations, including the United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF), Program for Appropriate Technology in Health (PATH), and the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation.

Other partners are the United States Agency for International Development (USAID) and the Africa Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (Africa CDC).

IFC says the company’s manufacturing operations and product portfolio are supported by internationally recognised certifications and regulatory approvals, including 10 World Health Organization (WHO) Prequalified products, United States Food and Drug Administration (US FDA) 510(k) clearances and Medical Device Single Audit Program (MDSAP) certification.

‘The project is expected to expand access to affordable, quality health products for healthcare facilities and humanitarian settings across Kenya and East Africa, including essential healthcare kits for vulnerable populations reliant on donor-supported services,’ IFC said.

‘It will also support skills development and create direct and indirect employment opportunities in medical supplies manufacturing and logistics. Beyond these impacts, IFC’s financing will strengthen the resilience of the regional medical supplies market by supporting a systemically important player, helping scale critical manufacturing infrastructure while promoting greater market diversification and regional integration.’

Revital Healthcare is the latest Kenyan firm to be supported by IFC, which has backed scores of local firms through debt or equity investments.

In 46 developing countries, governments now spend more on loan interest payments than on either health or education, according to UN figures. Across the developing world, more than 3.4 billion people live in countries caught in this squeeze.

A hospital without medicines and a school without books often share the same underlying problem: money that could be invested in people and productive economies is instead being used to service increasingly expensive debt.

Africa feels this imbalance particularly acutely. Developing countries have historically borrowed internationally at rates two to four times higher than the US and six to 12 times higher than Germany. UNDP estimates that subjectivities in foreign credit ratings cost African countries as much as $74.5 billion through excessive interest and forgone lending.

At the United Nations General Assembly in New York in September, African leaders again called for international financial architecture and more accurate assessments of African risk.

But Africa must not only argue that its risk is mispriced. We must also produce more of the evidence that allows capital to price African opportunity differently. Trade can help us do that.

Investors want to understand what an investment will produce. Africa therefore needs more investment-ready projects with a clear economic and commercial case: the costs they will reduce, the trade they will improve, the revenues they can generate and the additional investment they can attract.

Public and concessional capital has an important role to play. It can fund prefeasibility studies, project preparation and initial risk, helping make projects bankable enough for development finance institutions and commercial investors to invest.

Trade strengthens the fundamentals on which economies are assessed.

When goods cross borders faster and at lower cost, businesses reach larger markets, exporters earn foreign currency, governments collect revenue. Stronger exports and more productive economies can, over time, strengthen investor confidence.

Realising this opportunity requires investment in the infrastructure that makes trade possible: roads connecting producers to markets, efficient ports and border posts, digital trade systems, standards infrastructure and finance for businesses to produce, process and export.

Africa should continue demanding a global financial system that prices its risk fairly. But we should not wait for that system to change.

Trade will not solve Africa’s borrowing problem on its own. But by building stronger economies, attracting investment and demonstrating measurable returns, it can help change the evidence on which Africa is priced.

Co-operative Bank is among 11 firms that have received a Sh12.9 billion legacy debt write-off from the National Treasury, with some loans dating back to the 1970s.

The Treasury says the loans, wiped off its books in the year ended June 2026, had accumulated over decades.

Officials add that recovery had been undermined by a range of circumstances, including borrowers’ financial difficulties, the collapse or liquidation of entities and projects, and the lack of proper or traceable loan documentation.

Treasury’s debt schedule shows Co-op Bank, Kenya’s third largest lender by assets and deposit accounts, had Sh267 million written off during the year.

The unpaid loan has raised questions about how the lender, which posted Sh29.75 billion profit last year, was struggling to pay off a debt of Sh267 million, which initially stood at Sh339 million.

But a senior official at the bank said the exposure came from an old government kitty received by the bank for on-lending to smallholder farmers in cotton, irrigation, pyrethrum and dairy sub-sectors, making the liability a legacy government programme rather than recent commercial lending.

The government had tasked Co-op with facilitating the issue of loans to farmers under co-operative societies, collecting the repayments and remitting the money to the Treasury, but poor repayment left residual balances long after the programmes collapsed.

‘A majority of farmers didn’t pay back, and that has reflected as the outstanding amount [in Treasury books] over the years,’ the official previously said.

The write-off leaves Equity Bank as the only privately owned lender remaining on Treasury’s list of borrowers under on-lending arrangements, with the country’s largest lender by deposit accounts owing Sh279 million in arrears from Sh534 million channelled through its network.

The Treasury says the debts chalked off form part of its book clean-up exercise targeting Sh26.33 billion.

The officials add that the Treasury sought Cabinet approval to write off Sh13.29 billion in outstanding principal and waive a further Sh13.04 billion in accumulated interest arrears which had become difficult or impossible to recover.

‘The write-offs were undertaken as part of efforts to clean up the National Treasury’s loan records, address long-outstanding audit queries and facilitate implementation of Public Accounts Committee (PAC) recommendations on non-performing Government loans,’ the Treasury writes in the latest annual debt management report.

The Treasury says the loans had remained unpaid for years due to financial constraints, collapsed projects, ceased operations, missing records, disputes over loan terms and legal changes that transferred liabilities to county governments.

The defunct Local Government Loans Authority accounted for the largest balance among the 11 entities, with Sh7.594 billion outstanding at June 2025 before the debt was wiped from Treasury’s books.

The authority historically facilitated capital development borrowing by local authorities, which accumulated liabilities to the national government before the system was replaced by devolved county governments.

Treasury also wrote off Sh2.461 billion owed by the National Water Conservation and Pipeline Corporation, a body formed in 1987 to develop public water supplies and reduce reliance on the Exchequer.

The corporation has since been reconstituted as the National Water Harvesting and Storage Authority, responsible for strategic national water storage, water harvesting and conservation.