Category: Business Daily

Top stockbrokers have been locked out of a mobile trading platform that will from today allow investors to buy and sell shares directly from M-Pesa.

Safaricom has tapped Kestrel Capital as the sole broker to process trades on the mobile money transfer service, in a shift from the decades-old tradition of relying on stockbrokers for buying and selling equities.

Kestrel was ranked 11th among Kenya’s 22 stockbrokers based on the brokerage commissions earned by the market intermediaries in the six months to June.

The move is intended to replicate the success in the bond market where, in 2017, investors were allowed to buy and sell bonds over mobile phones in a world first.

Top brokers are keen to be part of the M-Pesa shift known as Ziidi Trader in the hope of generating extra commissions from the expected rise of retail investors. Under the scheme, which President William Ruto is expected to launch today, anyone with a mobile phone will buy shares through the M-Pesa app, with Kestrel Capital embedded in the background.

For years, investors were required to open a Central Depository System (CDS) account with a stockbroker and only use M-Pesa for payment, not trading.

Investors under Ziidi will not require an individual CDS account because M-Pesa is pooling funds from multiple investors into a single account managed by Kestrel.

This is expected to help facilitate efficient, anonymous, and often faster share trading, which the NSE believes will rev up the participation of retail investors.

Read: NSE investors to buy, sell shares directly via M-Pesa

Kestrel is set to reap initial gains from the innovation, having shepherded the three-month pilot in trading of shares via M-Pesa.

‘Other stockbrokers will be brought on board at some stage, but the timeline has not been provided yet,’ said Francis Mwangi, the CEO and part-owner of Kestrel.

‘Being an innovation, it will still be important to open it up to the market and see what other learnings we can get and the adjustments we can make.’

Kenya’s number one stockbroker, Dry Associates, controlled commissions of Sh236.7 million in the six months to June out of the Sh1.46 billion in earnings shared by the 22 firms.

It was followed by Standard Investment Bank, Faida Investment Bank, EFG Hermes Kenya and Capital A Investment Bank.

Ziidi Trader is embedded in the M-Pesa app, including relying on Safaricom’s existing know your customer (KYC) credentials, while customers’ mobile money PINs are passcodes to authorise trading and other actions on the platform.

Individuals using the platform will be required to opt into the Ziidi Trader by launching its mini-application on the M-Pesa app after which they agree to the terms and conditions.

Investors will have an overview of the market, including all listed companies, their logos and descriptions, as well as key market data such as buy and sell orders (bid/ask prices) and available shares.

The transactions are capped at M-Pesa’s daily limit of Sh500,000.

On the backend, Kestrel will have a single CDS account, which will hold shares bought by the retail investors.

The stockbroker will receive a trading file from the NSE at the end of the trading day containing all transactions from clients and upload the same on the omnibus account.

‘By leveraging the M-Pesa KYC and not requiring customers to open new CDS accounts, the principal objective is to make the onboarding process easy,’ said Mr Mwangi.

‘The NSE has just over one million CDS accounts, but M-Pesa users are more than 35 million and that’s the target market we are looking at. We believe this innovation will be able to tap into a significant portion of the M-Pesa users within two or three years.’

The direct shares trading via the M-Pesa platform represents the latest leverage on the mobile money platform to grow retail investing after the establishment of Ziidi Money Market Fund (MMF), a collaboration between Safaricom and two fund managers, Standard Investment Bank (SIB) and ALA Capital.

The MMF, which was approved in November 2024, has attracted nearly half of Kenya’s unit trust investors, having closed in September 2025 with 1.15 million customers, according to data from the telecoms operator.

The launch of Ziidi Trader will present a new avenue for Safaricom to earn fees under its financial services division as it continues to diversify its business from just person-to-person transfers.

Safaricom earned Sh100 million in revenues from Ziidi MMF, representing about 0.6 percent of the asset base.

NSE chief executive Frank Mwiti earlier said the direct share sale will ease the burden of opening a trading account, including selecting stockbrokers, filling out forms such as know-your-customer and waiting time.

‘Leveraging M-Pesa makes it fairly seamless, and there is the ability to scale given the platform is already used by millions,’ Mr Mwiti told the Business Daily.

NSE’s five-year strategy seeks to bring at least nine million active retail investors to market by 2029, including Kenyans living and working in the diaspora.

The idea for direct shares trading has been controversial in the recent past, with brokers accusing the NSE of wanting to usurp their role in a fallout that triggered calls to oust Mr Mwiti in June.

The NSE is betting that the direct trading of shares via mobile phones will boost the participation of retail investors at the bourse.

The market rally witnessed in the past two years at the NSE has failed to attract significant new investors, with the number of participants remaining relatively unchanged.

The Capital Markets Authority (CMA) disclosed that the number of investors buying and selling shares at the NSE only grew by a measly 0.2 percent, or 2,621 to 1.3 million over two years.

This has meant that the boom witnessed at the Nairobi bourse has failed to reverse the drop in equity investors, which stood at over two million in September 2022.

The High Court has upheld a compensation award to six individuals wrongly accused of involvement in a Sh30 million robbery at Equity Bank, ruling that police and prosecutors acted without evidence and violated their constitutional rights.

The court dismissed an appeal by the Attorney General and the Inspector-General of Police, affirming an award of Sh1.1 million to each claimant for unlawful arrest, detention and malicious prosecution. The total payout amounts to Sh6.6 million.

The beneficiaries include an IT expert, casual workers linked to his office, a businessman and university students.

The case arose from an early morning robbery in October 2015 at Equity Bank’s Othaya branch, where Sh30 million was reported stolen after robbers, posing as auditors from the lender’s head office, gained access to the bank and escaped with the cash.

Police detectives arrested several suspects, including the IT specialist and individuals associated with his workplace.

They were charged before the Othaya Magistrate’s Court and detained – some for several days – before being released on bond, which some were unable to raise immediately.

One university student testified that he was detained for days and admitted to a Sh3 million bond he could not afford, forcing him to remain in remand custody. He told the court that the detention cost him a scholarship and a job opportunity.

Another claimant was arrested while visiting a relative who was already in police custody.

The criminal case collapsed in August 2016 after the trial court acquitted the accused under Section 210 of the Criminal Procedure Code, citing insufficient evidence.

Prosecutors conceded that there was no evidence linking the men to the robbery and acknowledged that investigations had been flawed.

Following their acquittal, the six sued the State for damages, arguing that they had been arrested, detained and prosecuted without reasonable or probable cause.

They said they were subjected to psychological torture during their unlawful detention, suffered trauma and humiliation, and that their constitutional rights were violated.

In 2018, the Othaya Magistrate’s Court awarded each claimant Sh1.1 million in damages, prompting the State to appeal on grounds that the arrests were justified and the compensation excessive.

The High Court rejected those arguments, noting that the prosecution failed to call witnesses to rebut the respondents’ evidence.

‘The State filed charges routinely, not to uphold justice,’ the judge said, describing the arrests as baseless.

He criticised investigators for indiscriminately detaining individuals, including visitors checking on suspects, terming the conduct reckless and malicious.

‘The practice of arresting young men first and later deciding what charges to impose is not only barbaric but warrants judicial condemnation,’ the judge said.

The court found that all elements of malicious prosecution had been established, noting that the State initiated proceedings without justification, the case ended in the accused’s favour, and malice was evident in the investigators’ conduct.

The judge emphasised that probable cause ‘cannot exist where the State admits there was no evidence’.

While acknowledging that inflation and the seriousness of the robbery-with-violence charge could have justified higher damages, the court declined to vary the award due to the absence of a cross-appeal.

Unremitted deductions to the National Social Security Fund (NSSF) reached a cumulative Sh5.1 billion in the year to June 2025, revealing the swelling value of missed benefits to employees.

The unremitted contributions for the review period alone comprised Sh1.01 billion from members and Sh1.01 billion from employers, tallying to Sh2.03 billion. Accrued unremitted contributions to the fund rose from Sh3.14 billion in the prior year.

Unremitted NSSF deductions deny employees their rightful benefits as the contributions are not invested in a timely fashion as envisioned.

The value of the accrued contributions has risen amid higher NSSF deductions which are set to reach as much as Sh6,480 per month for employees at the end of this month.

NSSF says it is engaging in a variety of remedies to recover the unremitted funds including penalties which top Sh11.6 billion.

‘The fund accrued unremitted contributions amounting to Sh5.1 billion. The arrears have attracted penalties amounting to Sh11.6 billion which is not included in the financial statements because of prudence considerations,’ the NSSF said in its latest annual report.

‘The fund has instituted recovery efforts through alternative dispute resolution, court action and intergovernmental relations technical committee for cases involving defunct local authorities.’

Employers risk fines that run anywhere from millions to billions of shillings for the non-remittance of the deductions. The NSSF Act sets the penalty for a default in payment at five percent of the amount of that contribution which shall be added to the contribution for each month.

The non-remittance of funds to the NSSF mirrors the plague faced by other pension schemes including the State’s Public Service Superannuation Scheme (PSSF).

The government had failed to remit deductions of Sh1.2 billion to the civil servants’ pension scheme according to the Office of the Auditor General’s report for the year to June 2025.

Delays in remitting the deductions means the funds have less time to earn returns for workers, hurting their benefits at retirement.

The NSSF received enhanced contributions in the period against the backdrop of higher employer/employee deductions.

Total contributions received for the year stood at Sh81.9 billion from Sh59.1 billion previously.

The contributions comprised Sh28.8 billion as Tier I and Sh52.5 billion in Tier II contributions.

The remaining balance covers Sh28.9 million in contributions to the old provident fund and Sh568.5 million to the new provident fund.

The Retirement Benefits Authority (RBA) said previously that it was pushing for changes to the law to rein in the chief executive officers (CEOs) and accounting officers of State agencies who collect but fail to remit the statutory deductions.

‘From where we sit, we are in the process of amending the law, so that all employers, whatsoever, including CEOs who do not remit those contributions to be held accountable and to be punished from day one,’ RBA chief executive officer Charles Machira said in a September 2025 interview.

The industry’s total unremitted contributions stood at Sh72 billion as of June 2025. Out of this, 98 percent are linked to county governments and quasi-government institutions including cash-strapped public universities and sugar millers.

The retirement industry regulator also plans to enlist the help of the Kenya Revenue Authority (KRA) in its quest to collect the unremitted pension deductions.

In Kenya, the healthcare pain point is no longer infrastructure but the inadequacy of usable and shareable healthcare data across facilities and counties.

This failure undermines the continuity of care and weakens progress toward Universal Health Coverage (UHC).

In an era of rapid technological development, Kenya’s digital health landscape should seek a cohesive and interoperable data network that functions effectively across all 47 counties.

Today, information breakdown is common. A patient treated for a condition in Kisumu may seek care in another county without access to their medical records, such as laboratory results, surgical notes, medication history, allergies, imaging reports, or follow-up plans.

In such situations, clinicians are forced to make critical decisions with incomplete information, compromising quality of care, patient safety, disease surveillance, and the broader promise of UHC.

The result is often a restart of care in that tests are repeated, diagnoses delayed, and treatment plans improvised. Clinical data can be lost along the way, which can negatively impact treatment modalities and outcomes.

Seamless information sharing across the healthcare space is vital and not a convenience. It ensures appropriate clinical decisions are made, which facilitates high-quality continuity of care that sits at the core of effective and safe healthcare delivery.

The UHC means that all people have access to the full range of quality health services they need, when and where they need them, without financial hardship.

When patient data does not follow the patient, providers can make avoidable or repetitive clinical decisions, driving up costs for households and the health system alike. Where data remains in silos rather than connected networks, UHC becomes fragmented rather than coordinated.

Beyond individual care, health data is essential for disease surveillance outbreaks, forecasting pharmaceutical drug supply chains and informing health policy. With the absence of easily accessible and shareable data across healthcare networks, the above-mentioned activities are negatively impacted.

When data that is to fully inform which diseases are ravaging Kenyans is not complete, then it is difficult to map out hotspots regions and preventive actions fall short of their targets. The same data missing at the bedside is the data needed for outbreak detection.

Epidemiology on diseases such as stroke and cancer has a paucity of data, which translates to inadequate mapping, missed signals and delayed action.

Drug consumption data serves to inform pharmaceutical services on the drugs volumes that are necessary for the vital, essential and non-essential groups. With proper supply chain forecasting drugs will be available in the healthcare facilities ensuring optimal health. When there is inadequate drug consumption data, missed early warning, drug stock-outs, and delayed response ensue.

Whereas there is continuous digitisation of healthcare services, the many existing healthcare information management systems are fragmented. These digital tools fail to achieve communication across counties or different levels of care resulting in diminished meaningful value.

Kenya’s challenge is, therefore, not the absence of data, but the lack of interoperable, clinically useful data systems designed to support care delivery rather than administrative reporting alone.

If Kenya is serious about Universal Health Coverage, then medical data must move from being an afterthought to becoming a core clinical tool and a foundational part of health infrastructure.

National and county governments should reinforce an integrated digital healthcare system where data is secure, accessed timely across the continuum of care. Without this shift, even well-meaning health improvements will continue to function with little visibility in the absence of this change, diminishing their effectiveness.

Kenya’s national health information systems face potential disruption following the withdrawal of external funding that supports critical digital infrastructure.

An analysis by the University of Nairobi’s Centre for Epidemiological Modelling and Analysis (CEMA) shows that the Sh513 million allocated by the US President’s Emergency Plan for Aids Relief (PEPFAR) for the 2024-25 financial year to maintain these platforms is ending, with no domestic budget in place to replace it.

Health information systems are digital platforms that collect, store, manage, and transmit medical data across healthcare facilities.

They enable tracking of patient records, disease surveillance, immunisation coverage, and service delivery.

The systems include Electronic Medical Records (EMR) used in facilities nationwide, Kenya Health Information System (KHIS2), Chanjo KE for immunisation tracking, Damu KE for blood services management, and HIV data platforms.

They depend on donor funding for maintenance, upgrades, staff training, and cybersecurity support.

‘External funding is used to pay for installation and maintenance of information systems and generally strengthens health system building blocks (governance, financing, and service delivery),’ read the analysis.

According to CEMA, most donor support for these systems operates off-budget, giving the State limited visibility into actual operational costs.

‘Health information systems, including EMRs, KHIS2, Chanjo KE, Damu KE, and HIV data platforms, also depend heavily on external funding, with PEPFAR allocation of around Sh513 million for maintenance and support in the financial year 2024-25,’ CEMA said.

The EMR requires constant maintenance to function. Without paid technical support, server problems could prevent clinics from accessing patient histories, blocking doctors from retrieving viral load results for HIV patients and pharmacists from verifying medication histories.

Similarly, KHIS2, which aggregates health data from thousands of facilities daily, could face operational challenges when database management and backup system contracts expire, a situation that would force health facilities to rely on paper reporting while compromising the digital infrastructure that converts reports into national surveillance data needed for disease outbreak detection.

In addition, Chanjo KE provides real-time data, allowing health officials to identify children missing vaccinations. It coordinates blood supply between donation centres and hospitals, enabling facilities to locate available blood supplies and blood banks to track inventory and expiration dates.

Meanwhile, HIV programme monitoring, which tracks hundreds of thousands of people on antiretroviral treatment, also faces significant disruption. It is through this programme that specialists monitor treatment adherence, appointment attendance, viral load testing, and treatment failure risk across the country’s HIV care network.

However, the government cannot immediately allocate replacement funds without detailed cost assessments required to determine exact transition costs, a process that has not yet been done.

Lately, there has been a lot of talk about the privatisation of big national companies-a subject so consequential for our nation’s economic trajectory, especially its role in strengthening Kenya’s competitiveness and unlocking value in our State-owned enterprises (SOEs).

At the heart of this discussion is the Kenya Pipeline Company (KPC), in some quarters considered the ‘family silver’ given its strategic positioning in Kenya’s economic landscape. Currently, KPC is undergoing a legally mandated process toward partial public ownership and listing on the Nairobi Securities Exchange (NSE).

Global experience over the past three decades indicates that privatisation has increasingly shifted from full divestments toward more structured mixed-ownership approaches.

The Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) notes that such approaches often involve partial listings, phased divestments, and the retention by the state of significant minority or majority stakes where there is a continued public-interest rationale.

While concerns have been raised about potential loss of national control or distributional outcomes, others view privatisation as a mechanism to address operational inefficiencies. In this context, there is a need for clear public information on the nature of privatisation, its implementation, and its implications for Kenya’s economy and consumers.

Privatisation should not be understood as a wholesale divestment of public assets, nor as a remedy for all structural challenges.

It generally involves the selective transfer of ownership or management rights in commercial public enterprises to private or public markets, conducted within defined legal and regulatory frameworks.

In Kenya, this process is governed by the Privatisation Act 2025, which establishes requirements relating to transparency, valuation, oversight, and investor protection. The framework is intended to ensure that privatisation processes are structured, accountable, and guided by economic considerations and public-interest objectives.

Evidence from OECD and emerging economies suggests that, when supported by strong institutions, effective regulation, transparency, and sound corporate governance, such approaches can be associated with improvements in efficiency, competition, and consumer outcomes.

State-owned enterprises (SOEs) play an important role in Kenya’s economy. However, as is the case with many large public institutions globally, they may face structural constraints related to bureaucratic processes and limited access to capital.

Policy initiatives such as partial public listings are intended to introduce market-based discipline, support operational efficiency, and expand access to managerial and technical expertise.

Kenya has prior experience with this approach, with companies including Safaricom, KCB Group, and KenGen having undergone public listings and subsequently operated as publicly traded entities.

Listing public enterprises on the NSE also provides a mechanism for wider participation in the ownership of national assets. Public offerings allow individual investors, pension funds, and domestic institutional investors to acquire shareholdings in strategic enterprises.

This broadening of ownership can contribute to financial inclusion and the development of domestic capital markets, which are relevant to long-term economic growth and financial stability.

From a fiscal standpoint, structured privatisation may reduce pressure on public finances by enabling the reallocation of resources toward priority areas such as education, healthcare, and infrastructure. When appropriately designed, such approaches aim to balance efficiency in the use of public resources with continued oversight of strategically important national assets.

The Kenya Pipeline Company (KPC) is a central component of the petroleum logistics network, operating storage and pipeline infrastructure linking Mombasa to inland markets and generating substantial revenues.

While KPC remains profitable under State ownership, various assessments and stakeholder inputs have identified areas of potential improvement, including the need for system upgrades, capacity expansion and diversification.

The proposed KPC initial public offering and retention of a government shareholding seek to provide access to additional capital and expertise to support these objectives, rather than transfer control over strategic national infrastructure. The stated aim is to strengthen operational performance, service reliability, and its overall contribution to the economy.

Privatisation should be considered a tool of public economic management rather than a partisan issue.

When implemented within a clear legal and regulatory framework, it can support competitiveness, unlock value, and expand opportunities for broader economic participation.

Privatisation provides a mechanism for citizens to acquire stakes in State-owned enterprises, strengthening these companies, deepening domestic capital markets, and contributing to the effective management of public resources.

Over time, KenGen has operated under a mixed-ownership structure, with the government retaining a majority stake alongside minority participation by private investors.

As a result, the firm has expanded renewable energy capacity and accessed a range of development financing options. This experience is often cited as an example of how mixed-ownership models, when combined with established governance and accountability frameworks, can support operational expansion and investment in ways that may be more challenging under fully public ownership structures.

Addressing concerns and ensuring accountability

Critics of privatisation often raise important questions regarding beneficiaries, asset valuation, and protections for workers and consumers. Such concerns are central to effective policymaking.

Kenya’s privatisation framework addresses these issues through established valuation standards, public disclosure requirements, multi-layered oversight, and mechanisms for stakeholder participation.

In the case of KPC, certain aspects of the process have been legally challenged and are subject to judicial review, reflecting the country’s constitutional commitment to due process and transparency.

When marriages end, disputes over assets often centre on visible wealth, such as the marital home, land, cars or businesses. Rarely does the fight turn to pensions, and when it does, the outcomes aren’t quite what you would expect.

In an Eldoret High Court ruling made last year, RCK vs DKK Matrimonial cause 004 2022, the court denied prayers by the applicant to lay claim to the respondent’s pension upon dissolution of the marriage.

‘Regarding the Pension provided to the Respondent through his former employer’s Provident Fund, I agree with the Respondent’s Counsel that the Applicant cannot claim to be a beneficiary thereof. Counsel urged that the Applicant is herself a teacher by profession with a Master’s Degree and is equally pensionable. Counsel therefore, understandably wondered what will happen to her own pension when she retires.

There is merit in this submission. Counsel also raised the further credible argument that the Respondent is already retired with no other source of income, hence it would be unjust for his retirement benefits to be made part of matrimonial property. I agree. In any event, what contribution, within the meaning in Section 6 of the Matrimonial Property Act, could the Applicant have made to the Pension?’

Although Kenya’s Constitution and the Matrimonial Property Act frame how assets are divided at the end of a marriage, pension savings occupy a distinct legal space governed by the Retirement Benefits Act (RBA). This separate statutory regime is central to why pension benefits are rarely divisible in divorce, even though they were accumulated during the marriage.

The Constitution states that spouses have equal rights during marriage and at its dissolution. However, according to constitutional lawyers, equality does not mean sharing all your assets.

This is implemented through legislation such as the Matrimonial Property Act, which emphasises ownership and contribution rather than entitlement.

According to the Matrimonial Property Act, matrimonial property includes the marital home, household goods and other movable or immovable property jointly owned and acquired during the marriage.

Although pensions fall within the broad category of movable property, they are treated differently due to how they are created and protected under pension law. Legal experts argue that pension contributions are personal, even if they are made during marriage.

Victor Olao, a constitutional lawyer, says pension deductions are individual by design.

“Pensions are personal savings. Whether it’s a private scheme, the NSSF scheme, or any other scheme, whatever arrangement you have for your pension is a personal and individual contribution; it’s a personal savings.” Being married does not mean that you stop being you,’ he says.

He argues that marriage does not dissolve personal identity or convert individual financial arrangements into communal property.

He cautions that classifying pensions as marital property would blur important legal boundaries.

“That would be like saying what’s in your bank account is matrimonial property,” says Mr Olao.

The lawyer adds that pension contributions come directly from personal earnings or individual financial resources, not communal funds.

“Remember, the source of your contribution is your earnings from work or other financial resources. It is not communal or joint unless you have a corporate plan for you and your family.”

The RBA, which governs all registered pension schemes in Kenya, reinforces this. According to the Act, pension benefits are funds held in trust for the exclusive benefit of an identified member. Once contributions are remitted to a pension scheme, the law considers those funds to belong to the member immediately, subjecting them to the scheme’s rules.

The benefits are not treated as general property capable of assignment, attachment, or division while the identified member is alive.

According to Mr Olao, the law recognises the specificity of pension ownership from the moment of enrollment.

“Your partner cannot claim your bank account, which is why the member number, contributor, and pensioner are all specific,” he says. “You need your identity card and PIN. During enrollment, it goes directly to your individual details. So, unless it is specifically a joint scheme, pensions cannot form part of matrimonial property.”

Confusion often arises during divorce proceedings when spouses seek to trace contributions made during the marriage.

“When you say ‘me and so-and-so bought this home,’ you demonstrate your cash trail. My money came from here; this is the lump sum that I took, so I have a share of this land or house. That completes its purpose. Now, whatever is on the table is the house, not the pension,’ says Mr Olao.

At that point, the court focuses on the property acquired, not the origin of the funds.

He adds that, once funds are invested in a joint asset, their source becomes legally irrelevant. “Where you got it from is no longer an issue, whether it was a pension or if you robbed someone. It doesn’t matter anymore. It’s just proof of contribution,” he says.

The same principle applies when one spouse takes out a loan to fund a joint investment. The liability for the loan remains personal, but the contribution is recognised. For example, if pension withdrawals are used to buy a marital home, the pension ceases to be subject to division.

Consequently, the RBA does not recognise divorce as a trigger event for the payment or division of an individual’s pension benefits. Pension trustees are only permitted to release benefits in the case of retirement, withdrawal under prescribed conditions, exit from employment, or the member’s death.

In the event of death, for example, benefits may be paid to the nominated beneficiaries or dependents. While the member is alive, payments are restricted to that individual.

The Act also stipulates that pension benefits are not part of a member’s estate for succession purposes until they are payable. This statutory protection is why pension administrators cannot act on divorce decrees as they do on probate or succession orders.

Even when courts recognise spousal contributions, pension trustees are legally bound by the RBA and cannot redirect benefits to a former spouse.

Ken Monyoncho, director at Enwealth Financial Services, says the distinction between matrimonial and pension law is intentional.

“Pension fund contributions are personal contributions. It cannot be given to someone who has not contributed,’ he says. “We don’t pay third parties. We can only pay a third party in the event of death, not divorce.’

According to the RBA, pension benefits are also non-assignable. They cannot be charged, attached, or used as security for obligations outside of the exceptions set out by law. Divorce-related claims fall outside of these exceptions and shield pension savings from division during marital dissolution.

“The moment money enters the pension scheme, it belongs to the member,” says Mr Monyoncho.

Artificial intelligence (AI) is entering a new operational phase as companies begin testing systems designed not just to respond to prompts but to plan tasks, make decisions and execute actions continuously within business environments.

While most organisations have so far adopted AI as a productivity layer, the model is now shifting as agentic AI systems are developed to pursue defined goals over time and coordinate multiple actions rather than stop after completing single tasks.

Alongside this shift, research into artificial general intelligence (AGI) is expanding beyond narrow task optimisation toward systems capable of transferring knowledge across domains, a trajectory that could fundamentally alter how digital work is organised.

Global market intelligence firm The Business Research Company notes that one of the main factors propelling the AGI market is the rising investment in advanced AI research.

‘These investments focus on developing AI systems that perform complex tasks, learn from varied data, and exhibit reasoning and problem-solving on par with human cognition,’ notes the firm in a report.

‘Governments, private companies and academic institutions are investing heavily to build AI that can operate autonomously, improve decision-making, and foster innovation across multiple industries.’

Tech analysts observe that the transition is being driven by practical pressures, as businesses seek faster decision cycles, lower operational costs, and automation that extends beyond execution into planning and coordination.

According to Anthony Muiyuro, East Africa’s regional director at Syntura, the defining change is not intelligence itself but continuity of action within structured environments.

‘Today’s AI tools are largely reactive. They respond to prompts, execute narrow tasks and stop. Agentic systems, on the other hand, represent a shift toward proactive, goal-driven AI systems that can plan, make decisions, use tools, learn from outcomes, and act continuously with limited human intervention,’ says Mr Muiyuro.

The techie observes that the shift has become commercially viable due to a combination of stronger models, lower computing costs, and rising demand from firms seeking automation that delivers measurable efficiency gains.

Capabilities that signal movement toward autonomous reasoning include multi-step planning, goal prioritisation where systems decide what matters most under constraints, self-correction without retraining, as well as the ability to select and use software tools independently.

US-based Tesla billionaire Elon Musk has previously predicted that AGI will surpass total human intelligence by 2030, describing AI and robotics as a “supersonic tsunami” leading to a “technological singularity,” where AI iterates beyond human comprehension.

“Humans are currently in the ‘biological bootloader’ phase of digital superintelligence. This supersonic tsunami-like change no longer allows us to press the pause button,” said Mr Musk in a past interview.

Today, early versions of these capabilities already exist, but deployment remains limited as organisations test reliability and attempt to manage risks associated with autonomy at scale.

Industry specialists note that the constraint is less about technical performance and more about predictability, governance, and accountability when systems are allowed to act without continuous human oversight.

‘Expect narrow autonomous agents at scale within two to three years, with broader reasoning systems following more cautiously,’ predicts Mr Muiyuro.

As a result, early adoption is currently concentrated in roles that are knowledge-heavy, repeatable, and fully digital, where outcomes can be clearly defined and measured.

These include customer support operations, software maintenance, IT infrastructure management, compliance checks, and structured financial reporting functions, among others.

Such roles provide controlled environments in which objectives are explicit, data flows are logged, and errors can be detected before cascading through wider systems.

In contrast, roles that rely heavily on judgment, trust, or social context remain more insulated from near-term automation.

Services such as healthcare delivery, caregiving, diplomacy, and governance continue to require human discretion that is difficult to encode into autonomous systems. Rather than eliminating jobs, Nr Muiyuro says, agentic AI is expected to recompose roles by shifting routine execution to machines while concentrating human effort on oversight, exception handling, and strategic judgment.

While this restructuring creates productivity gains, it also introduces operational risks that differ from those associated with earlier automation technologies. One foreseeable risk is goal misalignment, where systems optimise defined objectives that do not fully reflect organisational intent or ethical boundaries.

Others include opacity, as autonomous decision paths can become difficult to audit or explain, with error amplification presenting further concerns, as small mistakes could propagate rapidly when systems operate continuously across interconnected processes.

Over-delegation and enhanced security exposure have also been cited as emerging risks, with humans potentially losing situational awareness as responsibility shifts incrementally toward autonomous systems.

Agentic systems often require access to sensitive data, credentials, and internal tools to function effectively, which, if compromised, could provide attackers with deeper access than traditional software applications.

Mr Muiyuro says governance frameworks have not kept pace with technological capability, particularly in emerging markets where regulatory capacity remains uneven.

‘While technical safeguards are improving, governance frameworks are lagging – especially in emerging markets. Regulation, board oversight, and accountability models are still catching up to the reality of autonomous systems operating inside businesses,’ he says.

‘The key challenge is not whether agentic AI will arrive, but whether organisations adopt it deliberately, responsibly, and with human control firmly in the loop.’

Globally, firms deploying agentic AI are doing so cautiously, often limiting decision authority and requiring human approval at critical stages.

Most deployments begin with narrow use cases, parallel human supervision, and extensive logging to evaluate performance and risk exposure.

The public procurement watchdog is seeking the Senate’s intervention to rein in six counties that have ignored calls to address procurement malpractices in contracts valued at billions of shillings.

The regulator has written to Senate Speaker Amason Kingi, complaining that the counties have failed to follow procurement laws and could have lost cash, failed to pay suppliers, and are hiding procurement documents to escape accountability.

Public Procurement Regulatory Authority (PPRA) Director-General Patrick Wanjuki wrote to Mr Kingi last month requesting the Senate’s intervention. He listed Nairobi, Marsabit, Migori, Wajir, Mandera and Isiolo, among the worst offenders.

‘The authority has made repeated attempts to obtain the requisite information and documentation through formal engagement letters and reminder letters. Regrettably, the County Government of Nairobi has failed to submit the required procurement records/information to the authority, therefore, denying it access to records/information,’ Mr Wanjuki said in a January 22, 2026, letter.

Similar letters to the other five counties were sent to Mr Kingi, flagging several tenders issued between 2024 and last year, where the counties messed up procurement processes.

The PPRA blames the counties for refusing to upload documents on the Public Procurement Information Portal (PPIP) as required, including tender advertisements and documents, and contract awards.

The law mandates PPRA to assess contracts awarded by all public entities to confirm their compliance with legal requirements and ensure they do not lead to loss of public money.

‘This has hindered execution of the authority’s mandate as stipulated under Section 9 of the Act of monitoring the public procurement system; report on its overall functioning, and recommend areas of improvement,’ Mr Wanjuki said.

He said the lack of access to counties’ procurement information has hindered the PPRAS from preparing reports for submission to the National Treasury, Cabinet Secretary and Parliament, to inform them whether their procurement activities comply with the law.

Sources familiar with the PPRA investigations into the counties said the regulator is pursuing details on possible loss of public money in flawed contracts, while probing further queries raised in audits.

The watchdog now says it is naming the six counties in its ‘list of shame’ and is asking the Senate to recommend ‘administrative measures to address persistent non-compliance to strengthen governance and accountability’.

‘The Authority therefore seeks the intervention of the Senate pursuant to Section 9(1) (n) of the Act to take necessary measures as may be necessary to ensure that (the counties) comply fully with their legal obligations and cooperate with regulatory processes,’ Mr Wanjuki said.

The Public Procurement and Asset Disposal Act, 2015 empowers the PPRA to monitor procurement systems across the public service and investigate complaints received on procurements, or where it suspects there have been breaches.

The law also empowers the PPRA Director-General to terminate procurement proceedings or transfer procuring responsibilities of a non-compliant procuring entity to another, where there have been legal breaches.

Among tenders the PPRA previously flagged in Nairobi County was one on the provision of comprehensive medical cover to county workers in July 2024, faulting a number of skewed clauses in the tendering process that unfairly affected some of the bidders.

The Authority had written to Nairobi County’s acting County Secretary and Head of Public Service Patrick Analo on July 18, 2024, flagging issues including a requirement that bidders provide a list of five medical clients they had dealt with, with premiums of at least Sh100 million.

‘The requirement of Sh100 Million annual premiums per each of the five medical clients is unnecessarily high and should be reviewed to an average of Sh100 million for a maximum of three medical clients to promote competition amongst the industry players,’ Mr Wanjuki said in the letter.

In a June 18, 2025 letter to Migori’s County Executive Committee (CEC) Member for Finance, Maurice Otunga, the regulator also flagged three tenders valued Sh60 million, while faulting the county for failing to upload procurement documents on the public portal.

The flagged tenders were on the construction of a medical surgical complex, a health products warehouse and a physiotherapy unit at the Migori County Referral Hospital.

The county is accused of failing to upload documents relating to the three tenders on the public portal, unfairly disqualifying one of the companies that bid, and a lack of quorum in the committee that opened bids.

‘The Authority will not hesitate to request other investigative agencies to further investigate you as the Accounting Officer, the HOP (head of procurement), and other senior officials of your entity pursuant to Section 45 (2) (b) of the Anti-Corruption and Economic Crimes Act (ACECA) on willful failure to adhere to procurement laws should you continue to disregard the directives of the Authority,’ Mr Wanjuki warned.

The procurement watchdog further flagged Wajir County for delayed payments to suppliers, writing to the County Secretary in September last year.

I’ve always viewed film as an architectural blueprint for the human psyche. Movies give shape to our vague desires and provide a safe sandbox to explore versions of ourselves that reality doesn’t allow.

They satisfy a deep-seated need for meaning by imposing narrative logic, creating a world where every struggle has a purpose and every action leads to a resolution.

Through the psychological mechanism of identification, characters’ lives become monumental, fulfilling our fantasies of power and heroism without the actual risk.

Beyond simple escapism, film serves as emotional rehearsal, confronting our darkest fears in a controlled environment, providing a release that helps us navigate the complexity of our real lives. When we sit in the dark, we walk, walk, walk, feel and live with the characters.

Now, with that profound introduction out of the way, let’s look at a more grounded reality, the workplace, the office. Think of that terrible boss who looks down on everyone, the one who mistakes seniority for superiority.

Then, think of the overworked, underestimated employee who is actually the most competent person in the room, the one keeping the gears turning while the “leadership” takes the credit. Now, imagine those two stuck on an island after a plane crash.

Suddenly, the corporate structure is gone and survival is core.

The HR handbooks and the LinkedIn platitudes are burnt to ash. The employee has the survival skills, the grit and the practical knowledge.

The boss is injured and his life heavily depends on the employee. The power dynamic flips entirely. That is the premise of Sam Raimi’s latest movie, Send Help.

Starring Rachel McAdams as Linda and Dylan O’Brien as Bradley, the film wastes little time setting the stage. Linda is the overlooked corporate strategist, the person who does the math while being treated like furniture.

Bradley is the annoying person at the top, a man born in privilege. After their plane goes down in the Gulf of Thailand, the hierarchy is physically dismantled. Bradley is left with a mangled leg, a literal and metaphorical handicap that makes him entirely dependent on Linda’s survivalist expertise. The executive becomes the excess baggage, and the employee becomes the ruler.

As mentioned before, this is from Sam Raimi, the man who directed one of the best Spider-Man trilogies and, of course, Evil Dead. His signature is all over this. You see it in the frantic editing, the gory, practical-feeling effects, and an intentionally over-the-top tone.

By the way, I should mention, like Evil Dead, there is an element of dark comedy with this. Raimi has always had a fascination with how humans break under pressure, and he uses the island as a pressure cooker.

At times, the CGI is obvious, but in a way that feels endearing, reminiscent of his earlier work where the look was part of the charm. Other times, the digital work is just plain bad, looking rushed or out of place against the natural beauty of the setting. But when the movie leans into its campy horror roots and lets the blood spray, it all comes together.

The performances are the anchors here. McAdams is fantastic,, showing a range from a meek “office robot” to a hardened survival expert. That transition feels natural because of her performance, but the script is not strong.

Dylan O’Brien follows up his great work in Caddo Lake with a restrained, artful performance as a man losing his grip on authority. It would have been easy to play Bradley as a cartoon, but O’Brien finds the pathetic core of the character and brings out the annoying and abrasive nature of that personality.

In the quieter moments, these two manage to find a depth I didn’t expect from what I think is a generic genre film.

In fact, after the plane crash, I started to feel like I had seen this scenario before. Everything, while competently directed, reminded me of Triangle of Sadness.

Different setups, sure, but the themes are identical, the social underdog becomes the leader through sheer necessity, and the “elite” is reduced to a whimpering child.

If you enjoyed Triangle of Sadness, then Send Help will not feel fresh. It’s a familiar blueprint.

I found myself guessing the twists and reveals because the path had already been laid out by other films that explored the class-flip survival trope.

We live in an era of sequels and reboots. I understand there’s no such thing as a truly original idea anymore; we are all just remixing same human anxieties. But when the thematic beats are this similar, it becomes hard to stay surprised.

While the performances are great and Sam Raimi’s direction gives the story a punch that provides its own unique feel, I kept thinking this would have been better on streaming. It feels like a high-quality Movie of the Week rather than a cinematic event that demands a theatrical experience.

I was also surprised to learn that Danny Elfman handled the score.

Usually, an Elfman/Raimi collaboration is a match made in heaven, but here, the music lacks the distinct drama and personality you expect from him. It’s functional but forgettable. Visually, the movie looks great, but to be honest, I was lost in the direction and the pacing to notice anything special with the cinematography. It didn’t have those “wow” frames that linger in the mind after the credits roll.

That said, the movie does get interesting when it plays with the concept of the moral dilemma. Initially, Bradley is the pure villain and Linda is the moral lead. We want to see her win. But as the story unfolds, the film throws out information that complicates things. It isn’t a simple good vs. evil story. Both Linda and Bradley do questionable things throughout the movie.

The film is consistently testing your outlook on both characters, asking the audience how much cruelty they would tolerate if it meant staying alive.

There is a quiet moment that felt like the movie’s strongest point, a scene anchored entirely on performance that gives you a look into who these people really are behind their titles. It’s a glimpse of their past, clean and sometimes dirty.

But I thought the film could have done more with these moments. There are places where the film could have gone further into the darkness. Linda’s story about her past, for example, doesn’t fully explore her guilt or lack thereof. It feels like a missed opportunity to truly dissect her psyche.

The structural pacing also falters. The reveal of some things I thought came in too early, robbing those beats of the slow-burn tension they deserved. And while the ending, Linda’s transformation into what she decides to be (no spoilers), is fascinating on paper, it doesn’t land with the weight it could.

Or rather, it didn’t work for me. The ending is where the movie totally lost me. I thought it was the weakest point of the story, a bit of low-hanging fruit that felt beneath the creators. It was lazy, which for a Sam Raimi movie was a genuine surprise.

I kept wishing the film would push me emotionally, to make me hate Bradley enough to cheer his suffering, or sympathise with him enough to feel conflicted when Linda turns. But, I found myself just observing.

The film told me what was happening, but didn’t always make me feel it. The sandbox felt a little too controlled, the emotional rehearsal a little too scripted.

Send Help is a generic script that only works because of the direction. It sits in that awkward middle ground between something meant for the prestige of cinema and something designed for the casual consumption of streaming. Even if the writing feels a bit under-baked in spots, the performances make it a journey worth taking once, even if you’ve seen the map before.