Category: Business Daily

Kenya Pipeline Company (KPC) has been ordered to re-employ a former general manager after the Employment and Labour Relations Court found his dismissal over alleged poor performance unlawful and unfair.

The court found that KPC failed to demonstrate a valid reason to terminate Derek Wangaki Okova, who was dismissed in December 2025 despite performance appraisals rating him between ‘Good’ and ‘Very Good’.

The court said it was contradictory for KPC to describe Mr Okova as a poor performer while its own records showed that he had been recognised and rewarded for his performance.

‘For the foregoing reasons, the court finds that termination of the petitioner’s employment by the respondent was substantively unjustifiable and thus unfair within the meaning of Section 45 of the Employment Act,’ the court said in a decision issued on October 2, 2026.

The judge ordered KPC to re-engage Mr Okova within 21 days and directed the company to give him work comparable to that in which he was employed before his dismissal.

The court noted that employees rated ‘Excellent’ or ‘Very Good’ were eligible for incentive awards equivalent to 100 and 80 per cent of one month’s basic salary, respectively, and Mr Okova fell within that category.

Mr Okova was appointed general manager, Pipeline Operations and Maintenance, for a five year term beginning February 27, 2024. His contract was due to run until 2029.

He moved to court after his employment was terminated on December 10, 2025, arguing that KPC had violated its Human Resource Policy and Procedures Manual and his constitutional rights.

KPC opposed the case, maintaining that Mr Okova had consistently performed poorly despite being given feedback, supervision and opportunities to improve.

The anchor shareholders of Quickmart can sell up to 800 million shares or 40 percent of their remaining stake without restriction, following the retailer’s initial public offering (IPO) after the markets regulator agreed to a lock-up rule that only covers part of their holding.

The Capital Markets Authority (CMA) requires controlling shareholders to hold on to their stake for at least two years after listing, to reassure prospective investors that insiders are not looking for a quick exit or dumping struggling companies on the public.

Disclosures by Quickmart in its IPO information memorandum show that the selling shareholders will be required to hold on to at least 60 percent of their shares for the next two years.

Quickmart’s current owners comprise Mauritius-registered private equity fund Adenia Partners, the founders of Quickmart and Tumaini supermarkets and Chief Executive Officer Peter Kang’iri.

They are currently offloading two billion shares in the IPO, equivalent to a 50 percent stake, at a price of Sh7.50 a unit. Their shares are held through an investment vehicle known as Sokoni Retail Kenya Limited (SRKL).

‘The selling shareholder (SRKL) has agreed that, for a period of 24 months from the listing date, it will not, without the prior written consent of the lead placing agent, co-placing agent and the issuer and the approval of the CMA, directly or indirectly sell or transfer ordinary shares representing 60 percent of the total remaining ordinary shares envisaged to be held by it immediately after listing date,’ reads the information memorandum in part.

“The balance of such remaining ordinary shares not subject to the lock-up undertaking,” the document added.

The partial lock-up means that they can sell an additional 800 million shares in the next two years should they wish to do so. The less restrictive lock-up requirement mirrors that imposed on the Family Bank founder Titus Muya and his associates when the lender listed by introduction in June.

The CMA granted Mr Muya and his associates leeway to dilute their shareholding of 35.6 percent in order to allow them to meet the Central Bank of Kenya (CBK) regulatory cap of 25 percent without flouting listing rules.

In this year’s other IPO of Kenya Pipeline Company in March, the National Treasury was locked into holding its remaining 35 percent stake for at least 24 months after disposing a 65 percent stake to the public for Sh106 billion.

The Quickmart sale, which opened this week and runs until October 30, is targeting Sh15 billion and values the company at Sh30 billion.

Going into the listing, Adenia holds a 50.79 percent stake in SRKL, the family of Quickmart founder the late John Kinuthia 31.83 percent, the founders of Tumaini Supermarket 12.02 percent and Mr Kang’iri 5.36 percent.

Presuming the offer is fully subscribed, Adenia’s stake will drop to 25.4 percent, with the stakes of the Quickmart and Tumaini founders falling to 15.9 percent and 6.01 percent respectively. Meanwhile, Mr Kang’iri’s holding will halve to 2.68 percent.

Although PE funds usually have an investment cycle of between seven and 10 years, Adenia has said that it remains committed to staying on board and supporting Quickmart’s management through its next growth phase.

The fund acquired its stake in the retailer between 2018 and 2019, after buying majority stakes in Quickmart (51 percent) and Tumaini (55 percent) and then merging the entities under the Quickmart brand in 2020.

The only exceptions to the 60 percent lock-up of their shares post-listing include transfers of shares to affiliates and related Adenia funds, disposals required by law, acceptances of a general offer, permitted encumbrances, and transactions approved by the placing agents the CMA or the Nairobi Securities Exchange (NSE).

The International Finance Corporation (IFC) -the World Bank’s private investment arm- has also been exempted from any lock-up restrictions after coming in as the offer’s cornerstone investor, subject to approval by its board of directors.

Global practice usually restricts Cornerstone investors who commit to buying shares before an IPO opens restricted from selling for a fixed period after listing, although this is usually shorter than two years. This bet on the retail sector will see the IFC acquire 258.67 million shares in Quickmart, representing about 13 percent of the offer shares, and an ultimate stake of 6.5 percent in the company.

‘Any IFC purchase of offer shares would be made on the same terms and conditions as all other investors in the offer,’ said Quickmart in the information memorandum.

‘Notwithstanding IFC’s interest in the proposed investment, IFC may sell its shareholding at any time in the future.’

In the case of Family Bank, Mr Muya and his associates were granted a concession by CBK to hold a combined stake of up to 31.9 percent, meaning that a sale of a 3.7 percent stake would be necessary in order to comply with the concession before later moving to full compliance of a 25 percent holding.

They tried to dilute their stake in the bank previously by sitting out capital raising ventures such as the private placement conducted in 2025.

At the time of listing, Mr Muya’s direct stake in the bank was disclosed at 4.42 percent. Daykio Plantations, a real estate company owned 91 percent by Mr Muya and nine percent by the Estate of Leah Wanjiru, held a 9.53 percent stake in the lender.

Other members of his family, including the Estates of Rachael Njeri Muya and Leah Wanjiru Muya, held a combined stake of 19.5 percent. A further 2.22 percent is held by Kenya Orient Life Assurance and its sister company Kenya Orient Insurance, which are also associated with the bank’s founder.

In a public notice dated September 4, 2026, Kenya Revenue Authority (KRA) told all businesses using TIMS and eTIMS to keep accurate and up-to-date stock records.

The records must account for goods purchased or received, sold, transferred, returned, adjusted or otherwise disposed of. KRA says this will improve the accuracy of tax returns and reporting.

The aim is sound. Stock is where sales, purchases and costs meet, and a system that links the three can expose under-declared income and inflated expenses. For a trader, it works neatly: what comes in as a unit goes out as the same unit.

Manufacturers are different. A manufacturer buys one thing and sells another. Raw material goes into a process, some is lost to wastage and evaporation, some sit as work in progress, and what leaves the factory is a different product, often in a different unit. No invoice records that transformation. The invoice shows the input coming in and the finished good going out.

Take a simple example. A business buys 100 kilogrammes of raw material. Under normal conditions, 92 kilogrammes become finished product and eight are lost as expected wastage.

The books are right. A system that expects stock to match purchases and sales, with no model for yield, may see eight kilogrammes unaccounted for. Multiply that across thousands of transactions and the system flags an ordinary production variance as a discrepancy.

That matters because flags invite questions. An unexplained stock variance can quickly become a tax question, including whether sales have gone unrecorded. Manufacturers already know how hard it is to argue otherwise after the fact, when production returns have been mistaken for new stock.

Even well-run factories do not produce identical yields every month. Machine efficiency, raw material quality and seasonality all move the numbers. A fixed standard cannot be the final word on what counts as acceptable.

KRA indicated that consultative forums with the business community would commence in September to hear implementation challenges and recommendations. As the framework continues to take shape, manufacturers should use the consultation process to make specific asks.

There are four.

First, recognise manufacturers separately. The functionality should allow for bills of materials, so that inputs are linked to outputs through standard yields, and not assume one item in and the same item out.

Second, build in tolerance. Wastage and yield variance within a reasonable band should not be flagged. The band should be set with industry input and reviewed as processes change.

Third, give taxpayers a clear way to adjust and explain. If stock is adjusted for wastage, damage or rework, the system should record the reason and keep a trail, so the explanation exists when KRA asks.

Fourth, publish a timeline. Businesses need time to adjust their systems and processes before enforcement. Many stock systems were not built to feed eTIMS, and integration takes time and money.

None of this is an argument against stock controls. Better data helps honest taxpayers as much as it helps the revenue authority. But a system designed around the shop floor of a trader will misread the factory floor, and the cost of that misreading will fall on the businesses that make things, employ people and pay tax.

Manufacturers should take KRA at its word and speak now, while the framework can still be shaped around how factories actually operate.

The Central Bank of Kenya (CBK) has held its benchmark lending rate unchanged for a fourth straight time since February at 8.75 percent as inflation remains contained within the target range amid shocks from the Middle East war.

The monetary authority has attributed the decision to hold rates to the expectation that inflation will remain below the 7.5 percent ceiling even as consumer prices creep up on a month-over-month basis.

The CBK has also revised its growth outlook for 2026 to five percent from 4.9 percent, underlining economic resilience, particularly in the industry and services sectors, against the backdrop of a similar upgrade by the World Bank.

Private sector credit growth has continued to accelerate, touching 10.6 percent in September from 10.3 percent in August, reflecting the continued transmission of previous rate cuts while bank non-performing loans have also declined.

‘Overall inflation is expected to remain within the target range within the target range in the near term. This will be supported by appropriate monetary policy actions, government interventions and a stable exchange rate,’ CBK said in a statement on Wednesday.

Overall inflation in September crept up to reach 6.8 percent from 6.6 percent in August.

Core inflation, which measures non-food, non-fuel inflation, hit four percent in September from 3.4 percent in August on higher prices for processed foods like milk, wheat products and edible oils, while non-core inflation fell slightly to 14 percent from 14.7 percent in the same period.

The CBK’s market perception survey conducted in September revealed underlying inflationary pressures from higher fuel prices but projected a moderation in food costs on ample rainfall in the four quarter of 2026.

‘Respondents expect inflation to remain within the target range in the near term, due to exchange rate stability, and an expected decline in food prices due to the predicted above-average rainfall between October and December 2026,’ CBK added.

CBK’s retention of the policy rate aligns with a cautious stance adopted by global central banks as they continue to assess the impact of the Middle East conflict on inflation and growth.

Prior rate cuts by CBK continue to transmit in the economy as private sector credit growth accelerates further while the banking sector non-performing loans ratio has improved, falling to 13.9 percent in September from 14.8 percent in June.

The National Treasury has expanded the list of transactions to be checked for prices charged by multinational firms when trading with subsidiaries within the same company, signalling deeper scrutiny by the Kenya Revenue Authority (KRA).

New regulations published by National Treasury Cabinet Secretary John Mbadi showed that the KRA will now check at least 25 items on transfer pricing transactions between related divisions, subsidiaries, or affiliates of the same multinational company, marking a sharp increase from the past when about 10 areas were covered.

‘The object and purpose of these rules are to provide guidelines for determining arm’s length prices for transactions between related persons,’ Mr Mbadi said. Transfer pricing is an accounting practice used to determine the prices charged for transactions between related divisions, subsidiaries, or affiliates of the same company.

It’s commonly used by multinational corporations to allocate costs, revenues, and profits across different parts of the organisation while complying with tax regulations.

However, there are concerns that some multinationals misuse the provision to alter taxable income and cut their overall taxes.

The recently published rules on transfer pricing give KRA access to detailed information on related-party pricing, contracts, financial statements and the basis used by companies to determine whether their transactions are conducted at arm’s length.

The updated rules require companies to provide the taxman with information for each category of controlled transaction (which refers to transactions between related entities), including the parties involved, transaction value, settlement currency, contractual terms and the trading model.

‘The level of detail prescribed for transfer pricing information and supporting documentation signals the KRA’s continued, and intensifying, focus on transfer pricing as an audit and revenue mobilisation priority,’ experts at law firm Bowmans Kenya said in a commentary.

‘Collectively, the enhanced documentation requirements substantially increase the compliance burden for taxpayers and reflect a shift towards a more rigorous and evidence-based transfer pricing regime. Taxpayers should review their existing transfer pricing processes and documentation frameworks to ensure they can meet the increased disclosure and substantiation requirements.’

The new framework shifts transfer pricing compliance beyond simply declaring related-party transactions, requiring multinationals to maintain detailed evidence showing why the prices used in their cross-border dealings are commercially defensible.

The increased disclosures will give KRA a more detailed basis for testing whether prices used in transactions between related companies reflect what independent parties would have agreed.

The changes come on the back of KRA having already identified inter-company loans and royalty payments as sensitive areas in its transfer pricing reviews, amid concerns that inflated financing costs and royalty charges can reduce taxable profits in Kenya.

KRA said in March this year it was going to enhance focus on taxpayers whose declared profits do not match expected taxable income.

Under the updated rules, multinationals will also have to disclose intra-group payments and receipts broken down by the tax jurisdiction of the foreign payer or recipient, as well as the identities of connected persons and their relationships.

The rules state that the KRA commissioner may, where necessary, request a company for ‘books of accounts and other documents relating to transactions where transfer pricing is applied.’

The companies will also have to provide KRA with analysis showing the functions performed, risks assumed, and assets used by the Kenyan entity and its related parties.

Firms must also provide details of comparable transactions, the process used to identify them, the reasons for rejecting potential comparables, and an explanation of how the transfer pricing method was selected.

The rules expand the scope of transactions covered to include long- and short-term borrowing and lending, guarantees, marketable securities, advances, receivables and other debts. They also cover insurance and reinsurance, business restructurings, cost distribution arrangements and derivatives.

In addition, companies must provide audited financial statements, financial statements of transaction counterparties, segmented reports and schedules showing how financial information used in transfer pricing calculations relates to their annual accounts.

The rules also require companies applying arm’s-length pricing to develop an appropriate transfer pricing policy, determine the arm’s-length price in accordance with the rules, and provide documentation supporting their analysis when requested by KRA.

Any tax due and unpaid in a transfer pricing arrangement will be treated as additional tax under the Tax Procedures Act, exposing affected firms to penalties.

‘The provisions of the Tax Procedures Act relating to fraud, failure to furnish returns and underpayment of tax shall apply to transfer pricing,’ read the new rules.

Kenya has confirmed its first Ebola case after its citizen, who had travelled from the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), died in Nairobi on Monday night after a trip on public transport.

The death exposes lapses in disease screening and surveillance at the main Jomo Kenyatta International Airport, amid risks of ripple effects on the sensitive tourism sector.

The confirmation means that Kenya now becomes the third country to record a case linked to the Ebola epidemic in eastern Congo, which has so far registered more than 8,000 cases. Uganda reported 20 cases and two deaths earlier in the year but was declared Ebola-free.

The Ministry of Health on Tuesday confirmed that a Kenyan man who had lived in the DRC for seven years had tested positive for the Bundibugyo strain of Ebola after travelling from the DRC to Uganda’s capital, Kampala, by road and then flying to Nairobi on Saturday. The patient later died while receiving treatment at a Nairobi hospital.

‘The Ministry of Health has confirmed Kenya’s first imported case of Bundibugyo Ebola virus. The patient fell ill about a month ago and received treatment at several hospitals in the DRC,’ announced Health Cabinet Secretary Aden Duale. ‘He travelled by road to Kampala before boarding Jambojet flight 8523 to Nairobi, arriving on Saturday, October 3 at 13:10.’

After arriving at JKIA, the patient passed through health screening and was later taken by a relative to Nairobi Hospital. He was admitted with fever, chills and bleeding beneath the skin and was quickly placed in isolation, Mr Duale said.

The incident has raised health safety concerns with the government now tracing the 23 passengers and four crew who were on the Jambojet flight, in addition to the 28 contacts already identified. Those considered at risk will be quarantined for 21 days.

The case is also likely to trigger jitters in the Kenyan tourism sector, especially if more Ebola cases are detected. Past outbreaks in Central and West Africa have historically triggered a broader “fear factor” that impacts tourism.

Jambojet, whose Entebbe-Nairobi flight carried the patient, said it was working with the Ministry of Health to identify and manage passengers and crew who may have been exposed.

‘The health and safety of our guests, crew and staff remains our highest priority,’ the airline said, urging passengers to rely on information from its verified channels and health authorities.

Jambojet resumed its daily flights between Nairobi and Entebbe after a six-year hiatus on October 1, and later carried the Ebola victim two days later.

It had entered the Nairobi-Entebbe route in 2018 but suspended it nearly two years later as the Covid-19 pandemic disrupted international travel.

Before the Ebola case, Jambojet was optimistic that the route would benefit from recovering passenger and commercial traffic between the two countries, with cross-border passenger traffic projected to exceed 300,000 travellers in 2026.

The case comes at a time when the country is seeking to protect its tourism industry, which recorded strong growth last year. According to the Kenya National Bureau of Statistics, international visitor arrivals rose by 6.2 percent to 2.55 million in 2025, while hotel bed-night occupancy jumped 12.6 percent to 11.56 million.

Even before the country had recorded a case, tourism stakeholders had already raised concerns in June that reports and social media posts linking Kenya to Ebola were affecting travel decisions.

‘Misinformation is causing unnecessary travel cancellations and threatening the recovery of the country’s tourism sector,’ said John Ololtua, Tourism Principal Secretary, at the Kenya Association of Travel Agents’ annual meeting in Mombasa.

At the time, the government said it had intensified surveillance at ports of entry and was running a communications campaign to counter misinformation and maintain confidence among travellers.

The case has also drawn renewed attention to Kenya’s preparedness facilities, including the controversial US-backed Ebola quarantine facility proposed in Laikipia earlier this year.

Although the US government had committed $13.5 million towards Kenya’s Ebola preparedness, construction of the facility was later suspended following a court dispute.

Currently, the United States classifies Kenya as a Level Two travel destination, advising travellers to exercise increased caution due to risks including crime, kidnapping, terrorism, civil unrest, health issues and traffic safety.

Leaving the office on time may seem like a straightforward part of the workday, but in some workplaces, employees who consistently pack up at the official closing hour risk being seen as less committed than colleagues who stay late.

Sakwa Wangara, a human resource practitioner, lecturer at the College of Human Resource Management, and managing director of HRD Ingenuity, says workplace culture can influence how employees view working beyond official hours.

‘Some people feel the need to stay beyond their official working hours because of the culture at the workplace, as dictated by the kind of leadership that exists,’ Mr Wangara says.

He says some organisations associate employees who go beyond their official hours with commitment, particularly when they regularly take on extra work without claiming overtime.

This can also affect how employees who leave on time are perceived.

According to Mr Wangara, an employee who consistently leaves at the official closing time may be seen either as someone who respects time and is productive within the prescribed hours, or as someone unwilling to go beyond their basic duties.

‘The kind of perception the manager or colleagues would have can depend on the culture of the organisation, he says.

However, staying late does not automatically mean an employee is more productive.

Mr Wangara says if an employee is spending additional hours completing their normal workload, rather than dealing with a new assignment or an unexpected development, it could point to poor time management or productivity.

‘It should not be misconstrued to imply that you are a productive person and so you’re even ploughing in more hours for more output,’ he says.

Poor commitment

Verolyne Witambila Isutsa, a human resource professional with more than seven years’ experience, agrees that leaving on time should not be treated as a sign of poor commitment.

‘If you get to work on time, meet your targets and leave without anything pending on your desk, there’s nothing to feel guilty about when leaving work on time,’ she says.

However, she cautions that employees may sometimes need to stay longer when the needs of the business require it.

‘If the business needs an employee to go an extra mile so that it can achieve the set objectives and you choose to leave while your colleagues remain behind, you might come off as one who is not a team player,’ Ms Isutsa says.

For managers, Mr Wangara says the culture should start from the top. Leaders who complete their work within the prescribed hours and leave on time can help signal to employees that staying late is not a requirement for demonstrating commitment.

‘Everything is created there. So the kind of environment will be dictated by the kind of behaviour the leader or the manager is modelling,’ he says.

The distinction, he adds, is whether staying late is an exception or has become the norm.

An emergency or urgent deadline may justify working beyond official hours. But when employees regularly stay late simply to complete their normal duties, organisations may need to examine whether the issue is workload, productivity or workplace culture.

Picture a family from Frankfurt spending a week in Diani with one more wish: to see mountain gorillas. They must find a flight to Entebbe, then endure a long road trip to Kisoro in Uganda’s south-west, and back.

The gorilla permit is affordable but high airfares, a draining road and costly lodging near the parks push visitors to choose one experience over the other.

It need not be so. AI cannot shorten the road to Kisoro but can take the guesswork and hassle out of the trip. That is the challenge World Tourism Day set on September 27, under the theme ‘Digital Agenda and Artificial Intelligence to Redesign Tourism’.

UN Secretary-General António Guterres said that, left unchecked, AI could steer travellers to the same few places and platforms. The tools favour places that are already easy to find and book online. Our shared circuit must not be among those left behind.

Since 2022, Kenya and Uganda have had partnerships, bringing together operators, hoteliers and tourism players in Mombasa every year. The effort is paying off. Kenyan visitors to Uganda rose from 466,902 in 2024 to 519,041 in 2025.

Arrivals from Uganda grew from 201,623 to 234,556, making Uganda Kenya’s second-largest source market. For many Ugandans, Kenya once meant Nairobi. Today, a direct circuit runs to Mombasa, Kwale and Kilifi.

The Coast offers white beaches, hotels and industry leaders open to partnership. Uganda brings primates, scenery and adventure. Both destinations can learn from each other.

Yet our numbers are nothing to brag about. UN Tourism reports that Africa welcomed 81 million international tourists in 2025. That is barely five per cent of the 1.52 billion arrivals worldwide. The region must become easier to discover, plan and book.

This is where technology earns its place. Real-time data would show available rooms near the park and what each destination offers.

Who will build these tools? Young people are tech-savvy and form an emerging group of travellers with their own tastes. They also need IT skills, customer care, resilience, patience and trustworthiness.

Governments must provide funding, train young people, ease access to technology financing, keep rules supportive of innovation and invest in knowledge. They must also make movement easier. No app can fix a slow border crossing.

Long before a drought reaches the evening news, an elder in Turkana has already read it in the sky. He has watched which direction the ants moved their eggs, noticed how early the acacia flowered, tracked the behaviour of migratory birds that arrive weeks ahead of rain or refuse to arrive at all.

He has cross-checked this against the moon’s halo, the colour of the sunset, and the wind at dusk. By the time a meteorological bulletin catches up with what he already knows, the herd has usually moved.

This is a forecasting method, built and tested over generations, operating in a landscape where a formal weather station may sit hundreds of kilometres away and a rain gauge, even where one exists, tells you what fell yesterday rather than what is coming next week.

What separates this from folklore is the same thing that separates any science from guesswork: it is observation, repeated over decades, checked against outcomes, refined when it fails, and relied upon for decisions that carry real consequences for a family’s herd. It happens to be transmitted orally rather than published, and held collectively rather than credentialed. Its different form of recording does not make it any less rigorous.

The instinct in policy circles is to treat this knowledge as charming but auxiliary, useful colour for a project document, and subordinate to whatever the meteorological department eventually produces. That instinct gets the relationship backwards. In the drylands, indigenous ecological knowledge is often the more complete dataset, because it has been collected continuously, locally and at almost no cost, by people whose lives depend on getting the reading right.

A national meteorological service can tell a county roughly what rainfall to expect this season. It cannot tell a herder which specific valley will green first, or which watering point will hold through the next six weeks. That knowledge exists, but it exists in the heads of elders, herders and the women managing household water and forage, and it rarely makes it into a planning document.

The gap this creates is not trivial. When national drought early-warning systems and climate services are designed without incorporating what communities already observe, they produce forecasts that are technically sound and practically thin, generalised enough to miss the variation that actually determines whether a herd survives a season. Meanwhile, the knowledge that would have closed that gap erodes quietly, generation by generation, as younger pastoralists move toward towns and formal education systems that have no room in their curricula for how to read a sunset.

There is a better way to build climate services for the drylands, and it does not require choosing between indigenous knowledge and science. Community-based observation networks, blending local weather stations with satellite data and the observations herders are already making, offer a genuine template. So does the growing recognition, in institutions from UNESCO’s Local and Indigenous Knowledge Systems programme to national meteorological agencies experimenting with participatory forecasting, that combining the two produces sharper predictions than either produces alone.

The point is not to validate indigenous knowledge by holding it up against a model. It is to build the model so that indigenous observation is one of its primary inputs rather than just an afterthought consulted for texture.

Digital tools have a role here, and a serious one. Mobile platforms that share drought information, price data and early warnings can extend the reach of good forecasting well beyond the range of a single elder’s memory. But technology adopted without the community it serves tends to produce dashboards nobody trusts and platforms nobody uses.

The pastoralist who has spent 40 years reading pasture and sky is not a research subject waiting to be digitised. He is a working scientist whose instruments happen to be observation, memory and an intimate familiarity with a specific stretch of land, and any climate information system built for Turkana should start by asking what he already knows.

This matters beyond the value of any single forecast. Treating indigenous knowledge as evidence, rather than anecdote, changes who gets to sit at the table when rangeland and climate policy is made. It means employing local observers as paid contributors to early-warning systems rather than as informants for someone else’s research. It means training programmes in rangeland science that teach the acacia and the ant alongside the satellite image. And it means government drought-response frameworks treating an elder’s reading of the season as information worth acting on, not simply recording.

Kenya’s drylands are home to a deep and constantly evolving body of environmental knowledge. In pastoral areas like Turkana, elders have spent generations learning to read the sky, pasture, livestock and other signs of a changing season, drawing on observations that are tested against experience year after year, often without a smartphone or formal weather station. Much of this knowledge remains outside the formal systems that shape climate and drought decisions. Kenya’s task is to recognise its custodians as knowledge holders and create institutions capable of listening to what they already know.

Absa has cut short the gardening leave for its former CEO Abdi Mohamed, allowing rival lender I and M Bank to hire him as their head earlier than agreed.

Mr Mohamed was expected to take over at I and M Bank in December following terms attached to his exit that barred him from joining a rival bank within six months.

But I and M Bank announced that his tenure as CEO started on October 5 after executive changes at ABSA triggered the termination of the gardening leave.

Garden leave is a period when a departing employee stays on the company payroll and receives full pay and benefits during their notice period, but is instructed to stay away from work and forbidden from starting a new job.

When on garden leave, the former workers lose access to office buildings, company computers, emails, and colleagues.

But they must stay available during normal work hours if the old employer needs a quick question answered or a handover finished.

Absa Bank’s decision to promote Yusuf Omari as the substantive chief executive after holding the position in an interim capacity for two months triggered the end of Mr Mohamed’s gardening leave.

‘We fast-tracked the appointment of our CEO so we didn’t need to keep him any longer, and I and M had requested a fast-track also because they really wanted him taking over – so it was more a gentleman’s agreement,’ said a source at Absa Bank who sought anonymity.

‘We didn’t need consult him as per the requirements of gardening leave, so we terminated early,’ he added.

His gardening leave was terminated at the end of September. He has been enjoying full benefits as a chief executive, and Absa faced the financial load and an awkward arrangement of having a substantive CEO while retaining its former boss.

I and M Bank’s poaching of the CEO from its larger rival Absa Bank Kenya underscored the ambitions of the smaller lender that has been expanding aggressively in recent years.

The sudden move by Mr Mohamed to I and M Bank-the Kenyan banking subsidiary of I and M Group-marked a rare spectacle in the corporate world where CEO transitions are usually carefully planned to ensure smooth handovers.

The departure was also curious given that I and M Bank is smaller compared to Absa in terms of earnings and market value.

I and M Group will stretch its payroll if Mr Mohamed is to retain the same level of compensation he was enjoying at Absa.

His benefits at Absa totalled Sh120 million last year, dwarfing the Sh79.2 million that I and M Group paid its regional chief executive, Kihara Maina, who will now be his boss.

I and M Group has regional operations in Kenya, Tanzania, Uganda, Rwanda and Mauritius, which are overseen by Mr Maina. Mr Mohamed will head the Kenyan operations.

Mr Mohamed had worked with Absa, formerly Barclays Bank, for 32 years, rising to lead its Tanzanian operations before moving to helm the Kenya business.

‘The board of I and M Group Plc is pleased to inform the public that following receipt of all regulatory approvals, Mr Abdi Mohamed has been appointed as the chief executive officer of I and M Bank Limited with effect from 5 October 2026,’ said I and M Group in a public announcement.

The group has been vocal about its intentions to play more in the retail market with investment in a more robust IT system to support large numbers.

In the first three months of the year, Absa Bank reported a 13.8 percent drop in net profit to Sh5.3 billion, while I and M Bank Kenya reported a net income growth of 8.4 percent to Sh3.42 billion.

Absa has an asset base of Sh571 billion, constituting a loan book of Sh303 billion, while I and M Kenya has Sh550 billion in assets and loans of Sh250 billion. Customer savings with the two banks are almost at par, with Absa having Sh396 billion in deposits while I and M has Sh396 billion.