Category: Business Daily

There is a particular kind of relationship that financial analysts describe as “comfortable but concerning.” Everything looks fine on the surface: no missed payments, no dramatic headlines. Yet underneath, structural imbalances are quietly accumulating.

Kenya’s banking sector and its sovereign debt market have settled into exactly this arrangement, and the world’s financial watchdogs are beginning to take notice.

Kenyan banks collectively hold Sh2.2 trillion in government securities: Treasury bills, bonds, and other sovereign instruments issued by the Exchequer. That figure represents 30 percent of all domestic debt outstanding and roughly 27 percent of total banking assets.

More than a quarter of every shilling in Kenya’s banking system is, in some form, lent back to the government. The appetite is growing too: banks added Sh150 billion to these holdings in just six months to August 2026.

The logic is not hard to follow. Government securities are zero-risk-weighted under Basel frameworks, with no extra capital buffer required. They are liquid, regularly auctioned, and in Kenya’s case, high-yielding relative to regional peers. When private sector credit demand softens or loan default risks rise, a Treasury bill starts looking like the most sensible trade in the room.

In periods of fiscal expansion, the Exchequer borrows more; banks, flush with deposits, are ready buyers. The market deepens, auction participation stays healthy, and the system hums along. It is, in a sense, a finely tuned machine.

The question the IMF, Fitch, and others are raising is not whether the machine works (it clearly does), but what happens when one of its critical gears starts to wear.

Fitch flagged the issue as far back as 2025, noting that Kenyan banks were structurally inclined toward heavy government securities exposure and were expected to remain so. The IMF has since echoed the concern, framing the exposure as a risk that warrants monitoring, even if it does not yet constitute an emergency.

The underlying risk is what economists call the “sovereign-bank nexus”: the feedback loop where banks hold large quantities of government debt while the government relies on those same banks as its primary buyers. The concern is not default in isolation, but contagion: if sovereign creditworthiness deteriorates, bank balance sheets weaken simultaneously, precisely when stability is most needed.

Kenya’s own Debt Sustainability Analysis (2025) acknowledges that domestic debt is under stress, not at default risk, but requiring careful management. Total government debt stood at Sh13.06 trillion as of June 2026, with Sh7.32 trillion being domestic. Stress, even manageable stress, can shift the calculus quickly.

The Kenya Bankers Association has pointed toward diversification as the sector’s strategic direction, a genuine signal that banks are aware of the concentration. But diversification in banking is rarely a fast pivot. Loan books take time to build, credit infrastructure takes time to develop, and in an environment where government paper remains attractively priced and frictionless, the incentive to stay put competes constantly with the incentive to move on.

For investors, the immediate picture remains benign. Sovereign yields are attractive, default risk is contained, and the banking system is adequately capitalised by most measures. But the medium-term story is more nuanced. A sector this heavily weighted toward one borrower is a sector whose health is increasingly indistinguishable from the health of the sovereign itself.

For those who prefer warnings with receipts attached, Senegal offers a live case study. In 2024, the incoming administration discovered that fiscal deficits had been materially underreported for years, with hidden shortfalls averaging 5.5 percent of GDP annually between 2019 and 2023. True public debt was revised to approximately 100 percent of GDP, and the IMF subsequently placed total public sector debt at 132 percent of GDP by end-2024. Senegal had not suddenly borrowed more. The full picture had simply, finally, been revealed.

The consequences for the banking system were immediate. Senegalese banks, long accustomed to holding government securities as their preferred asset class, found themselves sitting on paper whose creditworthiness was now in question, while simultaneously being called upon to absorb more of it.

Senegal lost access to international capital markets; analysts described protecting the banking sector from sovereign debt restructuring as a “macro-financial imperative to prevent regional contagion.” Restructuring the debt without taking down the banks that held it became a near-impossible needle to thread.

Kenya’s situation differs in important respects: greater transparency, intact international market access, and a debt trajectory that, while strained, remains in a different league. But the structural warning is identical: a banking system that finances the sovereign at this scale has limited ability to act as a shock absorber if the sovereign story shifts. Senegal’s crisis was not inevitable. It was the product of quiet accumulation and deferred honesty.

Kenya’s banks and the Exchequer have built a relationship that works, until it doesn’t. The IMF’s warning is not a forecast of collapse; it is a structural observation. Breaking the loop requires deliberate policy choices: broadening the domestic investor base, growing private credit markets, and bringing the fiscal deficit down to reduce borrowing pressure. These are not quick fixes. But they are the right ones.

Until then, the banks and the government will remain very close friends. Senegal’s banks once thought the same. And the rest of us will be watching closely.

This past week, one of the biggest conversations was the groundbreaking of what is expected to be the biggest-ever oil refinery in East Africa, and its expected impact was unsurprisingly topical too.

For decades, fairly smaller, highly scalable social enterprises have redrawn what healthcare, clean energy, agriculture, and financial inclusion can be. Many more firms are doing exemplary work and delivering impact in various ways.

The capital chasing investment opportunities in the region are growing too. Between 2021 and 2025, East Africa is estimated to have pulled in over Sh531 billion ($4.1 billion) in private capital across nearly 500 deals, according to the Africa Venture Capital Association, with Kenya, Ethiopia and Tanzania leading the way. If philanthropy, bilateral aid, and public funds are added in the computation, the number could get even larger.

The question increasingly is whether and to what degree the capital is working, especially toward achieving a desired social, economic, and environmental impact. Knowing it’s working means more than a filed report and a logo on a donor’s annual review. It means proof that lives are measurably improved. Beneficiary communities and customers are now asking to see for themselves what value has actually been left behind. It calls for a conscious decision to prepare a specialised social impact report.

The social impact report ought to be one of the sharpest tools an organisation has for answering that question. For nonprofits, social enterprises, mission-driven businesses and even public institutions, it is where outcomes get named, and value gets counted. It appears straightforward, yet too often, it hasn’t worked that way. Despite funding flowing into the region, social impact has been treated as a well-meaning byproduct, relegated to the glossy back pages of an annual report, or a line on a donor’s checklist, rather than a discipline in its own right.

That is starting to change, and not a moment too soon. Acumen East Africa’s State of Social Impact Reporting study captures a real convergence where venture and equity investors, philanthropists, and donors are all asking questions about social and economic transformation. So are conscious shareholders, regulators, and public bodies looking for impact measurement models that can support national development goals. It outlines accountability, adequacy, and alignment as the three broad testable fixes, with findings serving as both mirror and roadmap.

If we are serious about impact and its measurement, we have to build in the cost to prove it. Funding measurement validates the logic behind an intervention and guarantees accountability for it, so treat it as a line item, not an afterthought.

An organisation that cannot show its work is asking for trust it hasn’t earned. The infrastructure to properly frame, document, and report impact is what makes the work real. But the fix doesn’t stop at budgets. The study shows that time has come to build a structured, localised framework for social impact measurement.

While global frameworks like the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals and the Global Reporting Initiative are useful starting points, they were not built with our socioeconomic context in mind. The study recommends a regional model, with its own metrics, that would tidy up measurement and reporting, raise data literacy, and give enterprises, public bodies, and investors a shared vocabulary that is grounded in local realities. It calls for contextualising the indicators and centering the communities themselves.

There is an underlying talent question too. The study flagged a lack of professional pathways for impact measurement practitioners as a big resourcing gap. We need formal career tracks, standardized certifications, and institutional training. Essentially, a resilient pool of regional talent who understand both advanced methodology and local context.

The era of good intentions has run its course. What comes next has to be measured, funded, and proven, or it risks becoming just another well-told story.

Businesses added 72,800 kilowatts (kW) of solar energy for their own use in the year ended June 2026, extending a trend in which a growing number of firms are turning to self-generation of electricity to lower their monthly bills and ensure steady supplies of electricity.

The increase pushed self-generation of electricity, technically referred to as captive power, to 676.60MW in the year to June 2026, up from 603.8MW the previous year.

‘This growth reflects continued uptake of distributed renewable energy solutions by commercial and industrial consumers to meet their electricity requirements,’ the Energy and Petroleum Regulatory Authority (Epra) says in its latest review of the energy sector.

Many businesses are increasingly shifting to solar to cut costs and ensure a stable and reliable electricity supply. A growing list of manufacturers, including Bio Food Products, Total Energies Kenya, Maisha Mabati Mills, Simba Cement, Unilever Tea Kenya, British American Tobacco, Africa Logistics Properties, Bidco, Mabati Rolling Mills, Centum Real Estate, and Devyani Food Industries, have shifted to their own solar power generation to cut operational costs and lower emissions.

Beverages company Coca-Cola last year also received regulatory approval to set up solar plants at its plants in Embakasi in Nairobi and Kisumu. The combined capacity of the plants will be 3.98Megawatts (MW).

Fast-moving consumer goods firm Unilever Kenya is the latest firm to join the list of commercial and industrial clients using captive power, with a solar photovoltaic plant that will produce 1,500,000 kilowatt-hours (kWh) annually.

‘We have now completed installing solar at our facility that is generating 1,500 megawatt-hours (MWh) of solar power, and we estimate that it will save us about Sh30 million from our annual power bill,” Luke Ochieng, the Managing Director at Unilever East Africa, said.

Migration of these companies to solar power could, in the long run, impact Kenya Power, given that industries and firms are the biggest source of revenue to the electricity distributor. For instance, revenue from electricity sales to new Kenya Power customers dropped by Sh1.07 billion in the year to June 2026 despite increased connections, an indication of slowing economic expansion and increased adoption of off-grid solar alternatives.

Official data shows that Kenya Power’s new customers consumed 161.7 Gigawatt-hours (GWh) in the year to June, marking a 20 percent drop from 202.98 GWh a year ago, pulling down revenues from this customer segment to Sh4.05 billion from Sh5.12billion in the previous period, or a 26.41percent drop. The dip in unit sales and revenues came despite Kenya Power connecting 412,249 new customers in the 12 months to June 2026, up from 401,848 the previous year, with more than half of them, or 226,803, being commercial customers.

The family of the late former Central Bank of Kenya governor Philip Ndegwa will buy back a 24.1 percent ICEA Lion Insurance Holdings and regain sole ownership of the company in a deal worth Sh8.5 billion.

First Chartered Securities, the investment firm controlled by the Ndegwa family, has received approval from the Competition Authority of Kenya (CAK) to acquire the stake it sold to Prudential-backed LeapFrog Investments in 2021 for Sh2.4 billion.

Leapfrog Strategic Africa sale is in line with PE funds’ strategy of staying in a business for five to seven years, with an average holding period of about 6.5 years.

Mr James Ndegwa and his brother, Mr Andrew Ndegwa, serve on the ICEA board, with the former being the chairman.

Completion of the deal will give First Chartered, which currently holds 75.9 percent in the ICEA Lion, full control of the firm that provides life and general insurance as well as asset and fund management through its subsidiaries spread out in Kenya, Uganda and Tanzania.

‘It is notified for general information that, in exercise of the powers conferred upon the Competition Authority of Kenya by Section 46 (6) (a) (ii) of the Competition Act, the Competition Authority of Kenya has authorised the proposed transaction as set out herein,’ said CAK Director-General David Kemei in a gazette notice.

The transaction is in line with Leapfrog’s investment strategy, where it invests, grows value, and then exits profitably.

Leapfrog previously bought and sold stakes in insurers, including Apollo Investments Limited-the parent company of APA Life and APA General Insurance.

Leapfrog in July last year sold its entire 69.9 percent stake in Goodlife Pharmacy to medicine distributor CFAO Healthcare, marking its exit from the retail pharmacy chain after nine years.

Prudential Financial told investors in an earnings call that the exit from ICEA is part of a broader push to redeploy capital into higher-return opportunities.

The firm had exited PGIM Taiwan-its global investment management business- in East Asia during the third quarter of last year.

The ICEA Lion deal is consistent with the Ndegwas wider strategy of reshaping the family’s investment portfolio through acquisitions, mergers and disposals.

The family has interests spanning banking, manufacturing, real estate, logistics and insurance.

The Ndegwas were instrumental in the creation of NCBA Group through the 2020 merger of NIC Group and CBA Group.

NCBA recently completed a cash-and-stock acquisition by Nedbank Group, giving the Ndegwas cash and a stake in the South Africa-headquartered group.

The family has also disposed of some assets over the years, including the ICEA Building in Nairobi’s central business district, which was sold to Jomo Kenyatta University of Agriculture and Technology for Sh1.8 billion in 2015 and subsequently renamed JKUAT Towers.

Prudential has been holding the 24.1 percent ICEA stake through Leapfrog Strategic Africa Investments (LSAI).

LSAI, in turn, held the stake through Eastern Africa Holdings Limited, which is a special purpose investment vehicle incorporated in the United Kingdom.

The latest transaction values the stake at more than three times the price paid six years ago, underlining the growth in the value of ICEA Lion during the period.

The financial services group has been growing over the past six years, posting a net profit of Sh1.16 billion in the in the year ended December 2025 compared with Sh1.34 billion in the previous year and Sh682.52 million in 2020 before Prudential joined.

Over the same period, ICEA has been a consistent dividend payer, giving out Sh600 million in 2025, up 50 percent from Sh400 million in the previous year and three times the Sh200 million paid in 2020.

The group traces its roots back to 1895 and was formed in its current structure through the 2012 merger of Insurance Company of East Africa and Lion of Kenya Insurance.

Insurance Regulatory Authority disclosures show that last year, ICEA Lion Life Assurance commanded the second largest market share (13.9 percent) in long-term insurance business where the market leader is Britam Life (22.6 percent). In the short-term business, ICEA Lion General held 3.98 percent, making it the ninth largest.

The group has been expanding its asset management business, including ICEA Lion Asset Management acquiring Stanlib Kenya as it sought to build scale in the fund management industry.

The return of the Ndegwas’ investment vehicle to full ownership comes against a backdrop of increased consolidation and foreign investment in Kenya’s insurance industry.

South Africa’s Absa Group in August this year agreed to sell its entire 63.32 percent stake in Absa Life Assurance and First Assurance Kenya Limited to First Assurance Investments Limited. The deal represents another sell-back of the stake to original owners.

First Assurance Investments Limited, which is an investment vehicle associated with Prime Cabinet Secretary Musalia Mudavadi and currently holds 16.98 percent, had sold the 63.3 percent stake in First Assurance Kenya to Absa (then Barclays Africa) in 2015 in a Sh2.2 billion deal.

A misconception in modern risk management is that an organisation controls its own risk. In Kenya’s connected economy, a business may secure its premises, systems and people yet still be exposed through a cloud platform, payments partner, telecommunications network or software supplier.

Traditional approaches built around organisational boundaries are no longer enough: when services, data and money move across an ecosystem in seconds, risk does too. Internal audit must help leaders see and manage that wider field of exposure.

Today’s losses are less likely to begin with someone physically taking cash from a bank. They may start with an intercepted transaction, compromised account, unauthorised application access or weakness in a supplier’s technology. A single failure can travel quickly across connected institutions and reach customers before conventional controls register it.

The question is no longer only whether each organisation is secure, but whether it understands the pathways through which disruption can enter, spread and become systemic.

This is most visible in financial services, where banks depend on technology firms, payment platforms and telecommunications infrastructure to deliver everyday services. These relationships enable scale and innovation, but they also create concentration and continuity risks that cannot be managed by reviewing contracts alone.

Leaders need a current map of critical dependencies, clear accountability when services fail and credible evidence that recovery arrangements will work across organisational boundaries. As organisations add cloud services, automated decisions and artificial intelligence (AI) to this network, the number of connections and the potential points of failure continues to grow.

AI raises the stakes further. It can improve processes, products and customer experiences, but it can also magnify weak data, unclear decisions and poorly governed access. Assurance must therefore evolve alongside adoption. The wider lesson for business is straightforward: innovation must be matched by clear accountability, ethical guardrails and independent challenge, especially where automated tools rely on data or services supplied by others.

Internal audit is central to this shift because it can connect evidence across functions, entities and suppliers. Its value is not simply confirming that controls exist, but testing whether leaders can spot emerging threats, understand how exposures combine and respond at the speed of the business.

This requires teams with expertise in data, cybersecurity, fraud and technology, alongside the judgement to turn technical findings into practical decisions. Done well, audit is not a brake on innovation; it challenges assumptions early and gives boards and management greater confidence that growth is being pursued responsibly.

Resilience, in turn, must be demonstrated rather than declared. The lesson is that leaders must test preparedness, track weaknesses and ask whether lessons from incidents are changing controls.

Independent audit strengthens that discipline by assessing whether responses work and recurring issues are addressed at their source.

Kenya’s cyber-threat landscape shows the scale of the challenge. The Communications Authority reported more than 842 million cyber-threat events between July and September 2025. Its latest report, covering April to June 2026, indicates that ransomware, distributed denial-of-service attacks and social-engineering scams remain prevalent.

These are not isolated IT events: they can disrupt connected services and suppliers, erode customer trust and impose real costs on the wider economy.

For business leaders, the shift begins with better questions.

Which critical services would fail if a key provider became unavailable, and how long could customers tolerate the disruption? Where are the hidden concentrations in our technology, data and payment chains? As AI reshapes decisions and processes, are controls adapting at the same pace? And does internal audit have the access, expertise and authority to give leadership an independent view of risk across the business and its partners?

Health facilities will not be allowed to sign contracts with the Social Health Authority (SHA) for services they are not licensed to provide, in a new requirement that will determine which services hospitals can offer under the 2026-2029 health insurance contracts.

Health Cabinet Secretary Aden Duale and the Health committee of the Council of Governors (CoG) agreed to this requirement as part of measures to strengthen regulatory compliance, the quality of care, and patient safety.

‘Facilities will only be contracted for services for which they are duly licensed. The National and County Governments reaffirmed their commitment to ensuring that eligible public health facilities complete the contracting process on time, continuing to provide quality, accessible, uninterrupted services to SHA beneficiaries,’ they said in a statement.

Under the new arrangement, a facility cannot use its SHA contract to offer or claim payment for a service unless it holds the relevant licence. Therefore, a hospital may be contracted for some services but not others if it does not meet the relevant licensing requirements.

The guidelines stipulate that laboratory services must be licensed by the Kenya Medical Laboratory Technicians and Technologists Board (KMLTTB), pharmacy services by the Pharmacy and Poisons Board (PPB), and imaging services by the Kenya Nuclear Regulatory Authority (KENRA).

Meanwhile, Level Four and Level Five facilities have three months to meet the compulsory laboratory licensing requirements.

This licensing requirement comes as the SHA and the CoG implement the 2026-2029 contracting cycle. The current facility contracts have been extended to October 14, 2026, and will not be extended further.

‘The Cabinet Secretary for Health, Aden Duale, and the Health Committee of the Council of Governors (CoG) have agreed that the current Social Health Authority (SHA) facility contracts, which were extended to 14 October 2026, will not be extended any further,’ the statement read.

The SHA said that it will establish HAKIKA, a digital platform that will be used to manage the contracting of healthcare providers, and will contract clinics in every county by October 14 to help eligible facilities complete the contracting process.

Facilities that have met all other contracting requirements will have 30 days to submit any outstanding documentation from the National Social Security Fund (NSSF), the National Environment Management Authority (NEMA), the fire safety authorities, the National Council for Persons with Disabilities (NCPWD), and the Office of the Data Protection Commissioner (ODPC).

‘The conditional compliance period does not exempt facilities from their statutory obligations,’ read the statement.

The stakeholders also agreed on a 90-day timeline for the payment of clean claims. The SHA is required to pay these within 90 days of receipt, in the order in which they were received.

If available funds are insufficient to settle a clean claim within the 90 days, the unpaid amount will be recognised as a certified liability and carried forward for settlement within the same financial year, subject to the provision of appropriate funds.

Kitchens in Nairobi’s new apartments are losing their walls. In their place, developers are building a raised counter with a few tall stools, and some say a unit without one now struggles to match the price of one with it.

The feature is known as a breakfast bar, or a kitchen peninsula when it extends from the cabinetry, though the property trade usually calls it a breakfast nook. Developers say it makes an apartment feel modern without taking up much floor space.

Joel Chacha, who owns a furniture shop in Nairobi, says demand for tall seats has grown as homeowners set up these breakfast nooks.

“We sell the stools from Sh5,500, and that can go to more than Sh15,000 each depending on the design. Some are made of steel while others are of wood,” Mr Chacha says.

“They have become one of our fastest-moving items. Mostly, people take two or three stools. Sometimes clients customise the stools to match their dining area furniture,” he adds.

Kingmaxx Mbarire, CEO of Kingsville Real Estate, says his firm now includes breakfast nooks in its apartment designs because buyers like them.

“They are a standard design because clients find it attractive when there is a breakfast nook that separates the kitchen and the living room, especially for a small space. It also attracts the sale value of a property,” he says.

“For the bigger spaces, it makes an apartment or rather a house look more posh,” Mr Mbarire says.

He says the appeal goes beyond looks. An open floor arrangement keeps families in touch while someone is cooking.

“For example, mothers can watch their children eat while cooking in the kitchen,” he says.

The same layout works when entertaining guests.

“We are headed to festivities. This kind of arrangement allows interaction as some people will be in the living room area, others in the kitchen, and we just want to have a free-flowing conversation,” Mr Mbarire says.

A traditional breakfast nook is a small eating area with a table and bench seating close to the kitchen. In Kenyan apartments, however, the name is usually given to a counter extending from the kitchen and paired with tall stools.

Mr Mbarire says the nook is not meant to replace the dining room.

“It’s a totally different space from the dining area. A breakfast nook is set up as part of the kitchen nowadays; it’s not part of the dining area,” he says.

In small apartments, though, it can serve as the place for casual meals. Throughout the day, it doubles as a spot for breakfast, homework, remote work and conversation with guests.

“Most clients find it attractive. For example, in the tiny spaces where you can’t have a dining area, but you have that breakfast nook, you just add some seats, and it becomes very attractive. It is one of the considerations that buyers are looking for when buying and renting a property,” he says.

Interior designer Faith Kosgei says a nook works only if it is planned as part of the building.

“The design of the breakfast nook should integrate with the architecture of the house,” she says.

A well-designed nook, she says, makes use of awkward corners, improves the efficiency of the floor plan and gives the room a sense of balance.

“Lastly and most importantly, it should encourage family connections, be intimate and inviting. A real intentional design should bring out the potential to any underperforming space,” Ms Kosgei says.

She recommends warm wooden tones, curved or sculpted pieces, soft furnishings, and benches or leather banquettes that are easy to maintain. The nook need not match the dining furniture.

“The breakfast nook doesn’t have to match the rest of the furniture; it can actually be an opportunity to bring out your personal style, taste and identity to an otherwise functional space,” Ms Kosgei says.

Tailored for buyers

For developers, particularly at the higher end, the nook is another way to tailor apartments to buyers. Mr Mbarire says Kingsville uses finishes, lighting and cabinetry to set the space apart.

“We customise with nice hanging minimal chandeliers, then there is also the aspect of cabinets. Although there are people who request to design that space according to their liking,” he says.

“All our breakfast nooks are also marble or graphite, but you can choose a colour that you prefer, especially for the clients who are buying the units. When it comes to furnishing, especially for furnished apartments, we also add some cutlery. Sometimes, if the space is big, we customise a bar area for your liquor,” he says.

Cabinets add storage to what would otherwise be a seating area.

“A breakfast nook also adds more space, since some have cabinetry. In these cabinets, you can put cutlery so that, in case children or guests are coming to have breakfast, it’s easier to just whip out the cutlery and place it on top,” Mr Mbarire says.

Adding a counter and stools does not, however, automatically justify a higher price. At Kingsville, the gap between units with and without a nook reflects the extra space they take up.

“Our five-bedroom apartment with a breakfast nook is going for Sh55 million; the one that does not have it is priced at Sh53 million,” Mr Mbarire says.

“For a one-bedroom in Westlands, the price is Sh9.5 million for the standard one, but their size is a little bit smaller; their price is between Sh8.7 million,” he says.

“For a two-bedroom, most of our two-bedroom units come with a closed kitchen, but the ones that do not come with a closed kitchen, the price is Sh12 million. If we include the breakfast nook, the price is Sh13.5 million because, ideally, the space is also bigger,” he says

“So, the price does not change because of the breakfast nook; the price changes because of the price per square metre.”

The idea itself is not new. Breakfast nooks, breakfast bars and eat-in kitchens have long been common in the US, UK and Australia. There, dedicated breakfast corners have given way to multipurpose counters used for eating, working, studying and entertaining.

Kenyan developers are following suit, building the feature into the design and marketing of new projects rather than treating it as interior decoration.

Ms Kosgei says homeowners on a tight budget can still create one without structural work. She suggests making the most of natural light and using recycled materials, such as wooden pallets or bookshelves converted into benches with storage drawers.

“The breakfast nook is where mornings begin and the late night ends,” she says. “It should be a place of cosy vibrancy, beauty as well as warmth. It’s not merely an extra space to create but rather a better way to live.”

Banks are set to allow their customers to send money using their mobile phone numbers instead of the current requirement of account numbers, in a move that seeks to replicate the simplicity that has helped telcos grow their mobile money business in personal cash transfers.

Customers will no longer need to ask for or share bank account numbers when sending money under a new system that will allow their mobile phone number to act as simple payment identifiers.

The change means a person sending money from a bank or Sacco will only need to know the recipient’s phone number, without having to know their financial institution or obtaining their account details.

PesaLink Chief Executive Gituku Kirika said in an interview that the new product is ready for rollout and will target the more than 200 financial institutions that currently use Pesalink, including banks, Saccos, fintechs and telcos. Pesalink is 100 percent owned by the Kenya Bankers Association (KBA).

‘The idea is to have an alias, which is an identifier that is known to people and will be securely linked to a store of value. The platform is read and what is remaining is for the participants to start the mapping,’ said Mr Kirika.

The development mirrors change in other instant-payment markets such as India and South Africa, where proxy identifiers have been used to simplify payments.

The move will save customers from having to key in or share the long bank accounts, usually up to 16 digits, when they want to transact. This will simplify the payments journey as it is with mobile money services such as M-Pesa and Airtel Money where all the customers need is the phone number that can be easily remembered or recalled from the contacts list.

The simplicity of using mobile numbers has helped telcos process trillions of shillings per year including person-to-person payments. India’s Unified Payments Interface (UPI) ID allows users to make payments using identifiers instead of sharing conventional bank account details.

South Africa’s PayShap uses ShapIDs. The ShapID is a simple proxy identifier, usually a customer’s mobile phone number, that is linked to their bank accounts in South Africa, allowing them to send and receive instant payments without sharing the long account numbers.

In Kenya, a customer will request their bank or Sacco to map their phone number to their account. The phone number will then become the customer’s PesaLink ID and can be used by others to send money to them.

For institutional customers, banks and Saccos will instead assign a random number as the PesaLink ID, which will then be linked to the relevant account. The system will also allow customers to change the account linked to their PesaLink ID without changing the identifier itself.

‘For example, if I am your employer and I am paying you, all I need is the PesaLink ID,’ said Mr Kirika.

A customer changing banks would therefore only need to visit their new institution and remap the existing ID to the new account, without having to notify an employer or other regular payers of a new account number.

‘The ID remains the same but the customer can change the store of value where it is mapped. We are changing the language of transaction from sending to an account number to sending to a PesaLink ID,’ said Mr Kirika.

The expansion comes as PesaLink seeks to deepen interoperability across Kenya’s financial sector by bringing different types of institutions onto a common payments infrastructure.

Pesalink is also currently onboarding more institutions onto its ‘Lipa na Mbao’ campaign which has so far seen 25 banks, microfinance banks and Saccos cut fees for money transfers from as high as Sh250 to a flat fee of Sh20 for transactions above Sh1,000 and up to Sh999,999 and zero charges for transfers below Sh1,000.

Quickmart Kenya owners will receive Sh15 billion from the sale of a 50 percent stake through a public offer at the Nairobi bourse, giving the retail chain’s founders handsome returns.

Shareholders, through Sokoni Retail Kenya Limited (SRKL), are selling two billion shares at Sh7.50 each in the weeks to October 31, providing a multi-billion-shilling partial exit route for private equity firm Adenia and its founders.

In SRKL, Adenia holds a 50.79 percent stake; the family of Quickmart founder the late John Kinuthia (31.83 percent), Tumaini Supermarket founders (12.02 percent), and the CEO of the retail chain, Peter Kang’iri, who has a 5.36 per cent.

They will all cede half their ownership in the initial share offer (IPO) in a transaction that reveals the outsized growth in value of the chain under Adenia, which first bought Tumaini Supermarket in 2018 and the following year acquired Quickmart– which were merged in 2020.

This will add billions of shillings to the worth of the founders of Tumaini Supermarket and Quickmart, which were smaller retailers in a market then dominated by Tuskys and Naivas.

Adenia will bank Sh7.62 billion from the sale of 1.06 billion shares that represent half of its 2.03 billion units in Quickmart.

The fund acquired a 55 percent majority equity stake in Tumaini in 2018 and a 51 percent stake in Quickmart in 2019, before merging the two units under the Quickmart brand in January 2020.

Quickmart CEO, who joined the company in 2019, is set to earn Sh803.3 million in the sale of half of his 214.2 million shares in the retailer.

The Kinuthia family is in line for a total windfall of Sh4.77 billion as they cede half of their 1.27 billion shares in Sokoni Retail.

Duncan Kinuthia, the late founder’s son and a director at Quickmart, is selling 414.6 million shares in the IPO, which will net him Sh3.1 billion. He currently owns a 20.73 percent stake in the retailer, equivalent to 829.2 million shares.

His sister Gladys Wambui Kinuthia holds 191.5 million shares, or a 4.79 percent stake in the vehicle, meaning she stands to earn Sh718.2 million after offloading half of the holdings.

The late founder’s wife, Zipporah Kinuthia, and William Gitau Kinuthia are in line to net Sh473.4 million each after offloading 63.1 million shares apiece. They currently hold stakes of 3.16 percent each in the retailer.

Tumaini founders Moses Nditika, Joram Ngeruro Njoga and Elijah Omullo Okello will collectively bank Sh1.8 billion from the sale, courtesy of their holding of 12.02 percent in Sokoni Retail.

Mr Okello is selling 87.98 million shares in the offer, or half of his 4.4 percent stake, which will see him earn Sh660 million.

Mr Nditika and Mr Njoga currently hold equal stakes of 3.81 percent or 152.45 million shares each in Quickmart, meaning they stand to earn Sh571.7 million each from selling half of their shares in the IPO.

The chain, which posted a profit of Sh1.7 billion in the year to December, is promising investors to share 80 percent of the profits as dividends.

The sale through the NSE is a boost to the bourse, which this year ended a listing drought that lasted years following the Kenya Pipeline Company IPO and the entry of Family Bank via introduction.

This has widened investors’ choice in a market where five counters-Safaricom, Equity Bank, KCB, EABL and Cooperative Bank-dominated trading, masking the overall performance of the bourse.

‘The offer opens the next chapter in that journey by broadening ownership and enabling Kenyan and other eligible investors to participate in Quickmart’s future,’ said Martha Osier, a partner at Adenia.

‘The existing shareholder group will retain a substantial interest following the offer, reflecting our continued confidence in the company and its long-term prospects,’ she added

The sale opened on Monday morning after obtaining regulatory approvals, and will run until October 30.

Quickmart will now become the second listed retailer at the bourse, joining the struggling Uchumi Supermarket which went public in 1992.

The sale of part of Adenia’s stake through the NSE also marks a rare move by a PE fund, which often exits their investments through share sales to high-net-worth investors or their peers.

The deal aligns with PE funds’ strategy of staying in a business for five to seven years, with an average holding period of about six-and-a-half years.

For their remaining shares, Adenia and other shareholders have agreed to a lock-in period of 24 months for at least 60 percent of their stock, opening the way for the investors to make further share sales via the NSE.

Kenyan institutional investors have been allocated 35 percent of the IPO shares, followed by local retail and offering investors at 20 percent each.

East African Community investors have an allocation of 12 percent. The limits can, however, be adjusted depending on subscription levels per investor category.

Quickmart is now the second largest retail chain in Kenya behind Naivas by store count and turnover, with an estimated 15 percent share of the market. The company has a current store count of 72, in 16 counties.

In the year ended December 2025, Quickmart reported a 33 percent growth in net profit to Sh1.51 billion. Sales rose by 9.3 percent to Sh50.43 billion in the year.

The retailer paid its shareholders a dividend of Sh1.65 billion, representing a payout ratio of 109 percent.

Adenia sought to bet on a sector that had witnessed turmoil after several Kenyan supermarkets, including Uchumi, Nakumatt and Tuskys, had either gone bust or were about to do so as foreign retailers such as Shoprite and Game exited.

Quickmart launched a breakneck expansion that at first saw it open a branch nearly every month to become the fastest-growing supermarket chain in Kenya.

Financial Times ranked it this year at number 97 among Africa’s fastest-growing companies in a top 100 list that had 17 companies from Kenya.

While taking over Tumaini and Quick Mart, Adenia judged Kenya a nascent retail market with potential to grow in both scale and sophistication.

Adenia’s initial growth strategy was two-fold. First, it replaced the Kinuthia founding family with professional management, bringing in Mr Kangi’iri, with a background in retail, logistics and finance, as chief executive, and Jacques Dôme, who had been in retail in Dubai for 15 years, as his deputy.

Second, it sought to strike better deals with Kenyan suppliers, many of which enjoy dominant market positions.

Family Bank has secured a $10 million (Sh1.3 billion) financing from the African Development Bank (AfDB) as it seeks to increase lending to Kenya’s importers and exporters.

The facility will see the lender access foreign currency from the AfDB to bankroll small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) and local corporates, especially those in the manufacturing, agriculture, healthcare and renewable energy sectors.

Family Bank said it will also target women-owned businesses. The recently listed lender seeks to strengthen its ability to lend to small businesses, which make up over 80 percent of its customer base.

‘This facility strengthens our capacity to scale up lending to MSMEs, which form over 80 percent of our customer base, while addressing financing gaps that continue to constrain business growth,’ said Family Bank chief executive Nancy Njau.

Kenyan importers and exporters face challenges accessing affordable trade finance – financial products banks use to make buying and selling goods across borders easier. This includes foreign currency needed to settle transactions.

‘The financing will ease the pressure on exporters, importers in Kenya, help unlock new opportunities for sustainable economic activity and ultimately reduce Africa’s trade finance gap, currently estimated at more than $74 billion (Sh9.6 trillion),’ said Lamin Drammeh, AfDB’s head of trade finance.

Family Bank was set up in 1984 and became a fully-fledged commercial bank in 2007. It listed on the Nairobi Securities Exchange on June 23, 2026, at Sh18 per share. It was trading at Sh27.95 on Monday afternoon.

AfDB is among major financiers from which Kenyan banks have taken credit to fund their loans to local and regional businesses.

The loans are usually provided over the medium to long term in foreign currencies, helping banks to overcome the challenge of relying heavily on short-term deposits to fund multi-year loans.