Category: Business Daily

The Labour Relations Court has ruled against Stima Investment Cooperative Society for constructively dismissing its former head of legal by assigning her demeaning duties, such as keeping office keys, and excluding her from key meetings.

The court found that the Sacco’s actions created an intolerable work environment, forcing Viola Monica Atieno Odhiambo’s resignation, which amounted to constructive dismissal under the law.

Ms Odhiambo resigned in 2023 and subsequently sued, arguing that her departure from work was involuntary. She cited multiple grievances, including being removed from the Sacco’s board meetings-where she had previously taken minutes-without explanation.

Additionally, she said she was assigned the role of office keyholder despite being a lactating mother, making it impractical for her to arrive early at work or leave late.

Further allegations included arbitrary surcharges for a lost laptop, persistent harassment, unfair accusations of insubordination, and biased performance assessments.

The Sacco also permitted her assistant to attend Heads of Departments meetings despite her presence as the Legal Department head.

Ms Odhiambo had joined Stima Investment Co-operative Society Limited in March 2018 as Legal Officer under a three-year contract, which included inpatient medical coverage of Sh5 million and outpatient coverage of Sh200,000.

However, the Sacco unilaterally reduced her inpatient cover to Sh1 million without consultation, violating the Employment Act’s requirement for mutual agreement on contractual changes.

This downgrade had severe financial repercussions. In December 2020, Ms Odhiambo was hospitalised with a bill of Sh1.5 million.

The insurer covered only Sh1 million, leaving her liable for Sh506,372 after the Sacco recovered the balance from her. She later incurred another Sh140,000 in medical expenses. The court declared the downgrade unlawful and ordered reimbursement totaling Sh646,372.

“The employer cannot alter the employee’s employment contract without consulting the employee,’ the court said.

The court’s most critical findings centered on her second contract, effective March 2021 after maternity leave. The Sacco’s CEO had authorised her legal assistant to attend Heads of Departments meetings in her stead, undermining her authority.

The court deemed this a ‘direct assault’ on her role and a breach of contract.

Her assignment as keyholder was also contested. Ms Odhiambo testified that despite protesting the impracticality due to her breastfeeding needs, the CEO insisted she maintain the duty.

The court ruled that these additional responsibilities were not stipulated in her contract and dismissed the Sacco’s claim that she merely had to maintain a key register.

In its judgment, the court emphasised that constructive dismissal requires conduct so severe it signals the employer’s intent to no longer honor the contract.

It rejected the Sacco’s argument that Ms Odhiambo delayed her resignation unreasonably, noting that employees may seek alternatives before leaving.

For remedies, the court awarded her five months’ salary (Sh670,000 based on her Sh134,000 monthly pay), refunded Sh134,000 deducted as notice pay, and ordered reimbursement of Sh16,500 surcharged for the laptop and Sh36,150 for accrued leave.

However, it declined a tax refund, directing instead that the amount be remitted to the Kenya Revenue Authority.

The Court of Appeal has backed the dismissal of a former managing director of CIC Insurance Asset Management, Peter Mwaura, for misleading the board over Sh605 million deposits at the collapsed Imperial Bank.

The three-judge bench held that the insurer had valid grounds to end the employment relationship on claims that he performed his duties negligently and caused deposits to be made at Imperial Bank in excess of the agreed Sh485 million limit.

The court found that his 2016 exit followed a lawful disciplinary process and a voluntary resignation.

Mr Mwaura reckoned that he was forced to resign and sought Sh29 million in compensation, reinstatement and damages.

The bench overturned a 2019 finding of the Employment and Labour Relations Court that Mr Mwaura had been forced to resign after misleading the company chief executive and the board about the true financial position of the company’s deposits at Imperial bank.

While ruling on Mr Mwaura’s appeal and across-appeal filed by the company, the court said the record showed he chose to resign after a disciplinary process, rather than being pushed out through intolerable conduct by his employer.

The legal dispute originated from events of October 13, 2015 when Imperial Bank was placed under the management of the Kenya Deposit Insurance Corporation (KDIC). On the same day CIC’s board sought an urgent update on its exposure to the troubled lender.

Imperial Bank’s collapse sent shockwaves through Kenya’s financial sector after the Central Bank of Kenya placed the commercial bank under receivership over massive fraud linked to its top management. This was after the board of the mid-sized lender alerted it to suspected insider malpractice.

The bank had 28 branches when its board uncovered massive fraud, including billions of shillings in fraudulent, off-the-books transactions.

To stabilise the situation and protect customers, the regulator appointed the KDIC as receiver, while Kenya Commercial Bank later acquired some Imperial Bank assets and took responsibility for a share of liabilities. The bank had assets of Sh70.3 billion.

This triggered enquiries by CIC’s board on the level of the insurer’s exposure. Mr Mwaura, then managing director and principal officer of CIC Asset Management, reported that the group’s funds held Sh334 million at the bank. He said he had obtained the information from the company’s investment manager.

However, in December 2015, while Mr Mwaura was on leave, a request from the Capital Markets Authority prompted an internal check that revealed the actual exposure stood at Sh605 million. Two deposits of Sh200 million and Sh83 million had been omitted from the earlier report.

CIC issued Mr Mwaura with a notice to show cause and summoned him to a disciplinary hearing in February 2016.

The insurer said his role included supervising investment functions, ensuring reconciliations were done, and keeping the board accurately informed about risk exposure.

It was claimed that deposit of the CIC’s funds at the bank had been limited to Sh485 million at the material time based on June 2015 financials. It was further submitted that during the disciplinary proceedings, he regretted not regularly checking whether the respondent was excessively exposed to any bank.

However, Mr Mwaura argued he had relied on information from an investment manager and later claimed he was pressured to resign within minutes by the then CEO after the hearing.

He denied the alleged negligence and stated that after being misled by the investment manager, he unintentionally and excusably misled the CIC board and CEO on its exposure level.

‘Owing to pressure, coercion, intimidation and threats, the appellant handed in a two-line resignation letter and left the premises. By a letter dated February 16, 2016, the CEO accepted his resignation letter,’ the court heard.

He sued, seeking reinstatement, terminal dues and damages running into over Sh29 million.

CIC countered that the executive had acknowledged gaps in oversight, including failures in reconciliation and monitoring exposure limits, and that the board had resolved to terminate his employment for negligence but offered him the option to resign due to his long service.

He joined the company in 1985 as an assistant accountant and rose to the position of managing director/principal officer – CIC Asset Management Ltd at the time of exit, earning a monthly salary of Sh1.9 million at the time of termination.

The appellate court agreed with the insurer’s position, with the judges saying constructive dismissal requires conduct by an employer that is so serious it amounts to a fundamental breach of contract.

‘We are not persuaded that the appellant was constructively dismissed. The record shows that his employment was due for termination owing to his own undoing, but he chose the easier alternative of resigning. His resignation letter does not in any way exhibit that he was forced to resign by his employer,’ the court said.

It noted that the board had ‘valid reasons to consider terminating the claimant’s services’ over the alleged negligence in his duties.

The judges pointed to admissions made during the disciplinary process that proper reconciliations would have exposed the discrepancy earlier and that exposure to the bank had not been checked regularly. They also cited board minutes showing the decision to allow him to resign as an alternative to termination.

‘Upon various considerations, it was unanimously agreed that the appellant’s employment would be terminated but given his long service he would be given an opportunity to resign instead if he so wished,’ the court quoted from the record.

The court concluded that the resignation letter did not show coercion and that Mr Mwaura ‘chose the easier alternative of resigning’ in the face of an impending termination.

As a result, the judges set aside the lower court’s finding of constructive dismissal and rejected most of the claims against CIC. They allowed only a limited claim for 12 days’ unpaid salary for February 2016, which the insurer indicated it would settle subject to confirmation.

As Kenya navigates a Sh4.7 trillion budget framework amid revenue underperformance and rising debt service obligations, public debate has understandably focused on borrowing levels, taxation measures and expenditure ceilings.

These are visible pressure points. However, a less visible but structurally significant issue lies upstream in the infrastructure value chain: project underperformance.

Much of the current public frustration – whether expressed through concerns about rising taxation, service delivery strain or the widening gap between economic expansion and household welfare – reflects deeper structural pressures within the fiscal system.

Understanding these pressures requires looking beyond headline budget figures to the performance integrity of long-term capital investments.

Infrastructure is often discussed in binary terms – either as a necessary investment or as excessive borrowing. The reality is more nuanced. Infrastructure can expand economic capacity when assumptions hold.

But when core assumptions weaken – whether in demand forecasts, cost calibration or risk allocation – projects may generate less economic value than anticipated while still locking in long-term financial commitments.

This gap between projected performance and realised outcomes is not always dramatic. It often appears gradually, through lower-than-expected utilisation, deferred maintenance, renegotiated contracts or fiscal support measures that were not prominent at financial close. Over time, however, the cumulative effect becomes material.

Large-scale infrastructure projects embed economic assumptions that typically extend two to three decades – reflecting 20-year design lives under conventional procurement or 25-30-year concession periods under public -private partnership frameworks.

Traffic growth projections assume certain income elasticities and logistics patterns. Energy projects assume specific industrial expansion trajectories. Toll roads assume willingness-to-pay thresholds aligned with projected income growth. When these assumptions prove optimistic, the physical asset remains – but its economic performance shifts.

When infrastructure projects are scaled in the hundreds of billions of shillings, even modest percentage deviations in projected performance can materially alter fiscal outcomes.

A 10 to 20 percent divergence in traffic volumes, energy demand, or cost escalation assumptions may appear manageable in isolation, but when applied across multi-billion-shilling investments, the resulting revenue gaps or cost pressures can compound over decades.

These adjustments do not disappear; they must ultimately be absorbed within the broader fiscal framework. For example, if a major toll corridor records sustained traffic volumes below conservative projections, the resulting revenue gap may trigger fiscal support measures or contractual adjustments that reverberate beyond the transport sector.

The consequence is not merely a slower return on investment. It is fiscal inflexibility.

Revenue shortfalls in infrastructure-linked projects can migrate into contingent liabilities, tariff adjustments, concession restructuring or direct fiscal support.

Capital cost underestimation can result in variations and refinancing pressures. When aggregated across multiple projects, these adjustments narrow fiscal space and complicate medium-term budget planning.

This dynamic is not unique to Kenya. Globally, infrastructure performance risk is one of the most studied drivers of long-term public finance stress. What matters is not whether ambitious projects are pursued, but whether they are subjected to sufficiently rigorous preparation and independent scrutiny before commitment. The most expensive stage of any infrastructure project is not construction.

It is weak preparation.

When alternatives are not exhaustively evaluated, when traffic or demand models rely heavily on central-case projections, or when downside scenarios are treated as remote rather than plausible, risk accumulates quietly. By the time performance gaps emerge, contractual and political commitments make course correction complex.

In an environment of tightening fiscal space, Kenya’s economic resilience will depend not only on revenue mobilisation and borrowing strategy, but also on the performance integrity of its capital investments.

Infrastructure does not strain public finances simply because it is built. It strains public finances when projected economic value does not fully materialise.

Ensuring that assumptions are rigorously interrogated before financial commitments are made is therefore not a technocratic detail – it is central to long-term fiscal stability.

In capital investment, ambition must be matched by preparation and discipline. The budget ultimately reflects the difference.

Kenya possesses strong technical capacity in public and private sectors. The challenge is institutional consistency. Are demand models routinely stress-tested against conservative scenarios? Are bills of quantities examined not only for price competitiveness but for executability? Are lifecycle maintenance costs fully integrated into financial projections? Are downside cases given equal weight in decision-making processes?

These are not procedural questions. They are macroeconomic ones.

As infrastructure ambitions scale – particularly within regional corridor and energy integration frameworks – the magnitude of potential deviation expands. Small percentage errors, when applied to very large capital commitments, translate into meaningful fiscal consequences over time.

This does not argue for halting infrastructure development. On the contrary, infrastructure remains essential to productivity, trade integration and urban efficiency. The argument is for discipline commensurate with scale.

Strengthening upstream project preparation and independent technical challenge functions may be one of the most cost-effective fiscal reforms available. Institutionalising independent project review panels and mandatory downside sensitivity disclosure before financial close could significantly reduce long-term exposure without slowing development momentum.

In an environment of tightening fiscal space, Kenya’s economic resilience will depend not only on revenue mobilisation and borrowing strategy, but also on the performance integrity of its capital investments.

Infrastructure does not strain public finances simply because it is built. It strains public finances when projected economic value does not fully materialise.

Ensuring that assumptions are rigorously interrogated before financial commitments are made is therefore not a technocratic detail – it is central to long-term fiscal stability.

In capital investment, ambition must be matched by preparation discipline. The budget ultimately reflects the difference.

NCBA Group’s digital credit and banking services coupled with its progressive dividend payout were the key factors that saw South Africa’s Nedbank offer a relatively higher premium to acquire a 66 percent stake in the Nairobi Securities Exchange-listed lender.

Nedbank indicated on January 22 that it will pay Sh110.4 billion in cash and stock for the controlling stake in NCBA, translating to 1.4 times the net assets or book value of the Kenyan banking multinational.

The portion of net assets being acquired by Nedbank stood at Sh79.35 billion, based on NCBA’s results for the nine months ended September 2025.

The 1.4 times book value multiple places the valuation of NCBA above that of recent peer transactions.

Nigeria’s Access Bank acquired National Bank of Kenya in 2024 at 1.25 times net assets while a consortium of three companies acquired a 39 percent stake in Sidian Bank at a price that appraised the lender at 0.95 times its book value.

Equity Group in June 2023 acquired a controlling 92 percent stake in Rwanda’s Cogebanque at a 1.26 times its net assets. Kenyan banks previously traded at up to three times their net assets in early 2015, with their valuation taking a hit from multiple shocks including the Covid-19 pandemic and interest rates caps which lasted from September 2016 to November 2019.

‘NCBA has amazing technology. If you look at what NCBA has been doing in the digital and fintech arena, it has technologies that we think are incredibly powerful and something that we can use even in our own home market in South Africa and also in other markets because there’s something there that is clearly scalable,” Nedbank’s CEO, Jason Quinn, told the Business Daily.

“When you see technologies that are scalable, price-to-book multiple isn’t always the best determinant of value because you can scale and build out those technologies in other markets.”

Nedbank says that NCBA’s track record in dividend payment was another key factor that informed its willingness to accept a relatively high premium in acquiring a controlling stake in the business.

In the financial year 2024, NCBA’s dividend stood at Sh5.5 per share translating to a total payout of Sh9 billion which was a 15.8 percent increase compared to the previous year and a payout ratio of 41.4 percent. Between 2020 and 2024, NCBA’s total dividend payout stood at Sh31 billion.

Nedbank says that the NCBA acquisition is designed to give a more stable and stronger dividend payout than the bank experienced with Ecobank which it exited in 2025.

‘It’s also fair to say that NCBA Group is a strong dividend payer and so the earnings correlate quite nicely with the cash flows and that was another compelling component of the valuation especially given that the business is well capitalized,” Quinn says.

“Although we had long standing shareholding in Ecobank, West Africa is a little bit more difficult to extract returns out of and the track record of dividend coming out of Ecobank particularly in Nigeria was problematic.”

Nedbank’s CEO is visiting Kenya this week to meet the top leadership of NCBA Group as well as market regulators including the Capital Markets Authority and the Central Bank of Kenya.

The bank’s acquisition of NCBA is expected to be concluded within 6 to 9 months, implying it should be consummated by the start of the third quarter of 2026.

All roads led to teaching, even the ones Prof Jack Mwimali took to escape it. The secretary and CEO of the Council of Legal Education is the finest product of teachers, the best student of his mother and father. Family genes are hard to shake off, he has learned.

He was a naughty boy growing up, breaking his hand two or three times in rugby, football and WrestleMania. He had hoped the gene had missed his children, skipped a generation, but woe unto him. ‘In fact,’ he says, ‘in many cases, when I am mad and want to discipline my children, I see my younger self in them.’ He is a funny guy, that Mwimali.

But he is also a bodybuilder, something he has been doing since 1998. A strongman, you would be forgiven for thinking he comes at the world with the ‘full force of the law’. Forgiven, but wrong. Because underneath that giant patina is a reticent recluse, a man who prefers to do his own laundry. Not a revolutionary act, but given the circumstances, perhaps a revelatory one: everything has to be the best in class.

It is often said that professors and academics are quite uptight. Are you uptight, Prof?

Haha! Perhaps. I may not be the best judge of my own character. But I believe I’m amiable and a good listener. That’s probably what drew me to academia. To teach and impart knowledge, you also need feedback from the people you’re interacting with; otherwise, you’re just speaking to yourself.

Tell me something cool about yourself.

I’m a bodybuilder. I’ve been bodybuilding since 1998.

Let’s talk about your house of pain. What led you to bodybuilding?

Two reasons. First, I was asthmatic and struggled with colds and certain allergens, so I went to the gym to develop my chest and improve my breathing. I also used to be a very rough boy when I was young. I broke my arm about four times, and it got very weak. I went to the gym to try to strengthen that right arm.

What’s something most people don’t know about bodybuilding?

It requires a lot of discipline. At first, there’s a lot of pain as your muscles adapt. But after a while, you feel you can’t do without it. In fact, if you don’t exercise, you feel lethargic and off the whole day. It’s almost addictive.

Do you have a memorable bodybuilding experience from your younger years?

Not particularly. But I remember when I was in Sweden, I went to the gym at the University of Lund. Some renowned Nordic strongmen trained there. I would look at them and the level of intensity with which they were training, which was quite interesting. I resolved to try doing a bit of what they were doing. As much as I could not lift as heavily as they did, I was quite competitive. I surprised myself.

What’s the hardest part about being a bodybuilder?

When you wake up, and there’s that lethargic feeling. Yet you know that if you do not exercise for the next four or five days, by the time you go back, you’ll get those aches. You have to push yourself. But in most cases, once you have started, you pick up. Even though you may have felt that you didn’t want to go, the moment you’re there, it all flows.

How has your exercise regimen changed you?

It has helped my concentration. Leadership and research require a lot of intensity, and working out relieves pressure and improves sleep. It gives you a good night’s sleep so that by the time you wake up, you feel refreshed.

Secondly, just as long and drawn-out research requires discipline, so does bodybuilding. You have to be disciplined in how you approach your training schedule.

Speaking of, Prof, what’s your guilty pleasure?

I have a sweet tooth [chuckles]. I eat a lot of sweets. In fact, if you get to a place where there are sweets, people will be surprised because I take a lot of them. I literally chew on them.

There was a time I used to go to the supermarket and buy a packet, and within a few days, they’d be finished, so I deliberately stopped buying them. But at meetings, if there are sweets, I’m usually the one taking them [chuckles].

What do sweets do for you? Did you have them a lot in childhood or not at all?

I’m not sure. Maybe it’s because I didn’t have many sweets growing up. I was raised in a very remote rural area in Trans Nzoia, near Saiwa Swamp, where we walked barefoot for about five kilometres. But we never felt any different from other students. We never felt that we were being treated badly; it was life, and we lived it fully, eating maize stems as sugarcane.

But many childhood games had disciplinary consequences. If you made a wire car, people assumed you had cut a fence to get the wire, and you’d get beaten. I guess that is what we derive pleasure from – that prohibited fruit made it even sweeter.

What do you miss about your younger self?

Haha! I was very strong-headed. In fact, I often see my younger self in Gen Zs. I was very argumentative, and I held very strong positions. Grown-up me is more pragmatic. I have to listen to and take the views of others.

Is that why you gravitated to bodybuilding?

Maybe. I would have played rugby. I once broke my arm when I was playing as a football goalkeeper. When I caught the ball, it went with my arm. There was a time I was jumping a hurdle and landed on my arm and broke it. The third time was while wrestling. I was a naughty boy.

Have any of those traits been passed on to your children?

Oh, a lot of them. In fact, sometimes when I want to discipline them, I remember my younger self. Once, I was marking exam papers and warned my son not to touch them. Of course, the warning excited him, and he doodled on one of the papers. I was furious, but when I looked at his face, I saw myself. I just told him not to do it again [chuckles].

My daughter once abandoned her bicycle and insisted on riding her brother’s, which was bigger. I warned her several times. She hit a tree and got injured. After the hospital visit, she still went back on the bicycle. That was me back in the day [chuckles].

What’s an aspect of fatherhood that surprised you the most?

How humane it makes you. As a single person, you tend to think in terms of personal benefit. As a parent, you sacrifice and put your children first; you can give them everything that you have. As a hard-headed person, I never thought I could make sacrifices, especially for those tiny little people.

What shortcomings from your father are you correcting with your own children?

It’s not a shortcoming, but my dad was a teacher from 1956 to 1981, when he became an administrative chief. He was a disciplinarian par excellence, very firm and sometimes harsh. We thought he was unreasonable, but later realised he knew what he was doing, even though he sometimes went too far.

I have my own ways of dealing with my young ones, but not to the extremities of my dad or my mum, who was also a teacher from 1963 to 1998.

But the teaching gene refused to skip you?

In fact, at one time, I thought I would not want to be a teacher. I did everything not to be a teacher. By the time I turned 40, I looked back at

Kenya plans to tap up to 90 percent of annual collections from the Railway Development Levy (RDL) to secure additional financing for railway projects, under proposed legal changes before Parliament.

The Miscellaneous Fees and Levies (Amendment) Bill, 2025 seeks to amend the Miscellaneous Fees and Levies Act to expand how proceeds from the Railway Development Levy Fund (RDLF) can be used. The levy is charged at two percent of the customs value of all imported goods.

‘The purpose of the levy shall be to provide funds for the construction and operation of a standard gauge railway network in order to facilitate the transportation of goods,’ the memorandum to the Bill states.

If approved, the amendments would allow the State to leverage future levy revenues to mobilise fresh capital for railway infrastructure. This marks a shift from the current pay-as-you-go model.

A clause in the Bill provides that a proportion of the RDLF ‘not exceeding ninety percent of the Fund may be used to secure additional funds’ for developing railway infrastructure, including the standard gauge railway (SGR).

The structure mirrors the securitisation of the Road Maintenance Fuel Levy, where the government committed part of future fuel levy collections to repay investors in road bonds.

The Treasury securitised Sh7 of the Sh25 collected per litre of petrol and diesel after increasing the levy from Sh18 to Sh25 in July 2024.

Read: Martin Agumbi: Why Kenya Roads Board is tapping future fuel levies now

While that approach has been framed as a way to clear sector arrears, the National Treasury has differed with the International Monetary Fund over whether such financing should be classified as sovereign debt.

‘The concern is an accounting matter on whether we should capture it as a sovereign debt or not. Our position as government is that once you sell a right to a special purpose vehicle (SPV), then there is no risk to the government at all,’ Treasury Cabinet Secretary John Mbadi said earlier.

The proposed amendments would effectively turn the RDLF into a financial anchor, enabling the government to use future levy proceeds to back loans, bonds or other structured instruments to accelerate railway expansion and upgrades.

Chinese lenders negotiations

Kenya has increasingly turned to alternative financing models to fund infrastructure amid rising debt-servicing costs and constrained fiscal space. Rail projects, seen as critical to lowering freight costs and improving regional trade competitiveness, have faced funding gaps.

The Bill also broadens the use of the levy to include financing the safety and economic regulation of railway infrastructure, as well as rehabilitation works, subject to approval by the Cabinet Secretary.

The changes come as Kenya negotiates with Chinese lenders to make the levy more flexible. China Exim Bank financed the SGR from Mombasa to Suswa near Naivasha.

Mr Mbadi said Kenya has opened talks with China Exim Bank to drop a clause requiring RDL proceeds to be used to repay the loan for the Mombasa-Naivasha line.

He said a waiver would allow the levy, which forms part of the security for existing loans, to back a bond to finance the extension of the SGR from Naivasha to Malaba.

‘What we intend to do is use the railway development levy to raise funds and have an engagement with Exim Bank on this because there is a provision in the agreement that ties the railway development levy to this loan,’ he said on February 11.

He added: ‘We have not engaged with China to fund the railway from Naivasha.’

Ring-fencing RDLF

The Bill, sponsored by Majority Leader Kimani Ichung’wah, proposes the creation of a ring-fenced Railway Development Levy Fund into which all levy proceeds would be paid.

The Fund would be managed by a Railway Development Levy Fund Board structured as a corporate body. It would comprise a chairperson appointed by the President, the Principal Secretaries responsible for railway transport and the Treasury, a representative from the Office of the Attorney-General, five non-public members with expertise in infrastructure finance, law, investment or public-private partnerships, and a secretary serving ex officio.

The governance framework is intended to strengthen oversight of levy revenues, which have historically flowed through broader government systems.

Under the Bill, the Cabinet Secretary would have powers to make regulations on staffing, administration and use of the Fund, subject to the Public Finance Management Act. Transactions would be subject to audit under the Public Audit Act.

Administrative costs would be capped at 0.5 percent of the Fund, a provision aimed at limiting overheads and directing most resources to infrastructure development.

Africa’s economic future is no longer framed solely by development aid or political summits; it is increasingly defined by balance sheets, construction timelines, and export statistics.

Across the continent, governments are recalibrating their growth strategies toward industrialization, regional trade, and value addition.

The African Continental Free Trade Area (AfCFTA) represents more than a policy milestone; it signals a recognition that Africa’s 1.4 billion people can constitute a formidable internal market.

Yet integration on paper requires integration in practice.

Railways must move goods efficiently from inland production hubs to coastal ports. Power plants must keep factories running without interruption.

Digital infrastructure must connect entrepreneurs to global supply chains. From the expanding port facilities in Mombasa to industrial zones outside Addis Ababa, the continent’s ambitions are becoming visible in steel, concrete, and fiber-optic cables.

In this transformation, geopolitics and business have become inseparable. Major global economies are reconfiguring supply chains, seeking secure access to strategic minerals such as cobalt, copper, and lithium, resources that Africa holds in abundance.

The green energy transition has amplified this interest, turning parts of Southern and Central Africa into pivotal nodes in global manufacturing networks.

For African policymakers, however, the central question is how global competition can be leveraged for domestic gain.

The Asian giant has become a prominent and constructive commercial presence within this evolving landscape, pairing infrastructure financing with trade expansion and industrial cooperation.

Its approach has emphasized speed of delivery, large-scale implementation, and long-term strategic engagement, attributes that resonate strongly in environments where infrastructure deficits have historically constrained growth.

African business leaders increasingly focus on tangible results. When a railway reduces freight costs, manufacturers can price their goods more competitively. When a power project stabilises electricity supply, small enterprises can scale into medium-sized firms.

When port modernisation shortens cargo clearance times, exporters can meet international deadlines more reliably. The Asian giant’s growing engagement has included not only construction projects but also expanded market access for African products, enabling agricultural exporters and light manufacturers to tap into a vast consumer base.

For many African economies seeking diversification beyond raw commodity exports, such access represents a meaningful pathway toward value addition and industrial upgrading.

At the same time, Africa’s agency continues to strengthen. Governments are negotiating agreements that incorporate skills transfer, joint ventures, and domestic employment opportunities, ensuring that partnerships generate long-term developmental benefits.

In Kenya, infrastructure investments are increasingly designed to maximise economic spillovers ensuring that transport corridors stimulate industrial clusters and regional trade.

In Zambia and Tanzania, discussions about mineral wealth are advancing toward beneficiation and local processing, reinforcing the continent’s determination to capture greater value from its resources. Partnerships anchored in mutual respect and shared economic objectives are central to this progress.

The broader geopolitical environment reinforces Africa’s strategic importance. As global supply chains diversify and the energy transition accelerates, Africa’s youthful workforce and resource base position it as a vital contributor to global growth.

In this context, pragmatic engagement with reliable partners becomes essential. The Asian giant’s sustained involvement in infrastructure, manufacturing, and trade cooperation demonstrates a long-term perspective aligned with Africa’s industrial ambitions.

Rather than episodic engagement, the relationship increasingly reflects continuity and structured economic planning.

Demographics add urgency to these choices. Each year, millions of young Africans enter the labor force. Industrial parks, agro-processing facilities, and technology hubs must expand rapidly to absorb this workforce.

Infrastructure must anchor productive ecosystems that create stable employment and enhance competitiveness.

The Asian giant’s experience in rapid industrial scaling offers valuable lessons in sequencing development integrating transport, energy, and manufacturing capacity in coordinated corridors. When adapted thoughtfully to local conditions, such models can accelerate Africa’s transition from commodity dependence to diversified production.

Ultimately, Africa’s business moment is unfolding at the intersection of opportunity and transformation.

Global demand for minerals, consumer markets, and manufacturing diversification presents the continent with unprecedented leverage. Success will depend on disciplined governance, transparent negotiations, and a steadfast focus on productivity and innovation.

The future will be determined by measurable outcomes, kilometers of railway laid, megawatts generated, goods exported, and skills transferred.

Africa’s steady emphasis on industrialisation and value addition signals a continent intent on shaping its own commercial destiny. With committed partners such as the Asian giant contributing capital, expertise, and market access, Africa is not merely participating in global economic change; it is actively defining its role within it.

One common pitfall in implementing sustainability is organisations selecting performance measures that are misaligned with their business growth strategy.

Taking this approach leads to severe consequences, such as keeping sustainability on a separate parallel track from the actual business, and encouraging dual reporting, in which sustainability information is prepared solely for compliance and fails to address business information needs required to monitor progress against targets for business growth.

Organisations have numerous stakeholders with different expectations and information needs.

Therefore, it is imperative to distinguish between material sustainability issues and other matters that are related to compliance and information requests. Failure by organisations to make this distinction usually indicates a shallow understanding of sustainability and its role in the broader business context.

The reason for focusing on material issues is to identify the subset of non-financial matters that could impact the organisation’s short, medium, and long-term success. These material issues need to be considered as the organisation executes its strategy. The other sets of information that are not material but required for compliance or to meet stakeholder expectations need to be provided separately.

This is why, unlike other sustainability reporting standards, the IFRS sustainability disclosure standards are investor-focused and aim to provide investors with the relevant, decision-useful information about the organisation’s financial prospects.

Therefore, the handful of KPIs (key performance indicators) used to track these material investor-focused topics or issues will equally be of interest to the board and management of organisations. Organisations should ensure that their sustainability materiality process involves all critical stakeholders, including the strategy team.

The involvement of these stakeholders in the materiality process will further enrich the outcome, ensuring alignment and distinguishing between KPIs and other performance objectives that are not key but essential to meet other stakeholders’ information demands.

The benefits that accrue to organisations that are deliberate in this process range from a focused approach to value creation to the efficient use of resources and clarity on the sustainability reporting approach.

Organisations can choose to incorporate this investor-focused, strategy-aligned set of sustainability information, which also complies with the IFRS sustainability disclosure standards, into their general financial report, while using a separate sustainability report to meet other stakeholder information needs.

Akinyemi Awodumila is a Partner at PwC Kenya. He is an author who writes and speaks widely on corporate reporting topics

Across Africa, digital identity has become part of everyday life. Governments use it to deliver services, banks rely on it to open accounts and digital platforms depend on it to verify users.

According to the World Bank’s Identification for Development (ID4D) programme, Sub-Saharan Africa remains the only global region where ID ownership is not near-universal, with eight economies still below 70 percent coverage and persistent gender gaps in access.

This highlights that progress in expanding ID ownership is evident and important, yet having an ID is not the same as being able to use it, many people with IDs still face obstacles in leveraging them to access services, transact, or participate fully in the digital economy.

It is clear that identity systems have evolved. Older forms of identification were issued under earlier standards, using different data formats, enrolment methods, or verification rules. As governments and institutions modernise digital infrastructure, these older IDs are not always fully compatible with newer systems.

In practice, this can mean that a person who has been officially identified for decades may still fail digital verification. For example, during a recent verification process, a gentleman in his 50s, who had held a valid national ID for years, was unable to be authenticated because his legacy identity record did not align with the requirements of a newer digital system.

The issue was not fraud or lack of documentation, but a mismatch between old identity records and new infrastructure.

In such cases, exclusion is not caused by the absence of identity, but by how identity systems are upgraded, connected and maintained over time. Digital identity only works when systems are designed to accommodate transition, recognising that people, records and technologies do not all evolve at the same pace.

As identity systems are connected to payments, mobile services, healthcare and government platforms, they stop being stand-alone projects. They become shared infrastructure that needs to work for everyone.

When identity systems work well, services are easier to access and trust increases. When they do not, people are excluded, fraud increases and confidence in digital systems drops. These outcomes depend less on technology labels and more on the choices made when systems are built.

Also, in most identity systems, governments face what appears to be a difficult trade-off. Centralised databases enable fraud detection and de-duplication-but raise legitimate concerns about surveillance and data misuse.

Decentralised approaches protect privacy-but make it harder to prevent duplicate enrollments or detect fraud.

This is often presented as an either-or choice. But it does not have to be. Hybrid architectures offered by companies such as Identy.io can deliver both: on-device verification for daily authentication that keeps biometric templates on the citizen’s phone, with centralised checks activated only when de-duplication is truly needed-and only with explicit consent.

Decisions that seem technical often have real consequences. Some biometric systems do not work well for manual labourers, older people, or people with disabilities. Centralised systems can raise concerns about privacy and misuse of personal data.

Hardware-heavy systems can take years to roll out, delaying access to services for those who need them most. This is where system design becomes critical:

Africa has already shown how digital infrastructure can transform lives. Mobile technology changed how people save, pay, and communicate. Digital identity is now becoming the next foundation.

As identity becomes central to daily interactions, the stakes increase. Systems must be reliable, secure and fair. They must protect people while allowing governments and institutions to deliver services efficiently. Digital identity is no longer a back-office system. It is essential infrastructure.

Software-base capture-using smartphone cameras instead of specialized scanners can reduce deployment timelines from years to months.

These issues are not theoretical. They affect whether a farmer can receive support, whether a small business can access credit, or whether a citizen can safely prove their identity online.

At Identy.io, we see digital identity as public infrastructure that should serve people first. That means designing systems that recognize human diversity, protect individuals, and work in real-world conditions, not just in ideal settings.

What is Good Digital Identity?

From a policy perspective, three principles matter most: inclusion, trust, and adaptability. Inclusion means systems should not exclude people by default. No single method works for everyone, and identity systems need to reflect that reality.

Trust means protecting people from fraud, impersonation, and misuse.

As deepfakes and AI-generated content become more common, verifying that a real person is present becomes essential, not just to protect institutions but to protect individuals from harm.

Adaptability means governments should be able to improve and change systems over time. Digital identity should not lock countries into rigid structures that are hard to update as laws, technologies, and public expectations evolve.

Component-based architectures-where biometric authentication, identity platforms, and digital wallets can be mixed, replaced, or upgraded independently-give governments the flexibility to evolve without starting over. Avoiding vendor lock-in is not just a procurement concern; it is a matter of long-term sovereignty over critical national infrastructure.

‘Digital identity should make people’s lives easier, not harder,’ says Dr Olajide Olasiyan-Ola, Regional Head for West Africa at Identy.io. ‘If systems do not reflect real human conditions, they risk excluding the very people they are meant to support.’

Africa’s film industry is growing exponentially. Cinema screens are multiplying, streaming platforms are expanding their libraries and global audiences are hungry for diverse stories that reflect the richness of Africa.

But beneath this creative energy lies a truth: talent alone is no longer enough. To thrive in this new era, filmmakers must think not only as artists, but as founders who understand that storytelling is both craft and enterprise.

The creative sector already contributes over $4.2 billion to Africa’s gross domestic product with massive room for growth. Sub-Saharan Africa’s entertainment and media market is projected to grow at nearly 9 percent annually, one of the fastest rates in the world. This is a reminder to treat filmmaking as art and business.

Players must start thinking about revenue from their productions. Filmmakers who understand monetisation can shape their projects with intention, deciding whether a story belongs on streaming platforms, the festival circuit, short-form digital, television, or cinema. These choices ripple outward, influencing budgets, casting, marketing, and ultimately, impact.

Monetisation is expanding faster than ever. African filmmakers can now earn from digital streaming, licensing, brand partnerships, international co-productions, film grants, YouTube revenue and mobile-first platforms.

But to unlock these opportunities, they must track budgets, planning revenue, and positioning their work strategically. According to Unesco, less than 10 percent of African films secure international distribution due to weak business structures.

Another cornerstone of creative entrepreneurship is intellectual property, especially in a continent where piracy and informal distribution is a menace. IP is valuable to filmmakers because it determines long-term revenue through syndication, international sales, and adaptation rights. Yet too many filmmakers sign away their rights too early, trading long-term growth for short-term payoffs.

Pitching, too, becomes critical when filmmakers embrace entrepreneurship. A strong pitch is not just about telling a story; it is about proving feasibility. Investors want clarity on audience, budget, distribution, and market potential.

Funding models are also evolving beyond traditional grants and broadcaster commissions, filmmakers now have access to co-production treaties, crowdfunding, impact investment, accelerators, and even private equity funds exploring creative ventures.

To unlock these opportunities filmmakers must maintain transparent accounting, financial roadmaps, and clear strategies that show how funds will translate into production output and returns. Training institutions are rising to meet this moment.

They are no longer teaching only technical skills; they are embedding entrepreneurship into their curricula. Students learn how to build production companies, negotiate contracts, design sustainable business models, and pitch to investors.