Category: Business Daily

The Nairobi Securities Exchange (NSE) is betting on the listing of funds to expand investor participation, even as the bourse closes in on its first initial public offering (IPO) in nearly 11 years -the Kenya Pipeline Company.

Officials of the NSE say funds including exchange traded funds (ETFs) and mutual funds can attract retail/individual investors by handing them a diversified portfolio over single stocks.

ETFs are listed investment products tracking the performance of a particular index or basket of shares, bonds, money market instruments or a single commodity while mutual funds describe pooled investor funds which build diversified portfolios.

The NSE has already listed two funds since its last IPO in 2015 including the Absa New Gold ETF and the Satrix MSCI World Feeder ETF.

‘People invest in funds and ETFs over individual stocks because a single stock limits your exposure to just one company while listed funds give one a diversified portfolio,’ said Irungu Waggema, the NSE chief officer for strategy, risk and compliance.

‘As a retail investor, one does not need to think too much about making the investment decision.’

ETF’s give investors exposure to a wide variety of securities or assets, avoiding the risk of putting all of one’s eggs in one basket.

Investors in ETFs are still eligible to receive dividends should the securities in the tracking index pay dividends.

The funds require a market maker in Kenya which creates liquidity through two-way quotes to eradicate substantial price gaps and ensure a liquid market for all investors.

Read: Venture fund Africa Eats to list exchange-traded fund on NSE

The Absa New Gold ETF was the first listed fund on the NSE and offers investors at the bourse the chance to buy the listed 400,000 gold bullion debentures, each equivalent to 0.01 of an ounce of gold or 0.28 grammes.

The Satrix MSCI World Feeder ETF was listed on the NSE in July last year and provides investors with exposure to over 1,300 large and mid-cap companies across 23 markets having invested in the iShares Core MSCI World UCITS ETF.

The NSE 2025-2029 strategy envisions new listings of 50 funds on the bourse, in contrast with 40 listed companies, underlining the exchange’s bias for listed funds.

‘This goal points to our intention to broaden our product offerings by including a variety of funds -such as mutual funds, exchange traded funds and other managed funds,’ the NSE says in its strategy.

‘We will focus on catering to various investor preferences, risk tolerances and investment objectives. Offering 50 diverse funds will attract a wider audience, including those interested in managed investment options.’

The NSE is on the verge of listing a third ETF, with venture capital fund Africa Eats expecting approval from the Capital Markets Authority (CMA) to list an exchange traded fund.

This fund will contain the firm and its portfolio companies which include Kenyan based Nyota, Chicken Basket and Boka Eats.

The Nairobi bourse is however yet to have locally founded funds tracking securities including equities listed on the NSE. The bourse has attributed the lack of local funds to restraint from potential issuers.

‘EFTs and other funds are good opportunities, but Kenyans will generally not want to be the first ones to issue.’

For banks in East Africa, sustainability has remained topical for different reasons. For example, regulators across the region have set mandatory dates for reporting on IFRS sustainability disclosures, which is driving a flurry of activity among banks as they prepare for compliance.

In addition, banks are dealing with the realities of climate risk-related events, ranging from droughts and floods and their impact on agriculture, an important sector for countries in East Africa.

In response, banks are growing their sustainable finance portfolios, designing innovative products and reconfiguring their risk management practices.

The desired outcome for banks is to ensure they stand out in a competitive industry and deliver sustainable returns to their shareholders and broader stakeholders.

This unique backdrop sets the stage for how banks in the region are navigating sustainability and their business rationale for building a sustainable banking business model. Here are some of the approaches banks in East Africa have adopted to create value:

The lenders are keen to leverage sustainability to be differentiated in their markets. This involves product innovation, customer experience, and technology adoption that drive topline growth, improve profitability, and enhance risk management.

Sustainability is emerging strongly as a key enabler for driving business growth strategy across East African banks. Another area where banks are creating value is applying sustainability in building the ‘bank of the future’. Banks are reimagining their business and operating models, focused on future customers and their unique preferences.

Banks are actively engaged in meeting the increasing demand for sustainable finance. As economies transition from high-intensity to low-intensity carbon economies, banks recognise the opportunity for value creation.

Finally, banks are creating value through sustainability reporting to build trust across markets. Providing high-quality, decision-useful financial and non-financial reporting is critical to improving the confidence of investors and other market players.

The banks are investing in sustainability reporting competencies and tools that provide insight and enhance the overall utility of their corporate reports.

Sustainability for banks is no longer about regulatory compliance but value creation over time.

While sustainability faces headwinds globally, across East Africa, it is viewed by banks as a business and moral imperative for society.

Banks remain focused on achieving tangible business benefits through sustainability and are taking a business lens view as they integrate sustainability across their business.

Recent pension reforms have given employers something rare in statutory compliance: a meaningful choice.

The implementation of the National Social Security Fund (NSSF) Act has clarified a two-tier contribution structure that not only strengthens Kenya’s social security foundation, but also opens a strategic window for employers who want to go beyond minimum requirements and build genuinely competitive retirement benefits.

Tier I contributions play an essential role in providing a universal baseline for retirement security, which is something Kenya have struggled with for decades.

Tier II, however, presents a different opportunity altogether. It allows employers, with the necessary approvals, to redirect part of their statutory pension contributions into licensed private pension schemes.

This option was deliberately built into the law, and it deserves to be used as intended: as a tool for enhancing long-term outcomes for employees.

In practice, many employers treat pension contributions as a compliance exercise rather than a strategic financial well-being decision.

Yet retirement benefits are increasingly viewed by employees as part of the total value proposition of employment. In competitive labour markets like ours, workers do not simply ask whether their employer is compliant; they ask and ponder whether their employer is intentional about their future. Tier II offers employers the chance to answer that question positively.

Redirecting Tier II contributions into a private pension scheme is not about replacing public systems but about complementing them. This is a strategic investment in an organisation’s human capital.

The NSSF provides a solid foundation, while private schemes introduce flexibility, transparency and long-term investment discipline that align well with the realities of modern careers.

Over a working life that may span three or four decades, small differences in governance, reporting and investment structure can meaningfully influence retirement outcomes.

There is also a leadership dimension to this decision. Employers who actively manage their pension strategy signal that they see retirement not as a distant obligation, but as a present responsibility.

Choosing an approved private scheme for Tier II contributions allows employers to engage more closely with how retirement savings are invested, how performance is monitored and how members are educated about their benefits.

This level of engagement builds trust and reinforces the employer’s role as a long-term partner in an employee’s financial journey.

Importantly, this is not an experimental path. Kenya’s pension regulatory framework already accommodates Tier II redirection, and several licensed providers are equipped to administer these contributions under Retirement Benefits Authority oversight. The structures exist. What is required is employer intent.

From a governance perspective, private pension schemes offer employers clearer visibility. Regular reporting, audited performance data and structured trustee oversight allow for informed conversations at board and management level.

Instead of pensions being revisited only during audits or regulatory filings, they become part of broader human capital strategy discussions.

There is also a practical advantage in alignment. Employers can design retirement arrangements that better reflect their workforce profile. Younger employees may value growth-oriented strategies, while older staff may prioritise stability and predictability. A private pension framework allows for these distinctions, all within the boundaries of existing regulation.

None of this diminishes the role of statutory pensions. On the contrary, the strength of Kenya’s retirement system lies in its layered approach. Tier I ensures broad coverage. Tier II enables enhancement. Employers who embrace this design are not opting out of responsibility; they are stepping into it more fully.

As Kenyan businesses continue to professionalise governance and refine employee value propositions in 2026, retirement benefits should not lag behind.

Tier II contributions represent a rare convergence of compliance and choice. Employers who recognise this early have the opportunity to lead rather than follow.

The question, then, is not whether Tier II redirection is allowed. It is whether employers are willing to use the flexibility the law already provides to create stronger, more resilient retirement outcomes for their people. In a market where talent increasingly values long-term security, that choice may soon define which employers stand apart.

Nobody forgets their first time. The first time they flew. Their first salary. Jackson Kiplagat, the CEO of World Wide Fund for Nature (WWF) Kenya, remembers the first time he left his village.

‘In a lorry hired by the school,’ he says.

He was heading to Nakuru for the Agricultural Society of Kenya show because, even then, farming was his first love: obsessive, deeply rooted, but profound.

He remembers growing up on a farm in Uasin Gishu County and making money from that same land. In the small spaces between work, he cultivated dreams, that unbreakable habit of the young.

Now he is a big shot in the city, but the past still taps at his door. Like the running career he never quite pursued.

‘I could have been a runner, you know,’ he says, more to convince himself than me.

How has your life been lately?

Very good. A little bit of catching up with my new role as the CEO of WWF Kenya. But I have an advantage because I have been with the organisation for about 16 years, so it was easy for me to pick up and run with the role. I have also had very good support from our former CEO and the board.

What’s bringing excitement to your life now?

I like experimenting with what we teach in conservation. I grew up in Elgeyo-Marakwet County, but I live in Uasin Gishu County.

Traditionally, in December, after people harvest maize – the most popular crop in the county – they wait for the next planting season in March or April.

But for a few years now, I have been experimenting with crops that do not require much rainfall because it is a dry period. I have been growing sunflowers for the last three years.

Sunflowers?

Yes, and now it is catching on. I am seeing my neighbours, and even county governments and the national government have started distributing seeds to farmers. I use it as feed for my dairy cows.

Which part of your personality has farming brought out?

Patience. Farming is a very challenging sector where you have to mix skill and passion to make money. I also keep sheep and often slaughter them for home consumption. I rarely buy meat from a butchery.

What’s the best part about being you?

I am built on resilience and honesty. Resilience in the sense that I grew up in the village. The farthest I went was to the Nakuru ASK Show in a lorry hired by the school. The first time I came to Nairobi was when I was going to Kenyatta University for an undergraduate degree in Arts.

Initially, I was to do economics, but the class was full. I met Professor Wellington Nguya Wamicha, then chair of environmental science, who advised me to consider joining the environmental course.

What did you know about money then that has helped you till today?

[Chuckles] Money is very sweet, and you can easily lose your direction if you don’t have ideals for managing it. There are those of us who cannot spend the night in the same house with money. But I am not that kind. I have no problem with money. If I know what that money is for, I don’t bother with it.

My late grandfather taught me never to take what is not mine, and I use that as a principle. I can sleep in my house without worrying that somebody will come for their money.

What do you spend your money on?

I have a family, so I meet their needs. I also grow my few investments here and there on the farm, and properties here and there. And of course, the day-to-day consumables.

You don’t spend on yourself?

My family accuses me that whenever we go into a shop with a hardware section, that’s where we part ways. They say, ‘We know where you are going.’

I will want to see what is available – spanners, wrenches. If there is something I can fix, I try to do it before getting someone else.

You are a handyman.

I am a handyman [chuckles]. I will not be beaten. But what requires professionals, yes. Certain things I can do, and I will always do them.

Which part of your life feels underutilised the most?

People tell me that I am a public speaker. Maybe I haven’t utilised that skill well. They say I have a voice that captures attention and that I could use it more.

What habit are you trying to kick?

For the last two years, I have been trying to reduce my sugar consumption. I have continued to fail, but I have made progress this year. I used to take two spoonfuls. Now I do three-quarters, half, or none.

What used to make you happy but doesn’t anymore?

Travelling. I used to travel a lot for work. These days, I don’t want to travel, especially globally.

What happened?

It’s just changing priorities. I like being around my children. One is in university, another in high school, and the other in primary school.

Do you recall a moment when you were happiest in your life?

One was when I got admitted to university. My father struggled to pay school fees, and I was the firstborn in a family of eight. Going to university reshaped how the family thinks.

Most of my siblings are now degree holders. The one who follows me has a PhD.

My grandfather once said, ‘You guys have gone to university on my behalf.’ He gave us a piece of land as a gift – a reward for going to university on his behalf. That is where I live.

Do you ever feel the pressure of being the firstborn?

That is obvious. I have always been the guardian of my younger brothers. My father retired from civil service in 1997, and those still in school became my responsibility.

Being firstborn comes with responsibility, pressure and expectation. When I was in high school, I planned to be a doctor, but it didn’t materialise.

One of my happiest moments later was when my daughter became a medical student.

What’s the hardest boundary for a firstborn to draw?

Psychological and social. Where we come from, it is family and beyond. There is an expectation that you support everyone. Social capital depends on extended family relationships. That is why people never miss weddings or dowry negotiations – because you were there for them. Even the dowry negotiations in marriages are not necessarily run by the immediate family, but by others.

Do you think being a firstborn took away some part of your childhood?

No. As young people, we were not treated as firstborns. Our parents allowed us to be children.

What do you miss about your younger self?

Haha! Freestyle without responsibility. You could do anything, and someone else took responsibility. Now it’s the opposite. Choices have consequences now, haha!

At university, I would put the radio on the window and blast loud music, haha! You cannot do that now.

What is Kiplagat insecure about?

Preparing well for retirement so I can enjoy the same life I have now. My former boss, Mohamed Awer, challenged us on this. I want to retire without worrying about supporting myself, my immediate family and my extended family.

Does that sense of duty sometimes feel like a burden?

It is not easy, but you do what you can. If I can make someone else’s life better, that gives me pleasure.

Which part of your life is a work in progress?

Not carrying burdens from the past, and not reminding myself of the good things I have done for others.

What is the soundtrack of your life now?

My motto is: ‘Tomorrow is a better day than today.’ Despite today’s challenges, tomorrow will be better.

What has been the gift of your life?

Family. I have a supportive wife and well-brought-up, respectful children. That allows me to focus on other things.

What would surprise me about how you spend your weekends?

People expect I’m an athlete because of where I grew up, but I’m not [chuckles]. I am very active, though. I can climb trees or trucks if necessary, haha! Have I told you I deworm my own animals? [chuckles]

As Kenya inches closer to another election cycle, political manifestos will soon flood the public space, heavy with promises on jobs, food security, water, roads, housing, and economic growth.

The language will be polished, the slogans catchy, and the ambitions grand. However, any manifesto that fails to confront climate change head-on is not just incomplete, it is empty rhetoric.

Climate change is no longer a distant environmental concern reserved for scientists and activists. It is the underlying force shaping nearly every crisis politicians claim they will fix.

Droughts are no longer episodic shocks but recurring economic disruptions. Floods are no longer rare disasters but annual budget-breaking events.

Crop failures, rising food prices, water scarcity, collapsing fisheries, and damaged infrastructure all have one common denominator: a changing climate.

When politicians speak about food security without addressing climate-resilient agriculture, they are avoiding the root cause. When they promise roads and housing without talking about flood risk, drainage, land use planning, and resilient design, they are planning failures.

When they talk about jobs and industrial growth without acknowledging climate risks and green opportunities, they are anchoring the economy to a past that is fast disappearing.

Climate change is not a sector but a systems issue that cuts across agriculture, energy, transport, health, housing, security, and public finance. A manifesto that treats climate as a footnote, or worse, ignores it altogether, is essentially a list of intentions detached from reality.

Climate inaction is already costing Kenya dearly. Public funds meant for development are routinely diverted to disaster response and repairs.

Households absorb the shock through lost livelihoods, higher food prices, and rising energy costs. Businesses face supply disruptions and increased risk. Ignoring climate change is not a neutral political choice but an expensive one.

A serious manifesto in 2026 must treat climate action not as a standalone sector, but as the organising principle of development.

Water policy must be a climate-resilient water policy, focused on catchment protection, groundwater governance, and nature-based solutions.

Food security must mean climate-smart agriculture, investing in drought-tolerant crops, soil restoration, and farmer-led adaptation. Infrastructure must be designed for a warmer, wetter, and more volatile future, or it will fail expensively and repeatedly.

Voters should, therefore, be more demanding. It is no longer enough for aspirants to say they will deliver development. They must explain how they will deliver it in a climate-stressed world, showing how their policies reduce climate risks, protect livelihoods, and position the economy for the future.

In the end, a manifesto that ignores climate change is not visionary. It is evasive. It speaks loudly about symptoms while remaining silent on causes.

The public should read manifestos with one critical question in mind: Does this political vision recognise climate change as the defining challenge and opportunity of our time?

Across the continent, a new economic force is rapidly taking shape, largely invisible to traditional gross domestic product (GDP) metrics. Millions of young Africans are no longer just consuming the internet; they are the internet.

TikTok videos are helping FMCG products sell in downtown Nairobi. YouTube channels are shaping political narratives more effectively than traditional television.

Instagram and WhatsApp channels are helping drive actual purchase decisions, bypassing traditional retail. By almost every metric that matters, engagement, growth, cultural impact and raw attention, Africa’s creator economy is booming.

Yet financially, it remains small. The disconnect between the volume of influence and the value captured is staggering. To understand why, and to see where the market must go next, it helps to look East.

In China, the influencer economy is not driven by individual creators negotiating brand deals from their hot desks in co-working spaces. It is powered by Multi-Channel Networks (MCNs).

These are large, technology-enabled conglomerates that manage thousands of Key Opinion Leaders (KOLs) across platforms like Douyin, Kuaishou and WeChat.

These companies do far more than broker sponsorship deals. They recruit and train creators, optimise their content with granular data, manage distribution across fragmented platforms, finance production and plug influencers directly into supply chains.

In China, a single well-backed KOL can sell millions of dollars’ worth of goods in a single livestream, because of the infrastructure behind them. The inventory, logistics, payments, you name it, are all integrated.

The MCN takes a share of the revenue because they provide the operating system that makes the revenue possible. Africa does not have this. Instead, we have a fragmented ecosystem of independent freelancers, ad-hoc brand campaigns and global social platforms that control distribution while offering little in the way of local support.

However, proposing an African MCN requires a crucial caveat. We must be careful not to import the mistakes of the Western internet. In the US and Europe, the term MCN muddied in the mid-2010s. The first wave of Western MCNs became predatory middlemen.

They acted as rent-seekers, aggregating YouTube AdSense revenue and locking creators into restrictive contracts without adding tangible value. They were landlords, not builders.

They failed because their business model was based on value extraction, not creation. We cannot afford to replicate the predatory middleman model. The margins here are too thin, and the friction is too high.

The African MCN must be fundamentally different. It cannot just be an agency; it must be proper infrastructure. It needs to solve the boring problems that individual creators cannot solve for themselves: cross-border payments, tax compliance, data aggregation and negotiating leverage against global platforms. An African version of this model would act as the middleware of the creator economy.

Africa, with its high mobile-money penetration and youthful population, is uniquely positioned for this kind of media-commerce model. The infrastructure components like mobile money, rapid delivery logistics et al already exist. What is missing is the coordination layer.

So why has it not happened? The first barrier is platform fragmentation. Unlike China’s integrated super-apps, Africa’s creators operate across foreign platforms that do not talk to one another. Payments, content, and commerce are disconnected.

However, this is a data arbitrage opportunity. The entity that can stitch together a creator’s identity across TikTok, Meta, YouTube, and local payment rails will own the most valuable dataset on the continent.

The second barrier is capital. Building this infrastructure requires money. MCNs need to finance studios, offer creator advances, and front the cost of inventory for live commerce. African venture capital has largely overlooked creator infrastructure, viewing it as media rather than tech.

The third barrier is mindset. To succeed, these new entities cannot think like marketing firms. They must think like fintechs and marketplaces. They are in the business of asset management, where the asset is human attention.

None of these obstacles is permanent. But the clock is ticking. Here is the uncomfortable truth: if we do not build our own industrialised creator infrastructure, someone else will. We are already witnessing a form of digital colonialism.

Where our attention is harvested from engagement on social platforms, yet there are peanuts to show for it in payouts of whatever nature.

The cultural and commercial value created on the continent is being exported, leaving the local ecosystem with only the “likes” and “shares.” China understood early that attention is an asset and they built the machinery to monetise it at scale, on their own terms.

The next wave of African tech champions will not emerge from the social networks themselves. They will emerge from the layer that sits between creators, platforms and commerce. They will be the companies that industrialise influence and convert it into revenue.

The influence is already here. The audience is already here. The money has not caught up. But it will, and the only question is whose pocket it will end up in.

Two Chinese firms and a local company have been tapped to build walkways, single carriageways and footbridges to ease movement around Talanta Sports City Stadium in a Sh3.9 billion project as Kenya gears up to host the African Cup of Nations.

China Road and Bridge Corporation, China WU Yi Co Ltd and Gaps Construction and Engineering Co. Limited of Kenya were picked by Kenya Urban Roads Authority (Kura) through the Specially Permitted Procurement Procedure (SPPP).

The works will include constructing walkways on both sides of Ngong Road, a dual carriage and walkways linking Ngong Road to Cemetery Road and a bridge at the interchange of Southern Bypass. Another bridge will also be built across Ngong Road.

‘Your firm has been identified as one of the qualified, vetted, and approved contractors capable of undertaking this strategic infrastructure project,’ KURA said in a letter to M/s China Road and Bridge Corporation.

KURA wrote all letters to the three on January 9, 2026, adding that the project would take 12 months to complete and would have a defects notification period of a year.

The firms will also be required to build a single carriageway and walkways on both sides from the VIP Access side of Talanta Sports Complex to the Kenya Scouts Association, and another single carriageway and walkways on either side of Cemetery Road.

SPPP refers to a model where the procuring entity taps a contractor without publicly advertising the tender. SPPP bypasses standard tendering procedures and is used for high-value projects, which are urgent and must be delivered within a short time.

The expansion of the road infrastructure along Ngong Road and Southern Bypass are key to easing movement when Kenya co-hosts the 2027 African Cup of Nations with Uganda and Tanzania.

Awarding of the project to Chinese firms cements the grip that infrastructural firms from the Asian economic giant have gained in Kenya’s transport sector.

Chinese firms have bagged nearly all big-ticket roads and railway projects in Kenya, including the Nairobi Expressway, the standard gauge railway, the Southern and Eastern bypasses in Nairobi, the Thika Superhighway and the Rironi-Mau Summit road.

China Road and Bridge Corporation delivered the Mombasa-Nairobi-Naivasha standard gauge railway, the Nairobi Expressway.

The firm is also constructing the Nairobi-Nakuru-Mau Summit dual highway.

China WU Yi Co Ltd is also building the Bomas International Convention Centre along Langata Road. The firm was also part of the Chinese companies that delivered the Thika Superhighway.

Dominance of the Chinese firms has relegated local contractors to the small ticket roads projects, triggering an outcry and unsuccessful efforts to curtail the participation of foreign firms in low value projects.

The Sh44.79 billion Talanta Sports City Stadium is one of three pitches that will host Afcon matches in Kenya. The others are the Moi International Sports Centre and Nyayo National Stadium.

Talanta Sports Stadium is nearing completion, underscoring the pressure that the three firms face in completing the roads next to the facility.

Koko Networks Chief Executive and Co-Founder Greg Murray has spent much of his time pursuing innovations on clean energy in a bid to reduce the environmental pollution from fossil fuels in frontier markets.

On his LinkedIn profile, Mr Murray, an Australian national, describes himself as a climate entrepreneur who has spent 20 years building innovations for energy transition and protecting forests across four continents.

Together with Nicholas Stokes, Sagun Saxena and others, Mr Murray founded Koko Networks in 2013 and set eyes on Kenyan households that had for decades relied on dirty cooking fuels such as kerosene, charcoal and firewood.

‘Australian climate entrepreneur, scaling technology for energy transition and forest protection,

20 years of experience in emerging and frontier markets-Africa, Asia, Middle East, Latin America,’ says Mr Murray on his LinkedIn profile.

He is a member of the governing board of Renewable Energy and Energy Efficiency Partnership, a multilateral organisation formed to speed up the uptake of clean energy solutions and mitigate greenhouse gas emissions in emerging markets. He took this position in 2022.

Mr Murray is a Managing Partner and Co-Founder of CleanStar, the biggest shareholder of Koko, a position he has held since 2007.

Before venturing into the clean energy space, Mr Murray worked as an accountant at KPMG in his home country. He served for three years until 2000, when he left to work as the Operations Manager at Telecoms Clarity, which is owned by KPMG.

He left Telecoms Clarity in 2003 and ventured into consultancy, researching environmental ventures in Latin America, Europe and Africa.

His first stint in the energy sector was from 2005 to 2007, when he worked at Templeton Galt as the director for the Middle East and Africa.

Mr Murray was the face of Koko and oversaw ambitious growth in 11 years, a period during which the startup gained an estimated 1.5 million customers who turned to Koko’s biofuel and cooking stoves, both sold at subsidised prices of Sh100 a litre and Sh1,500, respectively.

The startup targeted an additional two million customers by December 2027, in an ambitious expansion plan riding on efforts to cut the use of dirty cooking fuels.

However, those dreams came crashing down when the firm announced an end to its operations in Kenya following a fallout with the government over approval to sell carbon credits abroad to raise money for its subsidised fuel and cooking stoves.

Koko banked on an agreement with the government to sell carbon credits earned from its clean fuel business and fund the subsidy programme.

The government renegaded on this agreement that was inked in June 2024, granting Koko ownership rights over carbon credits, allowing it to freely transfer the credits while the government committed not to resell these credits.

Kenya was Koko’s biggest market in Africa. A first-ever political insurance for carbon trading given to the startup last year underscored Koko’s rising stature in the world of clean fuel and the fight against pollution of the environment by fossil fuels.

Multilateral Guarantee Agency (MIGA), the guarantee arm of the World Bank, issued the 15-year security worth $179.64 million (Sh23.18 billion).

But one of the conditions of the insurance has now exposed taxpayers to a bill of Sh23 billion, which is the penalty slapped on the government of Kenya for breach of the contract.

Koko is yet to issue a statement following the abrupt exit that has left Kenyan households in the lurch. The government has come out guns blazing, casting doubts on the size of the carbon credits that the startup targeted to sell.

Extinguished dreams

Mr Murray, a commerce graduate of the University of New South Wales, has also been quiet despite the closure of the Kenyan operations.

The startup raised an estimated $100 million (Sh12.9 billion at current exchange rates) in debt and equity from major international investors. It invested $300 million (Sh38.7 billion) in Kenya, with half of this going to building the infrastructure that produced and delivered Koko fuel to customers.

Koko had an estimated 3,000 automated fuel vending machines across the country, with 2,000 of these in Nairobi. It had more than 700 staff.

Its abrupt exit has extinguished Mr Murray’s dream to scale up the use of Koko fuel in Kenya’s far-flung villages.

‘We are also exploring ways of expanding our business into more rural areas, but there we present more of a time-saving than cost-saving opportunity, because people collect wood from the forest for cooking fuel rather than buying charcoal,’ said Mr Murray in an earlier interview.

And with its exit, thousands of low-income households have been left in the dark and a possible return to smoke from the use of charcoal.

The blue flame of Koko fuel is now turning into a distant memory for many of the households in the low-income areas of Nairobi, such as Mathare and Mwiki.

The conspicuous Koko fuel canisters and cooking stoves are most likely to turn to scrap and a painful reminder of the shattered dream that took smoke from the kitchens of low-income homes.

Barely eight months after the Sh23.18 billion guarantee from MIGA gave hope to thousands of Kenyans’ homes, anguish has replaced the excitement and cooking is set to become a dirty affair.

Middle East Bank Kenya has been sued for failing to transfer a piece of land to a buyer from whom it had received the full transaction price of Sh195.2 million.

Hussein Alibhai Pirbhai and his firm Tranquility Holdings Limited filed an application at Nairobi’s Environment and Land Court seeking to compel the bank to complete the land sale.

In response, the bank sought to have the case dismissed on grounds that the court did not have jurisdiction to resolve the dispute.

The lender argued that it is the High Court that should hear the matter. The Environment and Land Court, however, rejected the bank’s argument, stating that the dispute lies in its domain.

‘In applying the predominant purpose test, it is clear that the intention of the contract in the present case was the sale and purchase of land, which will govern the ownership, occupation and title to the suit land, exactly what this court was designed to hear and determine,’ the court ruled.

‘From the above, I find the notice of motion dated November 25, 2025 misplaced and misconceived. The same lacks merit and it is thus dismissed with costs to the plaintiffs/respondents,’ the court said in the decision issued on February 5, 2026.

Mr Pirbhai told the court that he bought the land in an auction conducted on November 21, 2023, paying a 10 percent deposit amounting to Sh19.5 million and signing a sale agreement with the bank on the same date.

He subsequently instructed Tranquility Holdings on February 20, 2024, to remit the balance of Sh175,750,330 to the bank, which had communicated that the transfer documents were ready for completion.

Mr Pirbhai said he fully discharged all obligations as the purchaser by paying the total of Sh195.2 million, which was the highest successful bid in the auction.

The court heard that the bank did not inform the buyer that there was a pending suit at the High Court that prohibited completion of the sale of the land.

The bank won the High Court case on July 31, 2025 but still failed to transfer the land to Mr Pirbhai.

‘The said (High Court) suit was dismissed on 31st July, 2025 thereby allowing parties to complete the transaction, but the defendant/applicant is yet to complete the sale and transfer the suit property to the 1st plaintiff/respondent,’ the court was told.

The court said that land disputes including on processes like sale and transfer fall within its ambit.

‘Thus, the suit herein arising out of a contract regarding the sale, ownership and title to and use of the suit land falls squarely within the jurisdiction of this court, contrary to the defendant/ applicant’s contention,” the judge said.

An M-Pesa user in Ethiopia on average spends Sh0.50 a month in transaction fees, dimming the power of the mobile money service to grow Safaricom’s profits.

Investor disclosures for the nine months ended December 2025 show M-Pesa revenue in Ethiopia stood at measly Sh12.2 million, translating to a monthly average of about Sh1.4 million from the active 2.36 million users.

This translates to an average user revenue of 50 cents, paling in comparison to the Kenyan monthly average of Sh374.83 in the year to March 2025.

Safaricom had hoped to emulate the success of M-Pesa in Kenya to drive profits in Ethiopia when a consortium it led paid Addis Ababa $150 million (Sh19.4 billion) for the mobile money licence.

But instead of sending money to family and friends via M-Pesa, subscribers in Ethiopia are using the mobile money platform to buy data and airtime -services that don’t attract transaction fees.

‘M-Pesa users in Ethiopia are mainly buying airtime products and data. 20 percent of the sales (bundles and airtime) go through the M-Pesa channel initiated by self-top ups,’ said Wim Vanhelleputte, CEO of Safaricom Telecommunications Ethiopia PLC, in a past interview.

Safaricom has previously acknowledged that cash remains the default payment instrument in Ethiopia, especially for small-value transactions -the very segment that powered M-Pesa’s early success in Kenya.

‘Banking penetration in urban areas is relatively high but 99 percent of small value transactions are in cash,’ the Nairobi Securities Exchange-listed firm said in a past investor briefing.

Kenyans generate significant revenue for Safaricom by actively using the platform for daily financial transactions, including person-to-person transfers, Lipa na M-Pesa payments, agent withdrawals and digital financial products like Fuliza overdrafts.

During the year ended March 2025, M-Pesa in Kenya generated Sh161.1 billion in revenue supported by a base of 35.82 million monthly active customers, making the platform Safaricom’s single most important business.

Mobile money accounted for 44.2 percent of the telco’s total service revenue that stood at Sh364.3 billion during the year, cementing its position as the company’s primary earnings engine.

The M-Pesa revenue contribution dominance was followed by that of voice at 22.2 percent, data at 20 percent, while messaging services contributed 3.4 percent during the period. In 2010, when M-Pesa was three years old in Kenya as it is in Ethiopia now, the monthly revenue per user averaged Sh79.

In Ethiopia, M-Pesa contributed just 0.13 percent of the total service revenue of Sh9.7 billion for the nine months ended last December, highlighting a stark imbalance between customer adoption and monetisation.

Data revenues accounted for 66.97 percent of Ethiopia’s service revenue at Sh6.5 billion during the period under review, followed by voice and messaging revenues which contributed 21.99 percent and 1.2 percent respectively.

A 2021 report by the World Bank on financial inclusion and digital payments showed that cash in Ethiopia remains an overwhelmingly dominant payment method for the population, a sharp contrast to other markets in the region, including Kenya where non-cash payments have gained a foothold.

‘Most people still rely on cash to pay utility bills and receive payments. Almost all adults at 99 percent pay utility bills with cash, compared to 12 percent of people in Kenya and 59 percent in the region as a whole,’ the report noted.

Kenya’s M-Pesa scaled rapidly after its launch in 2007 by riding urban-to-rural remittance flows, as workers in cities sent money to relatives in villages.

Safaricom launched M-Pesa in Ethiopia in August 2023 as part of a phased rollout strategy prioritising scale before monetisation.

At the end of the first full month of operations, the platform had acquired 1.1 million customers and recorded transactions worth Sh43.7 billion. However, early revenues from the mobile money platform stood at just Sh7.2 million, underscoring initial monetisation challenges.

Financial inclusion indicators have further constrained the scaling of digital financial services, as the World Bank report indicated that only 11 percent of Ethiopians have accessed a loan from a formal financial institution.

Many Ethiopians rely on informal savings groups, family networks or community-based arrangements for borrowing and saving.

Safaricom has positioned M-Pesa as a long-term infrastructure investment aligned with Ethiopia’s ongoing financial sector reforms.

In October last year, M-Pesa was integrated with EthSwitch, Ethiopia’s national payment switch regulated by the National Bank of Ethiopia, connecting the Safaricom-owned platform to more than 30 banks and wallets through a single interface.

This, the telco reports, has enabled real-time wallet-to-bank and bank-to-wallet transfers, reducing fragmentation in the payments ecosystem.

The integration has also enabled interoperable QR (quick response) payments, expanding acceptance across more than 50,000 M-Pesa merchants nationwide, as part of Ethiopia’s National Digital Payment Strategy 2026-2030 launched in December 2025. For M-Pesa, interoperability removes a key bottleneck that previously limited usefulness beyond closed-loop transactions.

Ethiopia’s large population positions it as one of Africa’s biggest long-term growth opportunities for mobile money. The country is Africa’s second-most populous market after Nigeria.

During the six months ended last September, a 59 percent contraction in Ethiopia losses helped raise Safaricom’s half-year profit 52.1 percent to Sh42.7 billion.

The Kenya business continued to be the main profit driver on the back of M-Pesa whose revenue rose 14 percent to Sh88.1 billion up from Sh77.2 billion in a similar period the previous year.