Category: Business Daily

It’s just struck 1pm, and John Fox has ordered a Prosecco. Which makes perfect sense – when you’ve written a newspaper column for 34 years, you’ve earned the right to drink bubbles before lunch. We are with his friend M, who has a head of bouncy hair from a TV commercial.

We’ve been talking for an hour, mostly about my new book, which really means we’ve been talking about life. Because all books – even the bad ones – are about lives.

We sit under an umbrella as music thuds lazily from a speaker. The sun presses gently on our shoulders. I last saw Fox 15 years ago. He hasn’t changed much, though time has rearranged things around us with its long, meddlesome hands. It’s two days before my birthday, so it feels perfectly proper to start early. Never mind that in a few hours I’ll be picking my son up from school and he’ll say, ‘Papa, you smell funny.’ And I’ll tell him, ‘That’s the smell of birthdays.’

I’ve passed Kalamata countless times but never gone in. So, this feels like a small celebration – or at least a justified detour. It’s an outdoorsy sort of place, the kind people dress up for even if they pretend they didn’t. A lady in a blue dress walks in and claims her spot in the sun. She knows she looks good.

We order fish – something buttery with vegetables. It comes a little soggy, but that’s fine. The ambience wins. The chatter around us hums with energy, and the Prosecco sparkles in Fox’s glass like it’s auditioning for joy.

He tells me stories – about writing, about travel, about staying curious. The kind of wisdom that sounds light but sits heavy later.

When we finally leave, I feel older – not because of the birthday coming, but because time suddenly feels visible. Still, it’s been a good afternoon: prosecco, talk, sunlight, and the sense that growing older is a treasure, if Fox is anything to go by.

At least 35 counties have snubbed the electronic public procurement portal (e-GP), even as the National Treasury insisted that the government would only deal with suppliers through the platform.

The Treasury says, while all State departments have uploaded their procurement plans and some started procuring through the e-GP, only 12 county executives have uploaded the documents, leaving out 35 of the devolved units.

What you need to know:

International payments platform LemFi allows over 2 million immigrants to easily send money across the globe

LemFi uses AI within its robust credit service to enable ‘send now, pay later’ remittance, so people can ensure their families are supported when they need it most

New product will help streamline nearly £10 billion worth of payments

LemFi, the leading AI-powered international payments platform dedicated to building financial products and services for immigrant communities, today announced the launch of Send Now, Pay Later (SNPL), a credit-powered remittance product that allows its UK customers to use their LemFi credit line to send money home to their families when they need it most.

For the millions of immigrants in the UK whosend nearly £10 billion back home annually, there is often a timing mismatch between unexpected expenses and local earning cycles.

This can force them to delay pivotal transfers home or turn to unregulated, expensive credit solutions. Since traditional remittance providers typically require immediate payment, Send Now, Pay Later aims to address this critical pain point and provide vital service to customers who are new to the country and have a limited UK credit history. Powering SNPL is LemFi’s Ensemble AI model, which combines multiple data sources to inform credit decisions, including national credit bureaus, open banking data, and the company’s own remittance data, to help determine credit limits and repayment structures.

This intelligent system also automatically adjusts depending on the individual customer’s journey and available data points, determining the required data points based on the customer’s circumstances and then offering risk-adjusted credit based on the available data.

Ridwan Olalere, co-founder and CEO of LemFi, said: ‘The rise of Buy Now, Pay Later means people across the world can buy products and stagger the payments depending on their cash flow. But this has never been possible before with remittance, despite it being such a core part of the immigrant financial experience. With Send Now, Pay Later, we’re integrating credit directly into the remittance experience, ensuring financial support is never delayed by cash flow timing. It’s also a testament to our commitment to building a full-stack, AI-enabled financial ecosystem that understands and serves the unique challenges faced by global citizens.’ How Send Now, Pay Later Works

To access SNPL, LemFi customers are onboarded to LemFi Credit, which gives users access to credit lines ranging from £300 to £1,000, depending on their credit profile and assessment, which is enabled by leveraging open banking technology to evaluate eligibility.

This makes it accessible even to recent immigrants who often lack extensive UK credit histories and are excluded from traditional finance services. In addition, LemFi’s platform can recognise international credit histories and employs alternative credit assessment methods that look beyond traditional UK financial records.

This allows users to start with smaller credit limits and build their UK credit profile over time while accessing essential financial services.

This is done through the company’s AI-driven decisioning engine that analyses a wide spectrum of data points, including open banking insights, bureau files, remittance history and patterns within LemFi, as well as international credit footprints.

By training models across these diverse datasets, LemFi can predict affordability and repayment likelihood with greater accuracy than traditional scoring approaches while reducing bias that often excludes immigrants from mainstream credit, helping to solve the issue of ‘credit invisibility’ through the application of artificial intelligence.

Once onboarded, customers can access their credit limit to send money to any of the 30+ LemFi-supported destination countries. When choosing the SNPL option, LemFi immediately processes the transfer to the recipient while creating a deferred payment obligation for the sender.

Bridging the Credit Divide

Currently, immigrants face significant and widespread issues when it comes to trying to access credit and banking services more broadly. Approximately five million individuals in the UK are considered ‘credit invisible’, with immigrants from emerging countries disproportionately affected.

Research indicates that nine in 10 immigrants report that accessing credit has become more difficult in recent years, while 13 percent of migrants are excluded from banking services compared to just 3 percent of the general UK population. This exclusion creates a cascade of financial challenges that extend beyond simple access to credit.

LemFi’s approach to credit assessment specifically addresses these challenges. As well, SNPL will tackle friction points around timing and bank transfers. Its real-time / same-day transfers reduce the time taken by traditional banks by a third and provide a means for its users to support their community despite their cash flow.

Global Expansion and Market Opportunities

Following the UK launch, LemFi plans to expand the SNPL service to its other markets in the United States, Canada, and Europe. It currently supports over 2 million customers, enabling them to send money to over 30 countries across Asia, Africa, Europe, and Latin America.

Since its founding, LemFi has supported over 2 million customers in the United States, the United Kingdom, Canada, and Europe. In January 2025, LemFi secured $53 million in Series B funding, bringing its total funding to over $86M. Investors include Highland Europe, LeftLane Capital, Endeavor Capital, and Y-Combinator.

The Central Bank of Kenya (CBK) has lowered its target for inflation in the coming months to below the 5 percent midpoint, mirroring its view of less pressure on consumer prices than previously expected.

The lender, which had seen the inflation rate breaching the midpoint by March next year, now expects changes in consumer prices to stick below the threshold through August 2026.

The new public procurement framework has granted the taxman a view of all payments, cornering rogue suppliers who have been dodging taxes after earning from the government.

Starting July 2025, the electronic government procurement (e-GP) integrated public procurement details with the Kenya Revenue Authority’s (KRA) iTax system, allowing individuals and companies to update tax details, file returns and register payments.

The government has shaken up the board of Consolidated Bank of Kenya Ltd (CBKL) amid the pending privatisation of the State-owned lender that has been grappling with falling deposits, a dwindling loan book, increased impairment costs and capital constraints.

CBKL and another State-owned lender, the Development Bank of Kenya, are lined up for sale as the government attempts to cut reliance on the Exchequer, with the recouped money being channelled into development projects.

A growing number of giant construction firms, which won big-ticket jobs under the late president Moi’s reign, have run into financial headwinds after losing ground in a transformed infrastructure landscape dominated by Chinese players.

Crescent Construction Company is the latest in a string of cash-strapped legacy contractors to face auction, having missed out on the building boom that began under the Look-East policy introduced during the late President Kibaki’s tenure.

The podium that stood at the centre of Uhuru Park for many years is no more. For the average Kenyan adult, it occupied a space of gathering for political, civil, cultural and religious purposes.

The promulgation of Kenya’s new Constitution was celebrated here on August 27, 2012. Presidential inaugurations have been held here and numerous political and social rallies hosted at the Park.

The government has set a March 31, 2026 deadline for the listing of Kenya Pipeline Company (KPC) shares on the Nairobi Securities Exchange, a decision that sets a six-month window to complete the firm’s privatisation process.

This marks another delay; President William Ruto had previously stated that the company’s initial public offering (IPO) would be done by September 2025.

This was the case in June 2023, when the State Department for Planning issued the requisite rules to be adopted by ministries, departments, and agencies (MDAs), introducing a new section on learning that was tethered to the existing monitoring and evaluation (M and E) framework.

The M and E stages provide insights that enhance the authority’s operations. These lessons are synthesised and shared across the organisation to enhance responsiveness, innovation, and efficiency, achieving the set objective of creating efficient markets for consumers. To support this, the authority has developed a knowledge management framework, which incorporates various principles that the government agencies can adopt to enhance MEL.

First, put in place robust systems for capturing and documenting knowledge from projects and programmes. These are developed through standardised templates, digital tools and platforms to facilitate data collection, analysis, and dissemination.

Thereafter, collate and store reports in a centralised digital repository that is accessible to staff members. In line with the rapidly evolving digital landscape, ensure that the systems can be enhanced using appropriate artificial intelligence and data visualisation tools for efficient analysis and presentation of the data.

Secondly, promote timely and structured information exchange across departments by leveraging knowledge-sharing platforms, including townhall sessions/plenaries and webinars.

At the authority, every staff member, within days of resuming work from a local or international training session, is required to disseminate key learnings to all colleagues in plenary.

A softcopy report is also curated for future reference, with a special focus on actionable insights that can enhance the execution of our mandate. To enhance transparency and accountability in the authority’s operations, MEL insights are also incorporated into the authority’s public communication strategies. Third, the integration of knowledge into policy and decision-making processes fosters a culture that prioritises learning, accountability, and continuous improvement. Senior management must champion knowledge sharing and continuous learning.

This commitment is demonstrated through attending and presenting at knowledge-sharing sessions, moderating discussions, and monitoring the application of MEL recommendations in decision-making.

Finally, agencies should institutionalise evaluation processes by involving diverse stakeholders and, preferably, collaborating with academic and research institutions for independent evaluations and evidence generation.

This would also be enhanced by facilitating public feedback mechanisms to incorporate public insights into MEL frameworks.

Fitting contextualisation is available in a seminal article by Sarah Evans titled Why so many clean water projects fail.

Sarah opines that 60 percent of water projects in Africa fail despite well-laid strategies and objectives, further asserting that this failure is partly occasioned by donors, leaving communities the requisite training on how to maintain and manage the new systems.

This, unfortunately, forces communities to default to the known-their unsafe water sources! Such botched projects highlight the risk of failing to implement a robust monitoring, evaluation, and learning (MEL) system.

This got me thinking. While organisations may deploy the best strategies to meet their objectives, there is inadequate learning borne of evidence-based evaluation. So, let’s look at each of the three elements of a MEL system.

Monitoring entails tracking progress within a pre-determined period by identifying the outputs from each activity.

For instance, the Competition Authority of Kenya monitors activities in its plans every quarter, identifying the immediate outputs during each cycle.

Evaluation, on the other hand, determines the level of impact actualisation.

This process is longer. In the authority’s case, implementation of its five-year strategic plans is evaluated twice: at mid-term (two and a half years in) and at the end of the term.

Evaluation does not present the outcomes of an activity, and enables us to decipher and process the underlying factors supporting each performance metric.