Category: Business Daily

Supermarket chain Quickmart says it relies on friendly terms from suppliers to stock its stores, a move that has seen the company avoid bank financing for working capital.

The retailer has made the disclosure as it prepares to list on the Main Investment Market Segment of the Nairobi Securities Exchange (NSE).

The company, whose annual sales top Sh50 billion, had borrowings of only Sh6.8 million as of June 30, 2026, showing the extent of the favourable terms where suppliers deliver goods directly to its stores and are paid later.

At the end of the review period, the retailer owed suppliers Sh4 billion, which it did not need to finance.

‘The company’s structurally negative working capital position, which stood at Sh4 billion as at 30 June 2026, reflects its rapid inventory turnover and favourable supplier payment terms,’ Quickmart said.

‘The company operates an asset-light model under which all stores are leased rather than owned, combined with a supplier-led direct-to-store distribution model under which suppliers deliver merchandise directly to individual stores rather than through a central warehouse. Together with rapid inventory turnover and efficient working capital management, this model supports a structurally negative working capital position and strong operating cash conversion.’

Working capital shows the surplus or deficit of funds after deducting a company’s short-term debt. While a deficit would ordinarily imply illiquidity, in the case of Quickmart it is the demonstration of the favourable terms the retailer has secured from its suppliers.

The company’s deal with suppliers saw it hold a net cash position of nearly Sh700 million as of June 30, 2026, excluding lease liabilities.

Quickmart did not publish its balance sheet-which lists all the assets and liabilities-in its intention to float (list) announcement.

Other retailers whose financial statements have been made public, including the collapsed Nakumatt Holdings, Tusker Mattresses and the debt-ridden Uchumi Supermarkets, have relied heavily on multiple financiers in addition to suppliers.

Such financiers have included banks and holders of commercial paper, which are short-term debt instruments.

The favourable terms suppliers have extended to Quickmart shows the growing prominence of formal retailers in controlling consumers’ wallets.

Naivas, Carrefour and Quickmart alone sell goods worth more than Sh200 billion a year, making access to their shelves a top priority for manufacturers and suppliers of fast moving consumer goods.

The supermarket chains continue to expand aggressively across the country, taking shopping convenience into the suburbs of cities and towns where consumer loyalty is courted with store points.

Quickmart is the second largest formal grocery retailer in the country by store count and turnover, with an estimated 15 percent share of the modern grocery retail market and 72 stores across 16 counties.

‘The company recorded an average of approximately 5 million customer transactions per month during the six months to 30 June 2026 and is supported by approximately 2.5 million Q-Points loyalty members, who accounted for approximately 74 percent of sales during the financial year ended 31 December 2025,’ Quickmart said.

The retailer plans to continue its expansion, with a medium term target of opening 10 to 15 new stores annually in Kenya.

Naivas, which was the first supermarket chain to hit 100 stores in the country, also continues to grow its footprint.

The retailer had opened a cumulative 114 stores in the country as of May.

‘Expansion is focused on urban, peri-urban, regional and coastal catchments and is expected to be funded primarily from internally generated cash flows,’ Quickmart said.

‘The company has identified a pipeline of prospective locations to support its expansion plans.’

Carrefour Kenya opened eight new outlets in Kenya last year bringing its footprint to 34, making it the third largest supermarket operator in the country.

Suppliers’ dalliance with the big retailers has not always been rosy, with manufacturers and distributors losing heavily from the collapse of the former retail giants Nakumatt, Tuskys and Uchumi.

When it was placed under administration in February 2018, Nakumatt owed suppliers Sh18.5 billion, making them the biggest class of the retailer’s creditors.

Other creditors included banks which claimed Sh6.9 billion and holders of commercial paper (Sh4.7 billion).

When Tuskys’ problems emerged in late 2020, its supplier debt was estimated at Sh6.2 billion. Uchumi has meanwhile reported trade and other payables of more than Sh7 billion.

The formal retailers stock a wide variety of consumer goods including toiletries, packaged food and stationery. Farmers and distributors of fresh produce, including vegetables and meat products, also make substantial sales in supermarkets.

The collapse of Nakumatt, Tuskys and Uchumi, which were owned by Kenyan shareholders, led to the rise of foreign investors in the current player dominating the market.

Mauritian conglomerate IBL Group bought a controlling 51 percent stake in Naivas from the family of the late Peter Mukuha while private equity firm Adenia Partners acquired its Quickmart stake from the family of the chain’s founder John Kinuthia.

Adenia had earlier purchased an interest in Tumaini Supermarket, which was subsequently merged with Quickmart under the latter brand. Dubai’s Majid Al Futtaim’s local Carrefour franchise was a greenfield investment.

Homes and businesses with solar power plants face fines for illegally dumping excess electricity into the national grid, in new regulatory changes meant to protect Kenya Power’s distribution network.

The Energy and Petroleum Regulatory Authority (Epra) has introduced a dumping surcharge in regulations that allow consumers to supply excess electricity from their solar plants to Kenya Power.

Consumers who generate their own power but also buy from the grid, also known as prosumers, are allowed to feed their excess electricity to Kenya Power in line with the Energy (Net-Metering) Regulations in 2024. They must, however, have an agreement with Kenya Power.

But Kenya Power has decried cases of illegal solar connections to the grid, saying that it is posing a serious threat to the stability of the network, besides risking the lives of its technicians and engineers in routine network maintenance work.

A growing number of businesses and wealthy homes have installed solar plants as back-ups to supplies from Kenya Power. But the majority lack battery storage, meaning that they must turn to the national grid whenever generation by the solar dips.

‘Introduce dumping surcharge, any electrical energy dumped into the Company’s network without prior written authorisation shall be measured and charged at the applicable base tariff specified in this Schedule of Tariffs,’ reads the changes gazetted on Friday last week.

‘Without prejudice to any other action that the Company or the Authority may take under the applicable laws and regulations if the dumping leads to injury or damage to equipment.’

Epra defines dumping as the unauthorised injection of electrical energy from a consumer’s generating system into Kenya Power’s network without approval or without a net metering agreement.

Joseph Siror, the Managing Director of Kenya Power, said that the illegal connections of solar to the national grid have led to fatalities in addition to the risk they pose whenever these customers suddenly switch to the grid for electricity, especially when cloud cover pushes solar generation to near zero.

‘Uncontrolled grid-tied solar is one of our (Kenya Power) biggest issues currently. A number of customers tie to our grid without informing us, and this poses a risk to the safety of our staff besides damaging our infrastructure,’ Dr Siror said on Friday when the utility announced its financial results for the year to June 2026.

‘If we have our customers with solar installations with a combined capacity of 100MW meeting their demand, in case of cloud cover they immediately come to the grid to get the 100MW, and thus sudden change triggers a frequency dip and distorts the supply-demand balance, and you can easily lose the grid.’

An aging grid, which is in dire need of revamp besides being overstretched due to the surge in connections, has further made it vulnerable to any shocks, prompting Kenya Power to warn against any disruptions.

The Net-Metering Regulations of 2024 allow prosumers with their own power plants whose capacity does not exceed 1 Megawatt (MW) to sign agreements with Kenya Power to allow them to feed the excess electricity to the utility.

Prosumers are connected to the national grid via a meter that records the amount of electricity they supply and buy from Kenya Power.

Under the agreement, any excess electricity they supply to Kenya Power is offset from their future bills for the power they buy.

The provision for offsetting the bills is meant to protect Kenya Power from spending billions of shillings to pay for renewable energy, notably solar being fed into the grid amid a mass shift of many firms and wealthy individuals to own power generation.

Big firms such as Bamburi Cement, carbon dioxide manufacturer Carbacid Investments, Africa Logistics Properties, GlaxoSmithKline and the International Centre of Insect Physiology and Ecology have recently set up their solar plants.

Wealthy families have also turned to solar power plants, with some solely running on it to power their homes.

Official data from Epra shows that Kenya had 326.7MW of solar energy as at December last year, accounting for 51.9 percent of the total installed capacity of captive power in the country.

Captive power capacity refers to power generation plants that are privately established for self-consumption.

Kenya’s 10 largest county economies host more than two-thirds of commercial bank branches, concentrating physical banking services in regions generating most of the country’s economic output.

The distribution highlights the close relationship between economic activity and bank infrastructure, raising questions about access to formal financial services in counties outside the economic power points.

The counties-Nairobi, Kiambu, Mombasa, Nakuru, Meru, Machakos, Uasin Gishu, Kisumu, Kilifi and Kakamega-accounted for 1,096 of Kenya’s 1,611 commercial bank branches at the end of December 2025.

Kenya’s 10 largest county economies host more than two-thirds of commercial bank branches, concentrating physical banking services in regions generating most of the country’s economic output.

The distribution highlights the close relationship between economic activity and bank infrastructure, raising questions about access to formal financial services in counties outside the economic power points.

The counties-Nairobi, Kiambu, Mombasa, Nakuru, Meru, Machakos, Uasin Gishu, Kisumu, Kilifi and Kakamega-accounted for 1,096 of Kenya’s 1,611 commercial bank branches at the end of December 2025.

The concentration shows how banks continue to position physical outlets around established markets and commercial activity, rather than distributing branches evenly across the country.

Nairobi alone accounted for 596 branches, representing approximately 37 percent of the national network, while Kiambu followed with 95 branches and Mombasa with 118.

CBK data shows that Nakuru had 65 branches, Uasin Gishu 51, Meru 43, Kisumu 41, Kilifi 36, Machakos 34, and Kakamega 17.

The branch network increased by 38 outlets from 1,573 in December 2024 to 1,611 in December 2025, representing a 2.4 percent expansion during the year.

Nairobi registered the largest increase with seven additional branches, while Kiambu added six, indicating continued investment in established commercial and population centres.

The CBK attributed the national increase mainly to new branches opened by commercial banks in emerging growth areas, with 20 counties recording a net increase and 23 registering no change.

‘The increase in bank branches is mainly attributed to the opening of new branches by some commercial banks in emerging growth areas,’ said the apex bank in its report.

The expansion, however, was uneven, with four counties recording a combined decline of four branches during the reporting period, reflecting differences in banks’ geographical strategies.

The KNBS GCP estimates show significant disparities in the size of county economies, with Nairobi accounting for 27.4 percent of national Gross Value Added (GVA) in 2024.

Kiambu, Nakuru and Mombasa followed with shares of 5.5 percent, 5.2 percent and 4.8 percent, respectively, according to the 2025 Gross County Product report.

The four counties together contributed approximately 42.9 percent of national GVA, highlighting the concentration of productive activity in a small number of locations.

Nairobi’s position as the country’s principal commercial, financial and administrative centre supports demand for banking services from corporations, government institutions and households.

Kiambu’s proximity to Nairobi, alongside its industrial, residential and commercial activities, has helped make it a significant market for financial institutions.

Mombasa’s role as a port and coastal commercial centre, while Nakuru’s agricultural, trade and manufacturing activities, provide distinct economic bases for banking demand.

The dominance of physical branches in economically productive counties comes as financial institutions expand digital and agency channels, changing how customers access banking services.

The growth of digital banking allows institutions to serve customers without opening a full branch, potentially reducing the importance of physical proximity for routine transactions.

Branch networks, however, remain relevant for businesses requiring structured financial services, including credit applications, account support and other transactions that may require in-person engagement.

The CBK’s report notes that last year, banks continued to develop digital products, technology-based services and new approaches to financial delivery as part of sector modernisation.

But while the leading counties host the majority of commercial bank branches, economic output and access to formal financial services are not identical measures.

The KNBS 2025 Economic Survey reported that Kiambu had the highest formal financial inclusion rate at 94 percent in 2024, followed by Nairobi at 93.7 percent.

Kisumu recorded 91.2 percent, while Uasin Gishu and Machakos recorded 90.2 percent and 88.2 percent, respectively, according to the survey.

The concentration of bank branches in the largest county economies provides banks with access to markets containing substantial commercial activity, established businesses, and high transaction volumes.

It also exposes institutions to the risks of concentrating their physical operations in a limited number of markets, particularly where economic disruptions affect major urban and commercial centres.

Kenya loses close to 5,000 women a year to pregnancy and childbirth. Roughly four in ten of those deaths are attributed to postpartum haemorrhage-bleeding after birth.

One thing that defeats effective management of postpartum heaemorrhage is a link that is missing at the moment it is needed. That missing link is not a skill or a decision. It is a commodity that is somewhere else.

As an obstetrician, and now as the county executive for health in Kisumu, I have come to believe that on-demand aerial delivery belongs in Kenya’s health supply system as infrastructure and not as a pilot or a donor project.

In 2023, after a learning tour in Rwanda with governors from the Lake Region Economic Bloc, my governor directed that we implement this technology. Kisumu County contracted Zipline to strengthen our health supply chain.

The premise is simple: hold products centrally, under proper cold chain, and deliver them within about 15 minutes of an order. That breaks an assumption our system is built around-that every commodity must be forecast, procured and parked at every facility that might one day need it.

In the 2024/25 reporting period, the county’s own records document 3,347 deliveries carrying 37,339 units – vaccines, medical supplies, blood and other critical commodities.

Before this, Kisumu could not reliably meet demand for anti-rabies treatment. Stock was in the wrong places at the wrong times: it expired on shelves that never needed it. So we held it centrally and dispatched on request, including to patients referred from neighbouring counties.

People came to know that if you are bitten by a dog or a snake, you can get to a facility in Kisumu and be taken care of.

The honest business case is that this does not automatically reduce a budget. It recovers money lost to expiry, emergency transport and avoidable referrals, and turns fixed inventory into a demand-led system.

Nor does it solve maternal mortality. Drones do not staff a theatre at 2am or build a transfusion service where none exists. What they do is remove one failure-the commodity that was not where the patient was-from a list of failures that must all be addressed.

The decisive gain is not the cost per delivery. It is that a facility can promise a patient something and keep the promise.

Build it

Kenya has invested in roads, hospitals and airports on the understanding that access is a public good. The last mile deserves the same treatment-planned and procured as infrastructure, not adopted as a technology product.

Four things would move us from county experiments to a national system.

First, aerial delivery should be written into the national health products and technologies supply chain strategy as a recognised distribution modality, with clear service standards.

Second, it should be competitively tendered at national or regional scale, so counties buy a defined service against a published standard and the country gets the benefit of scale, rather than each county negotiating its own arrangement.

Third, delivery should be priced into the commodity itself. We budget for the product and treat getting it to the patient as a separate variable cost-which is why emergency delivery is often the first thing cut when money is tight. Build guaranteed availability into the unit price of what we buy, whether delivered by road or air, and spread the cost across the whole basket.

Our own service in Kisumu is winding down. Which is why ownership matters: we cannot build health systems around things that vanish when a contract ends.

Fourth, Kenya should own the infrastructure and build an industry around it. Hubs, warehouses, launch and charging infrastructure are national infrastructure in much the same way as ports or railway stations. They belong on a public balance sheet, with operators contracted to run the service.

So far, across Africa, the engineering and manufacturing value has largely remained abroad while what comes here is operations. That is the division of value we should be negotiating to share. Assembly here, and eventually component manufacture, would cut the cost of every airframe and spare part, and give Kenyan engineering graduates an industry that does not currently exist.

In Kisumu, the phrase hakuna dawa was heard less often than it was. When people heard the aircraft overhead, they would say, hiyo ni dawa inapelekwa-that is medicine being delivered.

They were not impressed by the technology. They have understood what it means.

A woman bleeding after childbirth does not need to know how a supply chain works. She needs blood, and she needs it now.

Kisumu has shown that this is a solvable part of the problem.

The question is whether we are prepared to solve it everywhere.

At eight o’clock during weekdays, millions of employees in Kenya are clocking into their workstations to begin their daily cores. To HR and supervisor dashboard metrics, the employees are present. In reality, however, this is a dangerous illusion in our organisations: the presenteeism myth.

Employees are physical at their workstation, but emotionally and mentally, far away. They are drowning under the heavy yoke of job stagnation, toxic environments and unrealistic roles. When the working environment shifts from a place of productivity to an ordeal of toxicity, the cost is no longer a measure of underperformance. It is a measure of human lives.

The month of September is celebrated as the Suicide Prevention Awareness Month. It is important that organisations begin to look beyond corporate regulations and confront the dark realities.

At eight o’clock during weekdays, millions of employees in Kenya are clocking into their workstations to begin their daily cores. To HR and supervisor dashboard metrics, the employees are present. In reality, however, this is a dangerous illusion in our organisations: the presenteeism myth.

Employees are physical at their workstation, but emotionally and mentally, far away. They are drowning under the heavy yoke of job stagnation, toxic environments and unrealistic roles. When the working environment shifts from a place of productivity to an ordeal of toxicity, the cost is no longer a measure of underperformance. It is a measure of human lives.

The month of September is celebrated as the Suicide Prevention Awareness Month. It is important that organisations begin to look beyond corporate regulations and confront the dark realities.

Hailey Sabai can count on one hand the number of times she has cooked in the last month.

‘Like last week, other than warming some food I bought from the supermarket, I haven’t cooked at all,’ she says. ‘Some weeks I’ll make tea and fried eggs at home, but those are very rare instances.’

For Hailey, eating out is not an occasional treat or luxury. It’s a necessity.

On the four days she goes to the office in a typical week, she might pick up some chicken from Carrefour for breakfast, order in some pilau and beef at lunchtime, have tea with sausages and plantain for an afternoon snack, before having her usual cardamom tea delivered just in time for dinner.

Weekends tend to push her spending even higher, with brunches from Java, two-piece meals from KFC, and a steady stream of snacks, from croissants and crisps to flavoured popcorn.

Add the two bottles of fresh juice she picks up every week, and her food bill comes to roughly Sh8,500 a week, or about Sh34,000 a month.

Costly, but convenient

That spending is hardly insignificant, but Hailey says this is a cost she is willing to bear for the convenience.

‘I don’t even feel like I have a choice,’ she says. ‘Just the thought of going to the market to pick up groceries after a long day at work exhausts me. And even if I have the groceries, because sometimes I do, I find it tiring and time-consuming to chop ingredients and wait an hour for food to cook. I often end up sleeping before the meal is ready.’

She has tried doing meal preps before, but the habit never sticks.

‘By day two, I would find that I was already bored with my options and wanting something different,’ she says.

‘There’s also something about the difference in tastes that keeps me going out for food. With even tea, for example, I have packets of milk in my house and it would be cheaper to just make the tea myself, but for some reason, the tea I make at home never tastes as good as the one I buy, and at this point, I am quite accustomed to those better tastes.’

And while Hailey is now earning enough to comfortably afford her eating-out habit, her income has never been the deciding factor.

‘Even when I was earning Sh30,000, I ate out,’ she says. ‘I didn’t even have any kitchenware at the time. I only went home to sleep. The only difference is that I would eat cheaper food and at cheaper joints. And if the money wasn’t enough, I would sometimes take out a Sh5,000 loan just for food, or ask my boss for an advance.’

5 percent of income

Lawrence Wairegi is another frequent diner. He eats out every day, for all three meals. With a budget of around Sh200 for breakfast, and between Sh300 and Sh500 for lunch and supper, his minimum daily spend comes to about Sh800 or roughly Sh6,000 a week. And like Hailey, Lawrence believes the cost is justified by what he gets in return.

‘I genuinely think it’s cheaper to eat out,’ says the businessman. ‘It’s only about five percent of my total income, and it saves me the time and effort that I would otherwise spend deciding what to eat, cooking, and worst of all, cleaning up. It has also spared me other expenses and worries. I haven’t had to buy something like gas for the past three years.’

Rising food prices have not been enough to wean him off the habit, but Lawrence says he might consider changing his lifestyle when he gets married.

‘If what I usually eat no longer fits within my budget, I simply choose something that does,’ he says. ‘And it’s not that I don’t know how to cook; I can cook everything. When I get a wife, I’ll probably cook for her sometimes or cook together with her, but for now, I am content to live this way.’

Chef with a home meals appetite

While Hailey and Lawrence are willing to pay for the convenience of eating out, George Onditi would rather put in the work at home. He eats out only about twice a week.

Hungarian Cold Cuts comprising of Salamis, Cheese, Sausages, Pickles and Pogacsa scones pictured during the launch of the Hungarian Food Week at Villa Rosa Kempinski Hotel in Nairobi on October 16, 2024.

File | Nation Media Group

George and his two roommates share the costs of buying food, mostly shop from a local supermarket, which brings his weekly contribution to around Sh5,000.

‘It is easier to control the ingredients when you cook at home,’ says George, a chef who also teaches people to cook. ‘When you eat at a restaurant, the only thing you can control is perhaps the salt. As a chef, you must follow the recipe, but at home, you are free to do whatever you want with your food.’

Cooking at home also makes it easier for people who are conscious of their health and diet to eat balanced meals.

‘When we eat out, we mostly get fatty food,’ he says. ‘A balanced meal often comes at an extra charge. But at home, you can easily get your carbohydrates, proteins, and vitamins.’

Beyond the practical benefits, George enjoys cooking because it gives him and his roommates a chance to spend time together.

‘I particularly enjoy cooking Swahili pilau, which typically takes time before it’s ready. As we wait, we often end up either playing games or talking, which helps us bond.’

Minding his hygiene

While George enjoys the control and social aspect of cooking, Fabian Oduor has another reason for preferring meals prepared at home: Hygiene.

‘I got sick one time after eating in a restaurant and since then, I have developed some phobia,’ he says. ‘So unless it is at a restaurant with reputable standards, I don’t like eating out.’

He typically prepares breakfast and supper at home, often having a substantial breakfast that carries him through most of the day. If he does get hungry for lunch and is somewhere close to home, he simply goes back to cook.

Fabian’s weekly shopping typically consists of spices and vegetables such as tomatoes and onions, which he estimates cost him around Sh600.

‘I learnt that it is cheaper to cook at home when I was in school, and I guess after doing it for so long, the habit just stuck,’ says the biomedical engineer.

So is eating out a waste of money?

According to Barbara Nzovu, personal finance coach and founder of BudgetnKE and Sumtack, there is no one-size-fits-all answer. Whether it makes financial sense depends on a person’s goals, priorities and overall spending habits.

Barbara Nzovu, personal finance coach, educator and founder of BudgetnKE and Sumstack Limited, based in Nairobi, Kenya.

Pool

‘If you look at the numbers, eating out tends to always be more expensive, but I have seen people who cook at home yet have very high spending budgets. Someone who shops at Zucchini or the higher-end supermarkets, for example, will have a very different budget from someone who goes to Gikomba market for their produce. And then there are those who will eat more organic foods and those who are comfortable with diversity. Bunching them all into one category would be misleading.’

Barbara says spending ultimately depends on factors such as income, where one shops, the number of people in the household, and their tastes and preferences.

It becomes a financial problem when there is no balance.

‘I would ideally keep non-essentials, which is where I’d personally categorise eating out, to between 20 and 30 percent of your income,’ she says.

‘If you are eating out more, there is a greater chance that you will end up pushing your non-essential spending beyond that range, which then reduces your income to invest or save more.’

Small expenses can also become a problem when they are not tracked.

‘Spending Sh100 here and Sh200 there can accumulate very quickly, particularly if you are not keeping track,’ she cautions. ‘You may end up spending a lot more than you had planned to.’

Setting a limit

One way she helps her clients manage this is by setting a limit for a particular expense and treating it as a boundary for the month.

‘If you choose to use that budget in one day, that’s fine, but just know that for the rest of the month, you will not be able to eat out again,’ she says. ‘Ideally, it gives you that distinct distance between the beginning and the end of the month. So you space it out and make sure you utilise it correctly throughout the month.’

For those who realise that they are spending a lot more on eating out than they can afford, Barbara’s recommendation is simple: start by tracking every shilling.

‘Sit with your M-Pesa and bank statements and monitor them for a month or two to identify where the leakage is, then you’ll see a trend or pattern which you can use as a corrective measure.’

Ultimately, Barbara says, managing your money is all about being intentional with what you have.

‘Let’s not hide or be afraid of personal finance. It is not difficult or reserved only for the wealthy.’

Joyce Wangui Gikonyo, a financial advisor at ICEA Lion Group, says, ‘The rule of thumb in budgeting is 50-30-20. 50 per cent needs, 30 per cent wants, 20 percent savings and investments. Of the 30 percent of your income, I would say prioritise fixed bills like subscriptions, then the rest can go to the occasional eating out. So I would say it depends on the person’s lifestyle but should not overrun other bills.”

The Kenya Bankers Association (KBA) Chief Executive Officer Raimond Molenje sat down with the Business Daily and discussed a range of topics, including pushing more credit to the private sector amid evolving macroeconomic risks, the lobby’s outlook on the Central Bank Rate (CBR) and recent sector reforms, including the lobby’s reservations on prudential guidelines on systemically important banks.

The President asked that banks scale lending to micro, small and medium enterprises; have you met his request?

We hosted the President in 2024 and began that conversation when total lending to MSMEs was at Sh75 billion, which was not the desired impact.

We made a commitment to double that number to Sh150 billion in 2025. We doubled on our commitment and lent Sh326 billion to the sector last year. Our focus on MSMEs is because the economy is generally run by small, micro, and medium enterprises, and banks have taken a step back in supporting that ecosystem.

Banks need to know their customers better and support them in a way that they even become consultants.

With technology, customers have moved away from the physical bank, and so lenders must look for the customer.

What’s the target for MSME lending in 2026?

Initially, we had set ourselves to lend Sh350 billion at the beginning of the year, but we have already surpassed that by financing Sh246 billion as at the end of June. We think we can lend close to Sh500 billion by the end of the year.

CBK spent a lot of time last year calling out lenders over failure to pass on lower borrowing costs. Do you believe that the industry’s interest rates now align with the regulator’s expectations?

The CBR has been unchanged since February, and I would say what we’ve seen in the last eight months is continued policy transmission. If you look at the average lending rate now and compare it to February, you can see borrowing costs have progressively come down.

This means that even without adjustments by the central bank, commercial banks have continued to adjust their rates. The market reality is that there is usually a lag to policy transmission.

The intention of the central bank was to continue lowering the CBR before the Middle East crisis occurred. I estimate average lending rates would be around 12 percent if that happened from the 14 percent today. This would have more impact on affordability, as a lot more customers would be able to service loans at 12 percent.

Are you worried that a further jump in inflation could trigger rate increases by CBK?

We see the CBK mostly sustaining the current benchmark until next year. However, there is a new challenge presented by the expected heavy rainfall, and we are yet to know the scale and impact that it would have.

The CBK has posed questions on how we are prepared to support our customers through the shock, but our hope is that the benchmark rate can remain unchanged. A hold in the CBR will moreover give banks more time to fully transmit policy and implement the risk-based credit pricing model which came to full effect in March this year.

What has been your view on the draft CBK guidelines on systemically important banks?

I think it’s too early to have this conversation, as banks are currently expected to raise their core capital bases, a matter yet to be fully implemented.

This poses a challenge because we need tier I banks to have enough capital to be able to support and come to the aid of smaller banks if required as we saw a few years back when Cooperative Bank took over Jamii Bora Bank.

The systemic approach is going to be counterproductive to the support required to smaller banks. For me, the timing is not appropriate as it will create more shocks in the market, creating constraints. A shareholder may not earn a return while lending to MSMEs could also be impacted as every extra shilling goes towards building capital.

We need bigger banks to be flexible enough to not only support smaller banks but also lend in the economy. Our brief to the CBK is that the proposal is good, but the timing is wrong.

What’s your industry outlook for the remainder of 2026?

We will still be sustaining our conversation on MSME lending and are looking at the impact we are having, especially on jobs. We also want to revisit our conversation about revising pay-as-you-earn (Paye) rates downwards to give a stimulus and create economic vibrancy.

On the payments side, we are scaling Pesalink to create more affordability with the next phase set on improving user experience. We have also established that not so many customers are aware of Pesalink, which informs our plan for more awareness campaigns, jointly as banks.

The payment systems will require further integration to ensure customers are not concerned whether they are in the Pesalink ecosystem, M-Pesa or Airtel Money.

The experience should be seamless, and only we should worry about what happens on the backend.

The Central Bank of Kenya (CBK) fined a record 33 commercial banks for defying the regulator’s calls to cut their loan rates in line with the reduced benchmark rate, denying borrowers cheaper credit.

The penalties followed on-site inspections of all 38 commercial banks, after which the CBK cracked the whip to force lenders to match their lending rates to the reduced Central Bank Rate (CBR).

The CBK did not disclose the identity of the banks in breach of the Banking Act provisions or the fines slapped on the 33 lenders, which represent 86.8 percent of the industry.

The apex bank said it took unspecified administrative actions on two other banks, while only three were fully compliant with the risk-based credit pricing model (RBCPM).

Between August 2024 and August 2025, the CBK cut the benchmark rate or CBR seven times by 3.5 percentage points to 9.5 percent from a 22-year high of 13 percent that lasted for about seven months.

Only six lenders — Citibank N.A Kenya, Absa Bank Kenya, Credit Bank, Standard Chartered Bank Kenya, Stanbic Bank Kenya and Victoria Commercial Bank — cut their overall lending rates to match or exceed the benchmark.

The banking regulator last year repeatedly put pressure on banks to lower borrowing costs and match cuts in the benchmark rate while threatening daily fines.

‘CBK conducted target inspections in 2025 on the implementation of the RBCPM rolled out in 2019 by all commercial banks. Following the inspections, penalties were levied on 33 banks, and administrative actions were taken on two banks,’ the CBK said in its latest annual banking supervision report.

‘Three banks were fully compliant with the RBCPM.’

The penalties on credit pricing breaches raised the number of commercial banks in violation of the Banking Act and CBK Prudential Guidelines in the year ended December 31, 2025 to 35, compared to 11 previously.

CBK Governor Kamau Thugge accused banks of failing to cut loan rates even after the CBR was trimmed from 13 percent in August 2024 to 10.75 percent in February 2026.

This triggered on-site inspections of banks up to June 2025 by the CBK to review the movement of lending rates.

Banks faced fines of Sh20 million or three times the monetary gain made from ‘overcharging’ borrowers, with the regulator leaning on the punitive penalty.

The banks also risked additional daily penalties of up to Sh100,000 for every case or implication for each loan account, with the executives liable for a Sh1 million

The banking sector regulator hinged its actions on Section 55 of the CBK Act.

‘The (Monetary Policy) Committee observed that the CBR had been lowered substantially since August 2024, yet lending rates have only declined marginally,’ Dr Thugge said in February last year.

‘Under the amendments to the Banking Act, any bank that has not passed on the benefits of reduced cost funds to reduce lending rates will be penalised in accordance with the law.’

Bank profits surged as they passed the higher interest rates on to borrowers far more quickly than to savers.

Another 24 banks cut interest rates in the year to August last year, but did not match the benchmark rate after trimming their borrowing costs by between 0.09 percentage points and 2.82 percentage points, CBK data shows.

Some banks reckoned they had locked in deposits used for loans at higher rates, arguing that the costly savings had slowed efforts to lower borrowing costs.

The high cost of borrowing at the time was deemed to have discouraged borrowers from taking out loans in a setting where the demand for products had become sluggish, prompting firms to freeze hiring and expansion plans.

Banks initially challenged the risk-based pricing model, arguing that it had left the industry unable to match the CBK’s rate without a standard benchmark from which to price loans.

The back-and-forth exchange between banks and the CBK culminated in the overhaul of the RBCPM, introducing a single industry benchmark underpinned by either the CBR or the overnight interbank rate, which was renamed the Kenya shilling overnight interbank average (Kesonia).

Commercial banks began implementing the revised framework on new loans from December 2025, while existing loans were fully transitioned to the revamped model at the end of February 2026.

Improvements in the monetary policy framework have seen the reunification of both the CBR and Kesonia at 8.75 percent presently, resulting in a single rate from which banks price their loans.

Banks add a risk premium, fees, and charges to the benchmark.

The average lending rate by commercial banks has fallen at a relatively faster pace since the overhaul of the RBCPM to 14.3 percent in July 2026 from 14.4 percent in June and 17.2 percent in November 2025, even after the CBK paused rate cuts in February this year.

Private sector credit growth has also recovered to reach double digits in June and July this year for the first time since February 2024.

The CBK, however, says it has been unable to fully implement the new risk-based credit pricing framework following the fallout from the Middle East conflict, which has forced pauses to additional CBR cuts.

The revised model came to full effect in March this year, matching the CBK’s wait-and-see policy stance, which has left the CBR unchanged at 8.75 percent.

‘Unfortunately, we did not get to use this framework when we were easing because the crisis in the Middle East intervened. We are now in a wait-and-see situation,’ Dr Thugge said last week.

A single piece can take him 200 hours or more to finish, sometimes stretching into a full month once he counts all the time spent simply brainstorming ideas. His studio is just a corner of his home.

Canvases stand on wooden stands around the room, some bare, some half painted, some finished and leaning quietly against the wall. Paint sits open on a small shelf, and older pieces hang on the walls. He does not force ideas to come.

‘I don’t have specific processes. I feel inspired,’ he says. Only once the feeling is clear does he move to the canvas, working, as he puts it, purely from instinct.

Leonard Amimo is 38 years old and signs his work as Lee Amimo. He calls his style ethereal wheels.

‘Ethereal basically means out of this world,’ he says, and the wheels are the small spiralling circles he paints, moving in threes. ‘The wheels symbolise flow of energy, vibration, what lies underneath. I just paint feelings,’ he says.

Narrowing a feeling

Lee believes his years as a writer shaped the way he now builds a painting, narrowing a feeling the same way he once narrowed a topic on the page. Once the feeling is clear in his head, the rest of the work just follows it wherever it leads.

That is exactly how one of his best-known pieces came to be. It is called ‘Nairobi’, and it shows a tall building on Kimathi Street, the kind that has stood in the city for years. It came from his own journey from Kisumu into Nairobi, the first time he saw buildings that tall.

The woman in the piece wears green, and a butterfly is drawn toward her. Around her are rippling circles repeating in threes.

‘It’s like a ripple. Rippling out,’ he says, tying the pattern back to something larger. ‘Vibration is all energy,’ he adds, describing how nothing in nature ever truly sits still.

Look closely at any of his paintings and you will notice that almost every figure he paints is a woman. ‘They are the doorway to this world. We come through a woman,’ he says, comparing women to flowers, since ‘flowers make everything beautiful.’

He enjoys dressing his painted women well, since, ‘I like to see beauty in things.’

None of this is decoration for its own sake. When someone stands in front of his work, he wants them to feel specific things.

‘Calm. Hope. Desire to keep moving,’ he says, along with a quiet reminder that the past and the future are tied together, even as daily life pulls people toward money and comparison.

Lee’s paintings seem to arrive in people’s lives at the right moment. One piece, called ‘Zahara’ was bought by someone who had just moved to Malindi to start a business in the aquamarine industry and had settled into a building carrying the same name. He had no idea about any of that when he painted it.

Another piece, called ‘Ada’ was bought by a woman who had just lost her mother, also named Ada, and the painted face reminded her of her mother when she was young.

He likens these moments to strangers who somehow understand each other instantly, even joking about the science behind it.

‘Are you aware of quantum entanglement?’ he asks before explaining that some people simply arrive already connected. ‘I print and make works of art from instinct. This is not something you can be taught.’

Pricing the art

Work like this does not come quickly. A single piece can take him between one week and one month to finish. That shapes how he prices his work.

‘I price it based on my experience, rarity, time I take, and, yeah, you know, my instincts. For art, there’s no fixed price point.’ His first painting sold for Sh15,500. Since then, he has sold work for as much as Sh450,000, and he expects further growth.

‘I can sell a piece for over Sh1 million, why not?’ Lee sometimes lets a piece go for less than its worth if the story moves him enough, believing that, ‘what you’re giving is what you get out.’

Long before any of that, before the studio and the stands and the finished canvases, there was a much smaller room, and a boy who did not yet know that art would be the only thing left of his family. His father died when he was only four years old, and the only thing he left behind was art.

His mother, who worked in medicine but was creative in her own way, died when he was eight. Art became the one thread tying him to his parents. ‘I feel like, for lack of a better term, I’m continuing my father’s legacy,’ he says.

That thread carried him through school, earning him scholarships and awards, and pulled him toward painters, sculptors, carpenters, and musicians who shaped how he saw the world.

Nairobi City Hopper, an artwork by artist Leonard Amimo, created using acrylics and permanent pen on canvas, photographed at his home in Ruaka on September 17, 2026.

Wilfred Nyangaresi | Nation Media Group

He studied art and design at the University of Nairobi, graduating in 2011 with a focus on illustration. It should have been a straight road from there into painting, but after school, he ran into the same wall many young Kenyans face.

‘The first thing they ask you is the experience you have. And then, the starting salary can’t sustain.’

So he turned to writing instead, a path he followed for about 10 years. Writing, he says, lets him travel the world in his mind and understand ‘the philosophies of life, religion,’ seeing existence through other people’s eyes.

Then, in 2022, art pulled him back. He began managing an artist named Steve Nyaga and spent long hours in the studio watching him work. The arrangement reminded him of what he could still do himself. He picked paper back up and began doodling again.

‘I was at a really deep place, and the style just came to me.’

By 2024, he had returned to practice seriously, refining what he calls a fresh approach.

Lee refuses to give up on people who claim they do not care about art. ‘It is my mission to make them appreciate art,’ he says, adding that we are ourselves artworks since we were created in a unique way.

None of this journey has been easy.

‘I started painting on a piece of paper. I couldn’t afford canvas,’ he says. There is no fund or organisation to turn to for support, and no separate studio either. He works from home, where family life often competes with his art for time and space.

His advice to anyone with ambitions to become a painter? ‘Start where you are. Plant the seed, give it time and watch it grow. Just believe.’

Art, for him, has never simply been a career. ‘For me it is a vacation, and I’m just on this river flowing where it needs to take me.’

Lee has tried other paths before and none of them ever felt whole the way this does. He believes there is always something waiting on the other side of hardship.

‘As long as you do it from an honest place,’ he says, ‘You will never sleep hungry.’

There is something profoundly humbling about sitting around a table to discuss the Kenya we want to leave for generations we may never meet. As a member of the Steering Committee guiding the development of Vision 2060, I have found the experience both exciting and grounding.

It is exciting because of the opportunity to contribute to a conversation about Kenya’s long-term future; grounding because a vision that stretches to 2060 will ultimately be judged not by the quality of its words, but by what the everyday Kenyan will experience in their daily lives.

This is exactly where the project management profession enters the conversation. Kenya has never lacked ambition. We have produced development plans, flagship projects and transformative programmes across infrastructure, health, education, housing, energy, agriculture and technology. The recurring challenge has always been converting ambition into tangible results and lasting impact.

As we look beyond Vision 2030, we must ask ourselves if we are sufficiently equipped to deliver the Kenya we envision.

A national vision is the beginning of a very large project. It has objectives to define, stakeholders to align, dependencies to manage, resources to mobilise, milestones to track, risks to mitigate and benefits to realise. The difference is that its scale is national, its complexity is immense, and its timeline spans generations.

Project management can no longer remain a back-office technical function. It must be recognised and treated as a strategic national capability.

The first lesson for Vision 2060 should be to strengthen the link between national priorities and implementation. Priorities such as infrastructure expansion, universal healthcare, quality education, affordable housing, food security, clean energy, climate resilience and digital transformation must be translated into coherent portfolios of programmes and projects, each with clear outcomes, ownership, resources, timelines, risks and accountability.

We also need greater discipline in deciding which projects Kenya should undertake. A project may be attractive, technically feasible and even financeable, yet still fail to represent the best use of scarce resources.

Project selection should be guided by strategic alignment, value for money, affordability, sustainability, implementation capacity and the value realisation it will deliver to citizens.

Equally important is how we define success. Completing a project on time and within budget matters, but it is not enough.

Success must also be measured by public value: better services, lower costs, greater efficiency, improved livelihoods, resilience, inclusion, sustainability and citizen satisfaction. A project that fails to deliver its intended economic or social benefits cannot be considered truly successful.

Vision 2060 should therefore entrench accountability for outcomes. We should ask not only whether we built the road, hospital, school, water system or digital platform, but whether it improved connectivity, healthcare, learning, productivity, livelihoods and access to essential services.

Sustained commitment is another critical issue. A 34-year vision will inevitably span several political administrations, and nationally significant projects cannot be repeatedly disrupted by political transitions. Kenya needs governance systems that preserve institutional memory and ensure decisions to continue, modify, or terminate projects that are based on evidence, performance, and national interest.

This is why Kenya must deliberately invest in project management talent. Tomorrow’s projects will be far more complex, spanning artificial intelligence, advanced infrastructure, climate adaptation, digital transformation, smart cities and public-private partnerships. We will require professionals who can manage not only schedules and budgets, but also uncertainty, stakeholders, technology, contracts, change and risk.

PMI Kenya’s invitation to serve on the Vision 2060 Steering Committee has reinforced my belief that Kenya has extraordinary expertise and ideas. What we must strengthen is the bridge between ideas and execution. Serving on the committee is more than an honour; it is a responsibility. It reminds me that project professionals have a role beyond individual organizations and projects: contributing to the systems through which our country plans, invests, and delivers.

And perhaps one of the most important conversations as we move toward Vision 2060 is the willingness to learn from Vision 2030. We should honestly examine what worked, what did not, and why – not to assign blame, but to strengthen institutional learning. Every successful project should teach us what to repeat, while every delayed, over-budget, or unsuccessful project should teach us what to improve.

If we get this right, Vision 2060 can be more than a statement of national aspiration. It can become a disciplined framework for delivery.

The Kenya of 2060 will not be created by a document alone. It will be created through thousands of programmes and projects, planned carefully, financed responsibly, implemented professionally, monitored transparently, and measured by the real change