Category: Business Daily

Advocates and certified secretaries will lose their licenses for fraudulent filings at the Business Registration Service (BRS) under a proposed code of conduct.

The move also aims to allow lawyers and governance compliance experts to make such submissions without seeking consent from company directors.

Following a consultative meeting with the Institute of Certified Secretaries (ICS) and the Law Society of Kenya (LSK), BRS agreed to jointly develop a conduct and implementation structure that would restore direct filing by professionals without directors’ consent.

The direct channel was suspended under an updated BRS system, known as BRS II, after fraudulent filings saw shareholders lose stakes worth billions of shillings in companies without their knowledge.

Under the initial version of the filling system, known as BRS I, advocates and certified secretaries could lodge and process applications without seeking consent from directors.

But this changed under the new automated system, through which individual company directors receive a one-time password (OTP) on their mobile phones for verification.

‘The meeting further discussed and resolved to…jointly develop and implement, within August 2026, a Code of Conduct and an implementation framework to guide the reinstatement of a structured Green Channel on the BRS Version II platform for qualified and in good standing practitioners,’ said BRS Director-General Kenneth Gathuma.

‘The framework will define clear roles, responsibilities, and accountability measures for all parties,’ added Mr Gathuma. Advocates and secretaries act on behalf of company directors in making several filings, including transfers of shares and changes in directorships.

Under the old system, BRS version I, they used to lodge directly without the consent of directors, on the faith that as certified professionals, they were expected to do the right thing.

However, there have been complaints of fraudulent filings across the country and in companies affected by fraud, including cases where directors were replaced without their knowledge or consent, in a clear case of identity theft.

Shareholders have also learnt of their shares being transferred to other parties without their authorisation.

The increased cases of fraudulent submissions prompted the State to end direct filing, including by advocates and secretaries, requiring them to first obtain consent from directors, a requirement that has prolonged the delivery of post-registration services.

Under the changes being made, instead of each director giving separate consent, the same will be done by the advocate or secretary.

However, other citizens will still have to obtain consent from directors to make the changes at BRS.

BRS version II has an automated system in which directors being replaced will, for example, receive a one-time password (OTP) on their mobile phones for verification-a shift from the earlier arrangement where notifications were sent by email or individuals were required to physically visit BRS offices.

‘The enhanced process will automate the end-to-end confirmation of new director appointments, as well as the resignation of directors and transfer of shares, through multi-factor authentication using a one-time password,’ said BRS Director-General Kenneth Gathuma.

BRS said this new component (OTP) was critical in safeguarding investments by the public in the form of shares and curbing incidents of identity theft and fraudulent lodgements.

Besides company registration, BRS’s day-to-day mandate extends to post-registration services, including facilitating the appointment of new directors or the removal or replacement of existing ones, as well as updating company secretary details.

The State agency also records changes in share ownership, including the sale, transfer or issuance of new shares, and updates registers to reflect the ultimate beneficial owners.

Officials at the BRS noted that the automation will significantly reduce the turnaround time for post-registration services, with the time it takes to effect directorship changes expected to fall from approximately 14 working days to five working days.

Some weeks ago, I watched a problem die inside a bank. It was a critical issue, and solving it would have cost the bank almost nothing. No millions.

Instead, it moved from desk to desk collecting refusals, each one perfectly defensible. A phone call was then made to the chief executive, the kind of call that spends years of banked social capital, and the matter was resolved in a day. Everybody won.

Which leaves the question this column exists to ask: why could nobody inside the system see it, and why could nobody act?

Once you notice this pattern, you meet it everywhere. I have sat in a tax dispute that swelled through objections, judgments and costs for five years, until alternative dispute resolution finally placed the problem on the table.

What process could not untangle in five years, ADR resolved in eight weeks because someone applied a founder’s view. The same script runs through hospitals, where decisions climb from the ward floor to the chief executive’s desk, sometimes too late for the patient. Institutions full of intelligent people keep producing unintelligent outcomes.

Call it the orphaned institution. Every organisation was once a startup. Someone once held the whole of it in one mind: customer, cost, risk, purpose and trade-offs.

Then it grew and was orphaned of its founder’s reasoning. The people remained capable; judgment stopped circulating. The structural proof is simple: put your team on the other side of the counter and they will instantly see the better decision. The eyes work; the seat forbids.

Why? Because institutions convert judgment into procedure, and procedure cannot see. An employee is rarely punished for a blocked solution but always exposed by an unauthorised one, so the rational clerk optimises for defensibility rather than outcomes. Founder reasoning is the opposite wiring: whole-problem sight, ownership of the result, and permission to weigh trade-offs. Remove any of the three and judgment dies quietly at the desk.

This is why founders struggle to let go. We are lectured about delegation. But the founder who grips too long is often not an ego case but a judgment-scarcity case: he has tested the structure and learned that his reasoning does not survive his absence. Last week, I argued that a creed carries values beyond the founder. This week’s harder question is what carries thinking.

The world is wrestling with the same question. Silicon Valley calls it founder mode. Critics call Elon Musk a micromanager, and sometimes he is.

But underneath the insult sits the unresolved problem: nobody has scaled founder judgment without the founder. Haier in China went furthest, dissolving itself into micro-enterprises so every employee faces the market like a founder. Yet orphanhood persists in the largest banks, telcos and ministries. Perhaps scale itself thins the blood.

Widen the lens and the pattern turns civilisational. Africa itself can read as an orphaned institution.

Our forefathers ran sophisticated leadership pipelines: age-sets that formed judgment in cohorts, councils of elders that transmitted it deliberately, and succession earned through initiation.

Colonialism severed the pipeline, and independence handed us the coloniser’s institutions, stripped of our own founding logic. So the continent keeps returning to the house that orphaned it, expecting it to supply the judgment we once formed at home.

Then comes this era’s provocation. If the founder’s reasoning cannot be transmitted through training manuals, could it be transmitted through machines? It is now possible to build a founder’s digital twin: an AI trained on the founder’s decisions and corrections, answering: what would the founder do here, and why?

I find the idea promising, and I do not trust it. A twin can carry logic. It cannot carry liability. My reasoning worked because I bore the consequence of being wrong.

Judgment without ownership is a suggestion box with better grammar. So the answer is probably a stack: the creed to carry the values, the twin to circulate the reasoning, and shared ownership to give the person at the desk a reason to use both.

Intelligence spreads fast. Skin in the game must still be distributed the old way.

Until then, the test of every institution remains embarrassingly simple. It is the day the clerk solves the founder-sized problem without anyone needing the chief executive’s number. It becomes an heir. So, one day, might a continent.

Kenya’s export earnings dipped to a five-year low in 2025, analysis shows. It was hurt by a biting drought across main producing areas, the strengthening of the dollar in key export markets, and human-wildlife conflicts that led to the destruction of sizeable volumes of the crop.

Kenya is among the world’s biggest sisal producers and ranks third after Brazil and Tanzania. The sisal fibre produced in Kenya is mainly for export, with an estimated 96 percent of the produce shipped abroad.

Locally, sisal is used for making ropes, bags, carpets, baskets, and furniture. Internationally, it is used to produce paper, ceiling boards, car bodies, clothes, and even paper currency.

Fresh data by the Agriculture and Food Authority (AFA) showed that Kenya earned Sh4.7 billion from sisal exports in 2025, down from Sh5.7 billion the previous year. The 2025 sisal export earnings are the lowest for Kenya since 2021 and mark a third successive year of drops.

The dip in export earnings coincided with a drop in both the output and the volume of crop shipped to markets abroad. Total production fell by 19.4 per cent to 24,899.46 tonnes in 2025 from 30,893.4 tonnes in 2024.

‘The reduction in output was attributed to lower productivity, likely driven by drought conditions that affected major sisal-producing estates and curtailed the harvesting of sisal leaves. In addition, outbreaks of diseases such as Korogwe leaf spot and early pole formation further diminished output,’ the regulator said.

‘Production was also negatively impacted by human-wildlife conflicts in some estates, which led to wildfires that destroyed sisal plantations and further suppressed overall yields’

Kenya suffered a severe drought in 2025, especially towards the end of the year where the country suffered the near-total failure of the October-December short rains,

In the 2025 crop season, Kenya exported its sisal fibre to 30 destinations overseas, shipping 23,323.1 tonnes to international markets and earning Sh4.7 billion compared to 26,168 tonnes exported in 2024, valued at Sh5.7 billion.

Nigeria remained the principal destination of Kenyan sisal fibre shipments in 2025, accounting for the largest share of both export volume and value, with 8,497.40 tonnes valued at Sh1.72 billion. The West African country has consistently been the top market for Kenyan sisal fibre, largely due to its extensive use in the construction industry. Saudi Arabia was the second-biggest buyer of Kenyan sisal in 2025, importing 2,717 tonnes worth Sh610 million.

‘Beyond its traditional markets, Kenya continued to diversify its export base across Africa, Asia and Europe. Shipments reached countries such as Morocco (2,098 tonnes), China (2,295tonnes), Spain (836 tonnes) and the Philippines (528 tonnes), reflecting sustained demand in industries that rely on natural fibres,’ AFA said.

Emerging markets, including Japan (25 tonnes), Sri Lanka (14 tonnes) and Slovenia (10.2tonnes), also imported smaller quantities, signalling growing global interest in sustainable and biodegradable raw materials.

‘Overall, this performance demonstrates the resilience and adaptability of Kenya’s export strategy and highlights the strategic role of sisal as a key cash crop, particularly in arid and semi-arid regions where it is well suited,’ the regulator said.

‘With the global shift toward environmentally friendly alternatives, sisal presents Kenya with significant opportunities to enhance its green economy profile while generating rural employment and foreign exchange earnings’

Sisal farming is largely carried out on a large scale in counties such as Taita Taveta, which is the largest producer by county ranking. Others are Kilifi, Baringo, Makueni, Kwale, Nakuru, and Migori counties.

In 2025, Taita Taveta posted a slight decline in output, decreasing to 8,226.57 tonnes, from 9,462.90 tonnes in 2024. Makueni registered the steepest drop in fibre production, with output falling by 33.5 per cent to 4,979.9 tonnes in 2025, with the value significantly decreasing to Sh910.4 million.

‘Overall, all counties experienced reductions in fibre production and the value of sisal fibre exports, despite an expansion in the area under cultivation,’ AFA said.

Kenya’s weather experts have now put a number on what many had treated as speculation. The Kenya Meteorological Department estimates an 81 percent probability of a very strong El Niño this year, bringing above-normal rainfall during the October to December short rains, and a 97 percent chance that the event extends into early 2027. For finance leaders, that is not just a forecast but a planning assumption.

A telecommunications network is a large consumer of electricity, with thousands of base stations operating around the clock. When storms bring down power lines, sites switch to batteries and then diesel generators – the most expensive electricity an operator buys.

Those generators must be refuelled by trucks travelling on roads damaged by the same rain.

Extended cloud cover creates another challenge. At Safaricom, we have converted 2,002 sites to solar power, with green energy now powering 35 percent of our network. Heavy cloud reduces solar output when the national grid is least reliable, forcing deeper battery cycles and accelerating replacement schedules.

The story does not end with higher costs. Full dams can increase hydropower generation and moderate electricity prices. Stronger harvests raise rural incomes, increasing economic activity and digital transactions. The risks lie in local infrastructure reliability; the opportunities lie in stronger national supply and demand. The objective is to model the forecast.

Both risks and opportunities eventually appear in the accounts as higher fuel bills, more expensive logistics, earlier maintenance cycles and insurance costs. By then, the cheapest opportunity to respond has passed.

This was the message I shared with finance leaders at the third annual CFO East Africa Sustainability Summit. The CFO’s responsibility today goes beyond protecting shareholder value and allocating capital. It includes recognising climate risk while it is still weather, rather than waiting until it becomes an accounting entry.

Climate-related investments should compete for capital on the same merits as any acquisition or major expansion. Does the investment reduce material risk? Does it lower costs or improve efficiency? Does it strengthen resilience to future shocks? Where the answer is yes, it belongs in the capital allocation process.

Capital markets have already moved in this direction. Late last year, Safaricom raised Sh20 billion through green notes to finance eligible environmental projects. The issue was oversubscribed by 175.7 percent, showing that investors increasingly recognise environmental resilience as a financial proposition.

Ultimately, this is a balance sheet issue. Climate exposure represents future costs, while investment in people, communities and sound governance strengthens reputation, customer loyalty and talent – assets that may not appear explicitly on the balance sheet but influence enterprise value.

October is roughly 90 days away. The forecast is public. The financial consequences of this rainy season will be determined not when the first storms arrive, but by decisions being made today.

Caroline Wambugu is the Head of Group Finance Controls, Performance and Investor relations, Safaricom PLC

TelPosta Pension Scheme expects to complete the first tranche of sales of its major property holdings by September 2026, paving the way for a review of payouts to its more than 5,000 members.

The closed pension scheme is negotiating with government ministries to sell four strategic properties, with the transactions expected to unlock about Sh10 billion for reinvestment in more liquid assets and potentially improve returns to members.

Scheme administrator Peter Rotich said talks with the government entities are now at an ‘advanced stage’, with the Ministry of ICT and Digital Economy set to take TelPosta Towers and the Ministry of Defence taking the Gilgil GTI staff quarters.

The Interior Ministry, through the Kenya Police, will acquire the Makande and Bombolulu residential houses in Mombasa.

‘Our talks are at an advanced stage and think we will be exiting the major property portfolios soon. We see end of September as a realistic date for closing the first tranche of the transactions,’ said Mr Rotich.

The sales would allow the scheme to increase allocations to government securities, corporate bonds, money market investments, cash and infrastructure funds, which Mr Rotich said would help the scheme increase payouts to members.

Mr Rotich said members should expect a review of payouts after the disposal of the major property holdings, although the final decision will depend on advice from actuaries.

‘Members’ expectation is high, and our plan is to review the payouts once we have completed the exit of major holdings in property investments,’ he said.

‘Trustees will take advice from actuaries to ensure we settle on what improves the welfare of members but at the same time is sustainable for the scheme.’

The scheme currently pays members an average monthly benefit of Sh11,895 and has paid more than Sh14.5 billion to its membership since it became a closed scheme.

TelPosta scheme recently dodged a Sh13.4 billion pension liability after the High Court dismissed claims by former members for additional payout, bringing to a close a 15-year legal battle that had threatened to plunge the fund into a massive deficit.

‘The end of this case allows us to concentrate on delivering on our strategy of cutting exposure in properties and focusing on high-yield investments. We were able to prove our case,’ said Mr Rotich.

The scheme has been seeking to reduce its heavy exposure to property, which accounted for 82.71 percent, or Sh12.21 billion, of its Sh14.76 billion investment portfolio as of June 2025.

The Retirement Benefits Authority investment rules cap pension schemes’ exposure to immovable property at 30 percent, making the planned disposals key to the scheme’s portfolio rebalancing.

The scheme was established in 1997 as a defined benefit scheme for Telkom Kenya employees and closed to new members and future accrual of benefits in November 2007.

Nearly 84 percent of its members are aged between 60 and 79 years, increasing pressure on trustees to ensure the scheme generates sufficient income to meet its obligations to a predominantly ageing membership.

TelPosta Towers, the scheme’s most valuable property, has 403,826 square feet of space spread across 29 floors along Kenyatta Avenue, with 98 percent of the space occupied by government ministries.

The Gilgil property comprises 174 rental units and 68 acres of undeveloped land, while the Makande and Bombolulu properties in Mombasa comprise 100 and 88 residential units respectively.

TelPosta scheme is also targeting another Sh5 billion from the sale of other properties spread across the country, taking the potential proceeds from the wider disposal programme to about Sh15 billion.

The property disposal is expected to reduce the scheme’s exposure to the administrative costs associated with managing real estate.

Between 2001 and 2025, it spent Sh532.38 million on property-related legal costs, involving efforts to recover properties from non-paying tenants, illegal occupants and property grabbers.

As Kenyans we proliferate as commensurate professionals. Go to any major global city and you are likely to find at least two types of Kenyan professionals: accountants and NGO leaders. We dominate those sectors.

The most innovative and prolific donor and sustainable development initiatives often originate in Kenya and even despite the sad demise of USAid, we still tower above others in the sector. Similarly with the accounting profession.

Over the years, I have sat in meetings in Washington DC, London, Singapore, Berlin, and other global hotspots only to have a joyful surprise when a Kenyan accountant walks in the conference room unexpectedly part of whatever meeting is taking place.

Then look Pan-African, our entrepreneurs and financial technology professionals are legendary. From Johannesburg to Kinshasa to Accra to Senegal to Cairo and everywhere in between, our entrepreneurs and fintech experts bring expertise and creativity to sectors. Then look regionally how our medical doctors, bankers, insurance actuarial scientists, and real estate project managers are far preferred.

But even as the world benefits from our Kenyan ingenuity and how many around the world come to Kenya to learn from Kenyans, how, in return, do organisations benefit when our professionals gain international experience and then come back here at home to run companies?

Mountains of social science literature have been written over recent years on how a professional who gains international experience can then improve how they work and the deliverables they produce. At an individual level, clearly the exposure to different types of thinking and processes is useful in expanding horizons but also building resilience in professionals to figure out new solutions.

However, what about on an organisational level? Sometimes we assume that a leader with international exposure can lead better because of experience with networks and different ways of thinking. These same leaders often demand higher renumeration packages from the organisations that they serve. But is it worth it?

Fei Qin, Klaus Meyer, and Sabina Nielsen just published rigorous qualitative research looking at 270 studies to investigate the extent to which a strategic leader’s own international experience actually helps the organisation that she or he leads or is the exposure largely overstated. In short, strategic leaders’ international experience generally does improve organisational outcomes. However, relevant and usable experience matters far more than merely having spent some time overseas.

Unsurprisingly, the research found that internationally experienced executives tended to invest more in innovation and generate better organisational returns from those investments. Additionally, top management teams who have international experience rank as the strongest predictor of how extensively a firm itself is able to grow internationally and domesticate global best practices.

Further, as many Kenyans who go abroad to study at foreign universities and then only to come home to find it difficult to find work, international work experience appears far more valuable in improving organisational outcomes as a leader than does the foreign education of a leader.

It is better for organisations if you conduct your studies in Kenya and then go and work abroad rather than go and study overseas and then come directly back.

In fact, people who both studied and worked overseas and then came back were found to do worse for the organisation than one who only worked abroad. People become too mentally fixed into the habits of the overseas location at that point to become as useful locally.

Unexpectedly, more international diversity on a firm’s management team does not automatically produce better results. While diversity within leadership teams does improve information processing and decision quality up to a point, extensive diversity creates coordination problems, interpersonal friction, and weaker post-acquisition performance when mergers take place.

Then what did the research find about boards of directors?

Alignment within the leadership group matters a lot. Internationally experienced board members contributed more to the firm when the respective CEO also possessed international experience. Otherwise, without having matching CEO international experience, directors on the board sometimes interfered too deeply in management decisions.

In summary, a person who worked intensively in the relevant foreign market may contribute far more than someone who merely studied overseas or accumulated numerous unrelated international assignments. Benchmarking trips do not help. More international exposure does not necessarily produce better leadership.

International experience does not operate like a qualification whereby you just go and hang it on your wall and assume that it automatically makes someone a better leader.

Instead, it creates the greatest organisational value when leaders gained substantial professional experience, when that experience matches the market or challenges actually facing the organisation, and when the leadership team can convert the resulting knowledge into sound decisions and effective implementation.

The tracking of bank transactions helped a State agency tasked with monitoring money laundering unearth illicit wealth worth $120.91 million (Sh15.65 billion) in the year to December 2025, reflecting increased use of financial intelligence in fight against economic crime.

Fresh disclosures from the Financial Reporting Centre (FRC), which is the country’s financial intelligence unit, show that suspicious transaction reports filed largely by banks triggered a wave of investigations that have led to the tracing and identification of the billions of shillings.

The intelligence was built from thousands of reports that banks and other reporting entities, such as real estate agencies and insurers, file with the FRC, including the weekly cash transaction reports (CTRs) that capture cash transactions above $15,000 (Sh1.94 million).

The flagged illicit deals triggered further probes by the Directorate of Criminal Investigations (DCI), the Ethics and Anti-Corruption Commission (EACC), the Kenya Revenue Authority (KRA) and the Assets Recovery Agency (ARA) in the war against dirty money.

The FRC said the bulk of the Sh15.65 billion relates to proceeds of corruption, economic crimes, unexplained wealth and high-value public land.

‘Unexplained wealth has been recovered. Restriction and preservation have been put on land pending recovery,’ said the FRC.

In the leafy suburbs, five-bedroom villas with servants’ quarters sell easily for Sh100 million in cash, real estate agents say.

High-end residential property prices have shot up multiple times since 2010, with the Nairobi market emerging as one of the top performers in Africa.

Sales of luxury vehicles have also surged, with conspicuous spending not tallying with official records on income tax payments.

This points to illicit money flow from faulty trade invoicing, crime, corruption and shady business activities.

The Financial Action Task Force, the official global watchdog, has kept Kenya on its “grey list” of countries it considers high risk for money laundering and terrorist finance activities.

The seizures came in the year the FRC saw an 18.8 percent surge in suspicious transaction reports to 9,571, from 8,057 in 2024, driven largely by the banking sector-which accounted for 85.7 percent of the reports.

Lenders have formed a key cog, given that the bulk of the cash transactions ultimately end up in clients’ bank accounts.

The disclosures come against the backdrop of a 2025 Financial Reporting Centre (FRC) typologies report showing Sh6.38 trillion or about 91 percent of suspicious flows passed through banks in three years to 2023, underlining the sector’s central role in money laundering risks.

The typologies report also flagged increasingly sophisticated tactics, including the use of shell companies and structuring transactions to evade detection, with illicit flows involving Kenya linked to at least 21 countries.

The FRC receives reports on suspicious deals from reporting institutions such as banks, insurers, saccos, forex bureaus, mobile money operators, lawyers, accountants, casinos and betting firms, real estate agents and dealers in precious metals and stones.

Reporting entities must file cash transaction reports for deals above $15,000 (Sh1.94 million) and cross-border declarations for amounts exceeding $10,000 (Sh1.29 million).

They also submit suspicious transaction and activity reports on any dealings or behaviour, regardless of value, linked to crime, money laundering, terrorism financing, or potential illicit financial flows.

The information from the reporting entities forms the financial intelligence that is used to fight money laundering, terrorism financing and proliferation financing. The FRC receives and analyses the information to pick out patterns or trends that may indicate financial crime.

The agency says it enriches the reports with information from multiple other sources to produce ‘high-quality intelligence disseminations’ used by agencies such as the DCI, the EACC, the KRA and the ARA in going after the culprits

‘The centre analyses suspicious reports and other financial transactions reports from reporting institutions from which it disseminates financial intelligence to law enforcement agencies for appropriate action,’ says the FRC in the latest report.

The FRC does not arrest or prosecute suspects, but it uses the intelligence reports from reporting entities and international financial intelligence units to connect the dots and feed leads to DCI, EACC and ARA to build watertight cases.

The latest report show the EACC was a key recipient of the 260 reports that the FRC shared to law enforcement agencies. The EACC received 72 such reports, all of which resulted in investigations that traced the Sh15.65 billion.

The KRA acted on 70 reports, completing investigations on 33 cases and raising tax assessments amounting to $4.56 million (Sh590.75 million) from which it has recovered $2.37 million (Sh307 million).

In addition, the DCI received 67 FRC intelligence reports, all of which triggered investigations.

The ARA, which focuses on tracing and seizures of proceeds of crime, handled 51 intelligence reports. The FRC says investigations are at different stages, with 31 cases advanced, two pending forfeitures in court and five already closed.

The FRC has been increasing the number of reporting institutions to step up the fight against illicit wealth.

Building a successful a law firm in the US as a Kenyan is less about courtroom drama than about managing the economics of survival.

The setup costs can run into millions of shillings, the career paths starting as a caregiver to pay tuition, or leveraging diaspora networks to build a client base from scratch.

Charles Wanjohi has practised law in the US for 20 years. He is the founder of Wanjohi and Muli Law Firm Plc, with offices in North Carolina, Dallas, Seattle, and Boston, with much of the work concentrated in Boston.

He studied law at the University of Nairobi and was admitted as an advocate of the High Court of Kenya in 2006. Just nine months into that admission, he travelled to the US to visit.

‘I saw this nice country, and I saw opportunities here, so I decided to stay,’ he says.

As a foreign-trained lawyer, Charles was able to sit for the New York bar exam without returning to law school. But before he could take that step, he spent several years simply working out his immigration status in the country, a period during which he did no legal work.

He was finally admitted as an attorney in New York in 2010. He then trained under another Kenyan attorney already established in the US.

‘I was lucky,’ he says. ‘One of them was gracious enough to mentor me into the practice.’

In 2013, he partnered with Mueni Muli, a Kenyan lawyer educated in the US, and together they founded their firm. ‘That’s what we’ve been doing for the last 13 years,’ he says.

Sh12.9 million capital

Starting a law firm from nothing required substantial money, yet a new firm has no credit history, which drives up the cost of commercial leases.

Add that to the cost of furniture, computers, electronics, a mandatory trust account, professional liability insurance, and ongoing marketing, and the total climbs quickly.

‘To start on your own will require somewhere between Sh6.4 million to Sh12.9 million to have a decent law firm,’ says the 46-year-old.

Even something as small as an office desk, Charles points out, could cost Sh258,000, or as much as Sh1.5 million, depending on the choices made along the way.

Their firm focused heavily on immigration law because of the goodwill they received from Kenyans already living in the US. ‘They push us every day,’ Charles says. The firm also handles commercial transactions and family law across the states where it operates.

The most rewarding moments, he says, come from reuniting families and defending clients facing deportation.

‘When you defend somebody facing deportation and they are not deported, when you represent somebody who is applying for asylum having been persecuted in their home countries and they end up getting safe haven here in the US, it’s very rewarding.’

The hardest part cuts the other way. Many of his clients lack legal status, which often means they lack steady income to pay their legal fees.

‘Payment of our legal fees is the biggest challenge,’ he admits.

Charles still holds a current practising certificate in Kenya and remains a partner in a separate firm there, Wanjohi and Muli Company Advocates, which handles matters connecting the US and Kenya.

‘At the end of the day, your comfort and your source of solace is a happy family,’ says the father of three, who spends much of his time outside work shuttling them to school and after-school activities.

Looking back at the young advocate he once was, hustling in Nairobi with little more than hope, Charles offers himself a simple message.

‘Thank you for keeping up the faith,’ he says. ‘I learned that there’s no shortcut, so you have to sweat to get what you want. And I kept that faith and here I am.’

“Cost like Sh65,000 for everything”

Gladys Mogaka is in her 40s and licensed to practise law in both Kenya and the US. She is now predominantly based in the US and the founder Law office of Gladys Mogaka Plc. As an attorney, her firm focuses on immigration law, trademarks, and copyright, and she is also quietly building a technology venture on the side. Before any of that, she was a young lawyer in Kenya.

She completed her Bachelor’s degree at Kampala International University in Uganda, graduating in 2007. She then attended the Kenya School of Law and passed her bar exam in 2009, followed by an internship at the law firm AH Malik and Company.

‘I was very ambitious,’ she says of herself back then.

A volunteer trip to deliver a speech at the United Nations about technology and the girl child changed the course of her life. There she met students pursuing their Master’s degrees in the US, and with extended family already living there, she felt encouraged to apply too.

She was accepted at Harvard, New York Law School, and Michigan State. She chose Michigan State because the school offered her a 50 percent scholarship. ‘My Master’s was very expensive,’ she says, ‘and as an international student it’s very hard for you to get student loans.’

She compressed a two-year Master’s programme into a single year, joining in January 2013 and finishing that December. To manage it, she worked nights as a caregiver while attending classes during the day. ‘I just did not have a social life,’ she says. ‘So I used to carry books to work.’

She started that caregiving job earning Sh1,000 an hour, and after being trained to administer medication to residents, her pay rose to Sh1,400 an hour. ‘I was so excited and happy,’ she recalls.

Passing a bar exam abroad tested her in ways she had not expected. She registered for the New York bar exam, a process that took about six months, and had to master a completely new body of state law stacked on top of what she already knew from Uganda, Kenya, and Michigan.

‘The nuances are so complicated,’ she says, describing how the same crime can carry a different number of legal degrees in every jurisdiction.

She sat for the exam in the summer of 2014 and waited until around November that year for her results. Her first legal job came at Ernst and Young, but she was let go a few months later when a major client required attorneys who already held their physical license.

She found steadier ground at Deloitte, working there from 2015 until she resigned in 2020, during the pandemic. ‘I knew if I put seven years in my own firm, I will make three times what they were going to pay me in seven years,’ she says of her reasoning at the time.

While still employed at Deloitte, Gladys quietly registered her own law firm in 2018. She built it on the side at first, driven partly by the steady stream of immigration questions Kenyans around her kept asking.

Registering a law firm in the US, she explains, involves holding a valid licence, choosing a legal structure such as an LLC, and paying processing fees. ‘It’s not a lot,’ she says. ‘It’s not more than like Sh65,000 for everything.’

Life in the US was not free of prejudice. She recalls being mistaken for a client rather than the attorney during courthouse security checks, and once being asked repeatedly for an interpreter badge instead of being recognised as the lawyer standing in front of a judge.

‘I am a lawyer,’ she remembers telling the court official. ‘And she kept asking me, whose lawyer are you interpreting for?’ Eventually she pulled out her badge and set it down firmly in front of the woman. ‘I had to let my work speak for me,’ Gladys says. ‘On so many occasions, my work has spoken for me.’

Today she mentors six students who dream of becoming lawyers, and two Kenyan attorneys have reached out to her directly for guidance on relocating to the US. ‘That right there, that is what I call successful,’ she says. ‘We have Black girls who have seen me, and they want to be like me.’

“It boils down to two things…”

While Gladys built her law firm through sheer resilience, starting from the very bottom of the ladder in New York and Michigan, Laban Opande took a different route. He bet on the Kenyans in the diaspora who eventually gave him a steady stream of clients.

Laban has run a law firm in the US for 18 years, despite never studying law in Kenya.

He did environmental science as his first degree, with a minor in computer science. He moved to the US immediately after high school.

He got a job at AIG, the insurance and financial group’s IT department, which helped pay 90 percent of his tuition at the University of Phoenix while pursuing his MBA.

Only after that did he attend the Thurgood Marshall School of Law, graduating in 2007. ‘I was pretty much in school for about 11 years. I’d always admired the likes of James Orengo and Paul Muite,’ says Laban, now in his 50s.

After law school, Laban interned with a friend named Solomon Musim, who guided him through his bar admission. The two eventually joined forces permanently in 2009, forming what became the O’Connor Law Firm.

Asked what it takes to open a law firm as a foreigner in the US, Laban does not pretend there is a formula.

‘But it boils down to two things. One, it’s just like any other business. You must have business acumen. Then the second one is being a good lawyer. You cannot be a businessman running after money, and you are not delivering for your clients.’

On getting the business running, Laban credits his close ties to the Kenyan community in the US.

‘When I started practising, there were not many Kenyan lawyers in the US,’ he says. ‘A majority of African lawyers were Nigerian.’

That gave him a competitive edge. His familiarity within the small Kenyan community provided an early foundation of trust and helped him build his client base.

‘It formed the foundation for me in terms of client buildup. But then you still have to deliver. You cannot take it for granted that people know you and then you don’t do the job,’ says the lawyer of his Houston-based firm, with a smaller Dallas office, which he runs with a Kenyan partner, other attorneys and support staff.

He started representing Kenyans including families whose relatives died in the Ethiopian Airlines crash in 2019.

‘That has been probably the most fulfilling case,’ he says, describing how he had to explain Kenyan cultural realities, including polygamous marriages, in an American legal system built around a single spouse.

‘American law does not recognise some of the things like polygamy,’ he says. ‘We had to manoeuvre through all those and figure out how you are able to capture the Kenyan essence in the American law and still be able to represent them well.’

Besides running his law firm, Laban juggles several other entrepreneurial ventures.

He once ran a restaurant in Houston before selling it, and he still runs a real estate business on the side. ‘I’m a typical Kenyan,’ he laughs.

‘You have to have a side gig,’ says Laban, who leads the Kenya US Bar Association, with 250 Kenyan-American lawyers and law students.

Nearly two decades ago, he helped found Uhuru Soccer, a team that has become a family affair, with the children of its original players now taking to the pitch alongside their parents.

The number of established Primary Care Networks (PCNs) across Kenya’s 47 counties increased by 22 percent to 277 in the 2025/26 financial year, up from 227 the previous year, as counties expand a system designed to bring services closer to communities.

PCNs bring together health facilities and community-level services within a defined area to improve the coordination of care, referrals and access to essential services. They are intended to make primary healthcare facilities the first point of contact for most routine health needs, allowing patients to receive care closer to home while easing pressure on higher-level hospitals.

Dr Mercy Mwangangi, Chief Executive Officer of the Social Health Authority (SHA), said that the PCNs handle the bulk of the country’s routine health needs; hence, investing at this level is very critical.

‘About 70 percent of health needs in the country are met at the primary healthcare level. Many of the conditions we commonly suffer from, such as flu, colds, and diarrhoea are handled at the primary healthcare level,’ Dr Mwangangi said yesterday during a Media Town Hall ahead of the Kenya Health Summit next week.

‘For every shilling invested in primary healthcare, you can recoup nine shillings. That is the return on investment of primary healthcare,’ she added.

According to SHA data, over the past 18 months, the government has invested Sh27 billion in primary healthcare compared with Sh1.8 billion invested by the previous government.

The expansion is part of the counties’ broader efforts to strengthen primary healthcare and improve access to services.

The Council of Governors’ Maarifa Centre documented 23 county innovations and best practices on PCNs from 15 counties, covering integrated service delivery, community health systems, referral coordination, digital health and health workforce strengthening.

The growth of the networks comes as the government seeks to remove financial barriers to accessing care at lower levels of the health system.

Speaking at the same event, Health Cabinet Secretary Aden Duale said that primary healthcare at Level Two, Level Three and part of Level Four facilities is free to Kenyans, while acknowledging that some facilities continue to charge patients despite the policy.

‘A Kenyan should be able to walk into a facility, receive treatment and walk out without being charged,’ Mr Duale said, adding that the policy applies whether a facility is faith-based, county-run, private or church-based.

‘I agree that there are challenges, including cases where some facilities still attempt to charge patients.’

Mr Duale said the government has allocated Sh19 billion in the current financial year to fund treatment for Kenyans accessing dispensaries, health facilities and some Level Four services.

‘Therefore, charging a Kenyan for these services is a criminal offence, regardless of the type of facility,’ he said.

The Treasury borrowed Sh207.7 billion to pay salaries, debt repayments and other recurrent expenditure in the year ended June, in continued breach of the public finance management law.

The draft 2026 Budget Review and Outlook Paper (BROP) shows the President William Ruto administration borrowed Sh983.7 billion in the financial year 2025/26.

The Treasury, however, says that only Sh776 billion was spent on development, leaving Sh207.7 billion to fund recurrent expenditure.

The disclosure means more than one in every five shillings borrowed in the year to June did not go into building roads, dams, schools, hospitals or other long-term assets, but instead financed the ordinary cost of running government.

Kenya faces severe fiscal pressures and cash constraints driven by high debt-servicing costs and below-target revenue performance, prompting the Treasury to tap loans for recurrent spending.

The Treasury’s figures show that 78.9 percent of borrowing financed development expenditure while 21.1 percent financed recurrent expenditure, highlighting the gap between Kenya’s legal borrowing rules and actual budget financing.

Section 15(2)(c) of the Public Finance Management Act, 2012 requires that national government borrowing should, over the medium term, be used only for development expenditure and not recurrent expenditure.

The Treasury has acknowledged the breach and pledged full adherence in future budgets.

‘Over the medium term, the government will ensure adherence to the fiscal responsibility principles,’ Treasury officials wrote in the review paper.

The continued breach contrasts with President Ruto’s pledge shortly after taking office in September 2022 that borrowing would no longer be used to keep the government running and meet obligations that recur every year.

‘The government should never borrow to finance recurrent expenditure. It is not right, it is not prudent, and it is not sustainable. It is simply wrong. We must bring ourselves and our country to sanity,’ the President said at the time, adding that his administration would restore fiscal discipline over time.

‘Over the next three years, we must reverse this and go back to a situation where the government contributes to the national savings effort by keeping recurrent expenditure below revenue levels.’

The latest figures suggest progress toward that goal, but they also reveal that the government remains unable to fully finance its recurrent budget from tax revenue and other ordinary income.

The Treasury data shows that Kenya has gradually reduced the share of borrowing used for recurrent expenditure.

In the financial year 2023/24, the government borrowed Sh766.4 billion but more than half, or Sh415.7 billion, financed recurrent expenditure — making that year one of the clearest examples of debt funding government consumption.

In the financial year 2024/25, borrowing rose to Sh854.5 billion, of which Sh604.1 billion went to development and Sh250.4 billion to recurrent spending, lifting the development share to 70.7 percent.

Last financial year marked a further improvement, but the remaining Sh207.7 billion still represents a substantial reliance on debt to finance consumption rather than investment, a practice economists have long argued weakens future economic growth.

The Treasury has repeatedly defended the government’s borrowing programme by arguing that debt is increasingly being directed toward infrastructure and productive investment rather than recurrent expenditure.

Treasury Cabinet Secretary John Mbadi has previously said the government was seeking to restore fiscal discipline and improve compliance with the Public Finance Management Act after years of heavy borrowing and rising debt servicing costs.

Borrowing for development creates assets such as roads that can raise future productivity and tax revenues, while borrowing for recurrent expenditure leaves taxpayers servicing debt long after the money has been spent.

Kenya’s recurrent expenditure-which hit nearly Sh3.29 trillion in the year to June from Sh2.95 trillion a year earlier – includes wages for public servants, pensions, debt interest payments, transfers to State agencies and county governments, and operations and maintenance costs across ministries and departments.

Debt servicing has become the single-largest pressure on the recurrent budget, prompting the government to devote an increasing share of revenue to interest and principal repayments.

The BROP report also shows that overall development expenditure has risen steadily, strengthening the Treasury’s argument that a larger share of public spending is being directed toward investment.

Development expenditure increased from Sh493.66 billion in the financial year 2022/23 to Sh546.39 billion in the financial year 2023/24, before rising to Sh582.94 billion in the financial year 2024/25.

The Treasury estimates that development expenditure reached a provisional Sh731.54 billion in the financial year 2025/26, an increase from the previous year and the highest level in the four years of President Ruto’s administration.

However, officials acknowledged that the government still failed to meet its own development spending target.

‘Development expenditure amounted to Sh731.5 billion against a target of Sh771.0 billion, translating to an under-spending of Sh39.5 billion. This variance was largely driven by lower-than-projected absorption in development projects, which underperformed by Sh41.5 billion,’ Treasury officials wrote in the draft BROP.

The missed target means the government borrowed nearly Sh984 billion while failing to spend all the development funds it had planned, raising fresh questions about project implementation and budget execution.

The Treasury has been pursuing a fiscal consolidation programme aimed at reducing the budget deficit and slowing the pace of debt accumulation through higher revenue collection and tighter control of expenditure.

However, the review paper indicates that ordinary revenues such as taxes, dividends from government-owned entities and charges on government services were still not sufficient to cover all recurrent obligations, requiring the government to use borrowed funds to bridge the financing gap.

The continued breach of the borrowing rule is likely to raise questions about the credibility of the government’s fiscal consolidation strategy, especially as Kenya seeks to reassure lenders such as the IMF and investors that public debt is funding productive investment.

The Treasury’s promise that future borrowing will fully comply with the PFM Act means the government would need to eliminate the practice of financing recurrent expenditure with debt, a target that has remained elusive for years.