Category: Business Daily

‘Every artist was first an amateur.’ – Ralph Waldo Emerson

We love to celebrate creativity when it shines on a stage or hangs in a gallery, but rarely do we speak of the nights when it had to pay the rent.

A fresh court battle has erupted between artistes, the Kenya Copyright Board (Kecobo), and the Music Copyright Society of Kenya (MCSK), over alleged mismanagement of funds collected from music and art consumers in the form of royalties.

Central to the ongoing dispute initiated by musicians Justus Ngemu and Saul Esikuri is the alleged loss of Sh56 million at MCSK. This amount had allegedly been received as royalties for artistes and musicians.

The windfall returns of 2024 from Treasury bills, government bonds, and money market funds appears to have ended. With yields drifting lower, investors are being forced to rethink how they position their portfolios.

Naomi Atera, a corporate finance analyst at Rock Advisors, says this means leaning into riskier asset classes, particularly equities listed on the Nairobi Securities Exchange.

Make Money, a podcast series, hosted by Kepha Muiruri, from Business Daily Africa unravels ways to be financially savvy. Get practical tips and advice on how to increase your income, build wealth, and achieve financial freedom in Kenya. Whether you’re just starting out or a seasoned investor, we’ve got something for everyone.

The value of bonds traded at the Nairobi securities Exchange (NSE) grew 73.5 percent to Sh2.03 trillion in the nine months to September, highlighting increased participation in the segment by retail investors.

This marks the first time that the turnover in bonds has touched the Sh2 trillion mark in a calendar year, with the market now surpassing the 2024 full year trades total of Sh1.54 trillion, which was a record annual total for the segment.

Rwanda’s national carrier, RwandAir, has launched a new Zanzibar-Mombasa route, hoping to tap the coastal tourism boom to grow its fortunes.

The airline will operate the new route four times weekly, linking its Kigali hub with two of East Africa’s most sought-after leisure destinations. The flights will be served by a Boeing 737 aircraft, marking RwandAir’s return to Mombasa after a six-year pause.

The expansion is part of RwandAir’s strategy to establish Kigali as a competitive regional hub that rivals Nairobi, Dar es Salaam, and Addis Ababa in connecting East Africa to global travel and trade corridors. ‘Returning to Mombasa and introducing Zanzibar is another step forward in our ambitious growth journey,’ said Yvonne Makolo, RwandAir’s CEO.

She added that the route will expand opportunities for both leisure travellers and regional commerce.

Zanzibar and Mombasa are among the region’s most popular coastal destinations, which draw in international visitors annually. Zanzibar, in particular, has seen a tourism recovery that has attracted investors in high-end hospitality, luxury villas, and beach resorts that cater for European, Middle East, and intra-African travellers.

Additionally, Mombasa has historically been Kenya’s gateway to the Indian Ocean as a tourist hotspot and a logistics hub through the port of Mombasa. However, it has been forced to reinvent itself amid rising competition from Zanzibar’s more aggressively marketed resort economy.

The airline’s new route will face competition from Kenya Airways (KQ) and Jambojet, which already have a strong presence on the coastal routes.

KQ currently flies daily between Nairobi and Zanzibar, with frequencies reaching 13 flights per week, including some days that have double services. Jambojet, KQ’s low-cost subsidiary, launched the Mombasa-Zanzibar route in July 2024. It began with four flights per week and has since expanded to as many as six per week, with the airline targeting daily flights during peak holiday seasons.

Other airlines include Precision Air and Air Tanzania, which have dominated the local Tanzania routes, while Ethiopian Airlines has also used Addis Ababa as a connecting hub for Zanzibar-bound travellers.

The coastal leisure market is proving resilient even amid global economic headwinds, with Zanzibar recording a steady rise in arrivals from Europe and the Gulf states. Airlines are banking on the sustained demand for short-haul regional tourism that has been fuelled by a rising African middle class and intra-African travel spurred by the African Continental Free Trade Area (AfCFTA).

Three-quarters of companies registered for corporate income tax (CIT) did not pay taxes on earnings in the year to June, pointing to deepening losses and tax avoidance.

Fresh data from the Kenya Revenue Authority (KRA) shows that 156,232 out of 618,201 firms on the corporate tax register paid up their fair share to the taxman, reflecting a compliance rate of 25.2 percent.

Early last month, Karen Thaba, a digital marketer, was approached by an agency to apply for a social media role and content creator. After she shared, the agency wrote back asking for a full social media strategy plus a two-week content creator calendar in 36 hours for a specific brand as an assignment.

“I checked the brand they requested I make the content for and noticed they could be their client,” she recalls.

A judge has reprimanded Kenya Power for repeatedly violating a former employee’s rights by subjecting her to repeated temporary three-month job contracts for eight years.

Employment and Labour Relations Court Judge James Rika said offering short-term contracts to employees for prolonged periods is casualisation of labour, which deprives workers of job security and terminal benefits due to permanent and pensionable employees.

Family Bank of Kenya has called an extraordinary general meeting of its shareholders to seek their approval to list on the Nairobi Securities Exchange (NSE).

The medium sized bank, which has flirted with public listing for over a decade, will be listing by way of introduction, meaning it does not plan to sell new shares but will be giving shareholders a trading platform to make their stocks more liquid.

In rural Kenya, the daily ritual of cooking is a battle against time and soot – mothers gathering firewood, smoke from cooking fire filling homes, clothes and lungs coated in layers of ash, painting the walls black.

It is the life of 90 percent of households; millions of people, in what is a quiet struggle for a clean flame. So, how can they move away from the choking, billowing smoke to clean fuels?

Policymakers are grappling with how to re-engineer county governments to drive the clean energy agenda and unlock the potential of renewable sources like solar and geothermal, not just for power grids, but for homes and small businesses.

This is a subtle acknowledgment that national-level solution is not enough; there’s need to empower counties to close the gap from the ground up.

The journey toward a cleaner energy future is already underway, but there are challenges that counties, investors, and other players face.

A year ago, the government began implementing the LPG Growth Strategy, an initiative to transition 80 percent of the population from biomass to clean LPG by 2026.

The strategy aims to boost the per capita LPG consumption from 6.5 kg to 15 kg by 2030 by upgrading the infrastructure, introducing LPG for schools, availing subsidised cylinders, and enacting legal and regulatory reforms.

While LPG uptake within urban centres has made tremendous gains, rural areas still lag due to reported county regulatory barriers.

Investors say county levies are exorbitant and often come in multiple forms-from branding, parking, and licence fees to business permits. They cite hostility from county and law enforcement officials.

Counties need to generate revenue, but they also need to keep energy prices affordable to promote adoption.

The Energy Regulatory Authority is urging counties to adopt incentives like Time-of-Use tariffs to reduce operational costs and drive industrial growth, and partner with the private sector on captive energy generation and storage.

According to Dr Stephen Ikiki, Senior Economist, National Treasury, inter-county collaborations could help unlock innovative financing models, such as blended finance or green bonds. This approach would allow counties to attract and negotiate large-scale sustainable energy investments, weaving them directly into their budgets.

Counties have a different story. For instance, in Kilifi County, Mr Wilfred Baya, the Director of Energy, shared how the county is empowering communities to lead the charge.

They have adopted a community-driven model where former charcoal sellers are now the biggest LPG investors and ambassadors. The county is also allocating land for LPG refill infrastructure and considering new policy incentives to stimulate investment. These efforts are making energy a central part of the County Integrated Development Plan.

The Energy and Petroleum Regulatory Authority (Epra) is supporting the transition through regulation that bolsters business operations for solutions like Autogas, smart LPG meters, and reticulation, says Stella Opakas, Deputy Director Mid and Downstream Petroleum.

The Energy (Integrated National Energy Plan) Regulations, 2025, have been gazetted to enhance energy access and reliability in counties through the integrated national energy planning committee that draws representation from the Ministry of Energy and Petroleum, Council of Governors, Epra and sector agencies.

One of its primary tasks is to track implementation of the county energy plans and the integrated national energy plan. The challenge now is finding the right balance.