Category: Business Daily

A silent revolution is reshaping the global economy, driven by talent, technology, and the relentless pursuit of competitive service delivery. As global enterprises diversify operations and seek new efficiency frontiers, Africa stands ready to reap the proceeds.

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Young, educated, and digitally connected, the continent is positioned to power the next wave of global services and innovation. Yet, the continent’s greatest opportunity remains its greatest gap; the need for world-class business ecosystems that allow global firms to set up, operate and scale with confidence.

A United Nations paper published in October 2024 estimates that Africa’s youth population, already the largest in the world, is projected to double to over 830 million by 2050. By the same year, the continent’s working-age population (15-64 years) will rise from 849 million in 2024 to 1.56 billion, accounting for 85 percent of the global workforce increase.

This will create an unmatched pool for technology, BPO, finance and professional services. One in four global workers will be African by 2035, shifting the centre of global talent.

Africa’s exports of services are growing faster than the global average, powered by digital infrastructure, trade integration, and expanding innovation hubs.

As a developing country and the sixth-largest economy on the continent, Kenya must be at the heart of this revolution. Nairobi must position itself as the gateway through which Africa’s services future is taking shape.

Without doubt, Kenya is where Africa’s service economy meets global scale. Strategically positioned, globally connected, and innovation-led, Kenya has become the continent’s hub for international services, investment, and talent.

With a vibrant private sector, policy stability, and world class digital infrastructure, Nairobi has evolved into a regional command centre for technology, finance, and professional services, where global companies establish operations, access skilled labour and serve international markets.

Over 400 regional and continental headquarters including the UN, Microsoft, Visa, IBM, and Teleperformance are located in Nairobi.

Services now account for over 50 percent of GDP and deliver Kenya’s only trade surplus, led by ICT, finance, and professional outsourcing.

The country is ranked top 3 innovation hub in Africa with more than 200 active tech and innovation centres and nearly 50 percent of East Africa’s tech Foreign Direct Investments (FDI).

The Jomo Kenyatta International Airport and the Moi International Airport Mombasa link Africa, Europe, and Asia within a single workday. Kenya’s strategic time zone (GMT+3) enables seamless overlap with Europe, the Middle East, and Asia. Strong governance and a progressive Special Economic Zones (SEZ) framework are big investor confidence boosters.

The smart money right now is betting that Africa’s next trillion-dollar growth frontier is not in goods, but in its in services.

Global demand for service delivery is rising sharply, and Africa is the next major frontier.

Driven by rising labour costs, talent shortages and supply-chain realignments, global firms are rethinking where they operate.

Multinationals are diversifying operations to cost-competitive, talent-rich, and stable hubs for service delivery. Africa is emerging as the next major services frontier.

The continent is beginning to capture a larger share of global outsourcing, technology, and professional-services investment. Kenya leads Africa’s service-export transformation. As a regional hub for innovation and corporate headquarters, it combines skilled talent, digital infrastructure, and policy stability, attracting global firms seeking scalable service operations.

Yet, setup remains complex and uncertain. Across Africa, companies struggle to find compliant facilities and predictable processes, slowing expansion and limiting the continent’s ability to convert opportunity into output. Global companies face the same obstacles; setting up operations is slow, complex, and uncertain.

So far, service SEZs have proven to provide the best chance for eliminating that barrier. They do so by offering Grade A workspace, clear regulation, world-class infrastructure, and a streamlined one-stop setup process, giving investors the speed, certainty, and compliance needed to start and scale. They enable service-oriented firms to launch or scale operations quickly and confidently.

By providing real estate, infrastructure, fiscal incentives, and enterprise enablement, global investors get quick access to regulatory licensing, skilled talent, advanced technology, operational certainty, and business enablement.

Beyond the tax and infrastructure incentives, SEZs also deliver high-level engagement with policymakers and global anchors, ensuring barriers are removed and growth is accelerated.

Investors don’t just find offices, they find acceleration, clarity, and confidence to grow globally from Kenya.

The government must be commended for creating a magnetic pull of tax advantaged-SEZs with the performance of private business accelerators, reducing friction, lowering cost, and amplifying productivity.

If Kenya is to generate tens of thousands of high-quality jobs for our youth, then it must tap into the expanding African footprint in global service delivery.

The UN paper titled Unlocking the potential of Africa’s youth posits that to fully harness their vast potential, aligning Africa’s economic strategies with the realities of its growing youth population is crucial.

Service SEZs have the capacity to catalyse Kenya’s next generation of skilled professionals, linking education, enterprise, and export-ready expertise.

Formal, high-income jobs feed directly into PAYE and income tax, while multinational tenants strengthen Kenya’s corporate tax base and boost foreign exchange earnings through export-led services.

On November 14 at COP30 in Belem, Brazil, an extraordinary moment unfolded that exposed the brutal contradictions of global climate politics.

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As delegates arrived for another day of glossy panels and diplomatic choreography, indigenous tribes of the Amazon blocked the main entrance to the conference venue.

This was not on the official agenda. Clad in traditional attire, bodies painted with ancestral symbols, carrying the spiritual weight of thousands of years of custodianship, they stood firmly and peacefully, forming a human barrier. Their message was clear: ‘Nothing about us, without us.’

What happened next revealed who truly bears the burden of the climate crisis and who pretends to solve it.

Corporate policymakers and government officials scrambled, bypassing the blocked entrance through exit doors, avoiding eye contact with the people whose lands they debate in panel rooms.

Brazilian military soldiers, UN security officers, armored trucks, and military patrols surrounded these peaceful protesters, as if the threat to COP was not the destruction of the Amazon, but the Indigenous communities defending it.

The people most affected by climate change, whose territories absorb carbon, shelter biodiversity, and stabilize global climate patterns, were met with rifles and shields.

Meanwhile, the biggest contributors to planetary destruction – those behind industrial agriculture, destructive mining, fossil fuels, and corporate land grabs – walked into air-conditioned halls to negotiate the future of those they left outside. That is the tragedy and hypocrisy of global climate politics.

For indigenous peoples, climate impacts are not theoretical. They are losing their land, forests, rivers, identity, and lives.

Their territories are invaded by loggers, ranchers, agribusiness giants, and multinational corporations, often backed by the very governments that claim climate leadership on global stages.

Indigenous peoples are not passive victims but frontline defenders. Their ecological knowledge, spiritual connection to land, and practices of living with nature offer some of the most grounded climate solutions humanity has ever known. Yet global systems continue to sideline, patronise, or militarise against them.

Read: COP30 must move beyond mere promises

The Amazon is home to more than 400 Indigenous groups who have lived in harmony with nature for millennia. Studies consistently show that Indigenous territories have the lowest deforestation rates, the richest biodiversity, and the most intact ecosystems.

These communities sequester carbon not through billion-dollar technological promises but through cultural memory, custodianship, and land practices that work with nature, not against it.

Despite their unparalleled success in conserving ecosystems, they remain the most threatened people in the Amazon, facing violent displacement, land grabbing, illegal mining, assassinations of community leaders, and cultural erasure.

While states and corporations debate and water down climate commitments, civil society organisations (CSOs) carry the weight of real climate action. Their work is often invisible and underfunded, but fundamental and far more transformative than annual negotiation cycles.

Across the Amazon and the Global South, CSOs defend Indigenous territories from land grabs, support community-led forest management, document human rights abuses, and link local struggles to global justice movements. They translate global rhetoric into local awareness and refuse to allow the climate struggle to be reduced to carbon markets and profit calculations.

While official COP30 negotiations unfold in restricted halls dominated by state interests and corporate lobbying, the People’s Summit, happening alongside COP30, offers something radically different: an open, accessible, community-led space where indigenous peoples are central leaders, not ‘invited participants’.

Here, discussions center on lived realities: the violence of extractivism, destruction of territories, criminalization of defenders, and alternatives rooted in Indigenous stewardship and grassroots organizing.

At the People’s Summit, not in official negotiating rooms, the most honest conversations about climate justice occur, unfiltered by diplomacy, acknowledging that the climate fight is a fight for land, rights, culture, autonomy, and life itself.

The blockade was not simply a protest but a moment of reckoning. It reminded the world that the people who protect forests do so without millions in climate funding, without badges, titles, or applause.

When they defend their lands, they face criminalization, militarization, and violence. Meanwhile, those responsible for environmental destruction continue shaping climate policy in heavily guarded rooms.

This contradiction is why COP30 needed disruption. The Amazon is speaking, and its people are demanding to be heard. The world can no longer pretend not to hear them.

This moment demands humility, honesty, and radical transformation. Global institutions must stop sidelining Indigenous peoples and recognize them as leaders of climate solutions. Civil society’s grassroots work must be elevated and respected. The world must finally confront the economic, political, and colonial systems that fuel the climate crisis.

If global climate summits are to mean anything, they must start by listening. The people standing outside COP30’s gates are not outsiders but guardians of the future we are all fighting for. The Amazon’s indigenous people are not at COP30. They are COP30.

The government has levied fresh import and export taxes on a Coast-grown cash crop used for food colouring and cosmetics production, in a development that signals rising State interest in the largely unregulated subsector.

Under the new Crops (Bixa) Regulations, 2025, exporters of processed bixa products will pay a levy equivalent to one percent of the consignment value while those shipping out raw bixa will pay three percent.

The regulations also impose a tax on importers at the rate of two percent of the customs value for any bixa or bixa product brought into the country.

The introduction of the levies marks the first structured tax framework for the crop, which for years has operated under loose regulatory supervision.

Bixa is a tropical shrub that’s disease, pest and nearly drought-resistant, actively grown across the coastal region in areas such as Kwale, Mswabweni, Lamu, Malindi and Kiunga.

Locally known as mrangi, the tree’s yields comprise bright red fruits that have numerous seeds which contain bixin, used for colouring cheese, fish, salad oil, margarine as well as in cosmetics such as lipsticks.

‘There shall be imposed a levy on exported and imported bixa and bixa products for purposes of development of the bixa subsector,’ reads the regulatory outline published by Agriculture Cabinet Secretary Mutahi Kagwe.

There are two bixa farming seasons in a year with a kilogramme of the yield going for between Sh50 and Sh70, earning a farmer about Sh150,000 for every tilled acre in a year.

Experts say the plant matures fully in about four to five years and has an economic life of 20 years, but could be harvested from about a year in the farm.

The crop was introduced to Kenya by the Japanese and Kenyan governments in the 1970s before its production died a slow death due to low market prices and little regulatory follow up by the State.

The bixa crop is one of the world’s most important natural colourant, making for about 70 percent of world’s natural dyes.

The National Land Commission (NLC) has ordered Kakuzi to surrender 3,250 acres of land to Murang’a County and its vulnerable residents, for which the agricultural firm says it will initiate a legal battle to quash the directive.

The land represents about a quarter of the Nairobi Securities Exchange-listed firm’s total productive land size of 4,949 hectares (12,229 acres).

Kakuzi’s share price has shrugged off the risk of land surrender, following the company’s disclosure of the NLC order on Wednesday morning.

The stock was down 3.67 percent to Sh400 as of midday on small volumes of 215 shares. Most of the company’s shares are held by UK multinational Camellia Plc (50.7 percent) and businessman John Kibunga Kimani (33.35 percent).

Dr Kimani was raised in the agricultural firm’s estates and over the decades amassed the ownership that saw him become a director of the company in November 2020.

The balance of the shares is distributed among some 1,400 retail investors, with daily trading rarely exceeding 300 shares.

‘Kakuzi has invested heavily in its land holdings and is wholly reliant on the land to deliver shareholder and related stakeholder value. Any disruption to its key agricultural resources will result in a material negative impact on Kakuzi operations and earnings, which may lead to job losses,’ the company said in a statement.

‘Kakuzi is reviewing the recommendations and will use all legal means to preserve the rights of its shareholders.’

The company has planted macadamia on 1,410 hectares, avocado (1,117 hectares), trees (1,912 hectares) and tea (510 hectares), according to its latest annual report.

NLC investigation

Following a petition by Kenyans who alleged that they were dispossessed of their land during the colonial days, the NLC conducted a years-long investigation that culminated in orders requiring Kakuzi to surrender the land as a final settlement on any claims against the company.

The NLC directed Kakuzi to give up 3,200 acres to settle the most vulnerable members of the claimants.

The agency also ordered the company to surrender at least 50 acres to the County Government of Murang’a for public use.

The NLC also directed Kakuzi to address other land-related issues that have caused regular flare-ups in the community, such as a lack of access roads to communal facilities, including schools.

The national and the Murang’a county government are to coordinate the implementation of the NLC directives, including the issuance of titles and regularisation of settlement schemes within Kakuzi land.

For years, communities in Murang’a have accused Kakuzi of illegally acquiring thousands of acres of land during the colonial era.

A group of individuals asked the NLC to investigate historical land injustice regarding Kakuzi’s acquisition of its land holdings.

Although the dispute went to court, the NLC issued a series of general directives against the agricultural firm prior to the latest, more definitive orders.

‘Allotments and titles to be issued for public purpose only. All leases for land held by Kakuzi in Murang’a County should not be renewed until the historical land injustice claim is heard and determined. Any 999-year leases to convert to 99 years,’ NLC said earlier.

Landowner pressures

The parent firm, Camellia, has stated that the land claims have been refuted through the Kenyan legal system. Kakuzi is the latest major landowner to face pressure to cede part of its property, following the fruits processor Del Monte’s surrender of 1,312 acres to the Murang’a County Government and 697 acres to the Kiambu County Government.

Kakuzi’s sister company, Eastern Produce Kenya Limited, has also faced pressure to cede land from the local community in Nandi County, where it has a tea plantation.

Some of the community living around Kakuzi’s estates have been buying shares in the company in what has been seen as both an investment and establishment of a platform to potentially air their grievances at forums such as annual general meetings.

Through Kakuzi Neighbourhoods Development Foundation, they held a 2.52 percent stake as of December 2024. The stake has a current market value of Sh197.7 million.

Pressure to cede land has become one of the material risks for agricultural firms with significant land holdings in the fertile Rift Valley and Central Kenya regions.

The value of bond and equities holdings by pension funds rose by 33 percent or Sh398.1 billion in the year to June 2025, fuelled by capital gains and higher contributions by scheme members.

Latest data from the Retirement Benefits Authority (RBA) shows that the schemes’ bond holdings rose by Sh318.1 billion to Sh1.33 trillion, while equities investments were up by Sh80.2 billion to Sh255.2 billion.

Bonds and shares saw significant capital gains in the period, helping boost the value of portfolios even as the funds accessed higher inflows from members thanks to higher deductions towards the National Social Security Fund (NSSF).

Bonds and listed shares account for 62.6 percent of pension funds’ Sh2.53 trillion total assets, with guaranteed funds the other major holding at 19.6 percent.

The total assets grew by 27.9 percent or Sh552 billion in the one-year period, having stood at Sh1.98 trillion in June 2024.

These major investment classes take up the bulk of new cash coming into the schemes, with the preference of bonds in particular being driven by a preference for low risk assets by the pension funds.

The RBA also attributed the growth in assets to a stable macroeconomic environment, pointing to a mix of a stable exchange rate, favourable interest rates, and mild inflationary pressure.

‘A significant boost came from the NSSF, where contributions rose sharply. This was a direct result of the third-year implementation of the NSSF Act, 2013, which saw the contribution limits increase: the lower limit went up to Sh8,000, and the upper limit to Sh72,000.’

‘Quoted equities saw a significant jump to Sh255.2 billion. This performance reflects a sustained market recovery and the positive impact of stable exchange rates.’

In the equities market, the Nairobi Securities Exchange (NSE) recorded a 41.3 percent or Sh706.4 billion increase in market capitalisation to Sh2.42 trillion in the year to June 2025, riding on higher share prices of key blue chips that also form the bulk of pension fund investments in the bourse.

Market capitalisation is the measure of investor wealth at the NSE, being the cumulative valuation of all the listed shares in the bourse.

The valuation currently stands at Sh2.97 trillion, following a continued appreciation in share prices in the second half of the year.

In the bonds segment, pension funds have enjoyed capital gains in the secondary market on papers with high coupons (interest rates), due to their prices going up in line with falling interest rates/yields in the economy.

There is an inverse relationship between bond prices and yields in the secondary market, where an increase in one results in a fall in the other.

When rates on new issuances in the market are going down, investors are reluctant to sell existing holdings (which pay higher interest) since they would earn less returns from new purchases in the market. They, therefore, demand a premium on price if they are to sell their bonds.

Infrastructure bonds that were issued in 2023 and 2024 at elevated rates of between 14.4 percent and 18.5 percent have been trading at a premium on face value, which translates to paper gains by investors when they are valuing their portfolios at present market prices.

The highest premium is on an 8.5-year infrastructure bond sold in sold in February 2024 at a coupon of 18.46 percent. The bond traded at Sh119.82 per bond unit of Sh100 face value, followed by a 6.5-year IFB sold in 2023 at a coupon of 17.93 percent, which is trading at Sh116.55 per unit in the secondary market.

There comes a point when the body stops negotiating. When the meetings, the adrenaline, the caffeine, the stoicism all fail to hide the truth. That’s when the soul steps in. Not with a shout, but with silence. It whispers: You cannot keep creating life while abandoning your own.

Last week, we spoke of burnout; that quiet rebellion of the body against a world that demands constant motion. But what happens after the collapse? After the public applause fades and the private exhaustion settles in? What happens when a founder finally faces the mirror and sees not a visionary, not a leader, not a fighter but a weary human in need of mercy?

This is where rest begins not as leisure, but as leadership. The soul demands what the body could not sustain: renewal, rhythm and realignment. Yet even here, the founder struggles. Rest feels unnatural in a world built on relentless productivity.

Stillness feels like failure. But recovery requires surrender. Healing begins the moment we stop trying to earn our worth.

The truth is, burnout doesn’t destroy ambition; it distills it. It strips away the noise until only meaning remains. The founder who rebuilds after collapse learns to lead differently slower, deeper, truer. They stop chasing validation and start cultivating vitality. They begin to understand that the most dangerous thing about exhaustion is not fatigue itself, but the illusion that it’s normal.

Across the continent, a quiet awakening is taking place. Founders are redefining success, choosing sanity over speed, longevity over limelight.

Some are restructuring their companies around balance. Others are integrating therapy, faith or silence into their routines. And some, after years of pushing, are simply learning to sleep again. Because sleep, for the exhausted soul, is not laziness but an act of resurrection.

Yet the hardest part of healing is unlearning. The founder’s identity is built on doing solving, fixing, moving. Rest requires listening, trusting, surrendering. That’s why the recovery journey is not a straight line. It moves in cycles: exhaustion, pause, reflection, renewal.

Each cycle brings new wisdom if we let it.

Emotionally, healing begins when founders reclaim their vulnerability. It’s saying, I am not okay, and realising that truth doesn’t make you weak, it makes you real. Socially, it’s rebuilding communities that allow honesty, not performance. The strongest founder is not the one who hides their wounds, but the one who leads with them.

Strategically, healing demands recalibration. You begin to prioritise sustainability over expansion, depth over scale. Decisions are made through clarity, not chaos. You stop reacting and start responding.

The company becomes quieter but stronger.

Spiritually, healing is a return to essence. You remember why you began. You realise your purpose was never profit; it was creation of value, of dignity, of legacy. And in mindset, healing is humility. It’s learning that stepping back is not stepping down; it’s making room for new strength to rise.

The rewired African Founders Operating System must now embrace this evolution, one that places restoration at the centre of leadership.

It must remind founders that no AI will fix emotional fatigue, no peer group will replace inner grounding, no distraction will restore peace.

Our new operating system must teach the art of stillness as strategy, empathy as structure and reflection as the highest form of intelligence. Because if the African founder is to build for decades, not seasons, their spirit must last longer than their startup.

We must create ecosystems that heal, as they grow mentorship circles that teach rest, investors who reward sustainability, boards that recognise human limits. Because a founder who is well builds differently.

And perhaps that is the next evolution of entrepreneurship on this continent, to build not just scalable companies, but sustainable souls.

To remember that no valuation is worth your sanity, and no legacy is worth your life.

There is an old myth in business that you must choose between greatness and grace. That you cannot lead fiercely and love gently at the same time. But the founders who survive the long road prove otherwise.

Their strength is not in their pace, but in their presence.

We are entering an age where leadership will not be measured by how much we build, but by how consciously we build it. Where balance will no longer be a buzzword, but a baseline. Where rest will be the new revolution.

Because when the soul demands rest, it’s not asking you to stop building, it’s asking you to start breathing again. It’s reminding you that your dream was never meant to cost your life. That legacy is not about immortality; it’s about integrity.

And when founders remember that, nations begin to heal too. The health of a nation is reflected in the peace of its entrepreneurs. And when its founders are whole again, Africa will rise not in noise, but in renewal.

Local power generation remained static for three years as demand for electricity rose, forcing Kenya Power to increase imports in a bid to avert widespread power rationing.

Official data shows that power generated from local plants has remained little changed at 12.57 billion kilowatt-hours (kWh) over the past three years.

Consumption meanwhile rose to 10.75 billion kWh last year from 10.32 billion kWh in 2023 and an average growth of 4 percent in the past three years.

This has forced Kenya Power to lean on Ethiopia and Uganda, to reduce the deficit with imports rising to 1.53 billion kWh from 337.5 million kWh in the same period. There has also been power rationing.

Increased consumption signals the budding economic activities and a growth in the number of customers linked to Kenya Power, as the utility firm comes under increased pressure to ensure a reliable supply.

President William Ruto early this month laid bare the country’s precarious state of electricity supply, as he sought to have Parliament lift a freeze on new Power Purchase Agreements (PPAs) imposed in 2018.

‘In Kenya, between 5pm and 10pm we have been forced to do load shedding. We have to shut off power in some areas to be able to power others because our energy is not enough,’ Dr Ruto said early this month.

Kenya Power is facing pressure to ensure that it provides enough electricity to support the country’s increasing economic activities, amid the rise in connections. The number of Kenya Power customers has crossed the 10-million mark from 8.89 million in the same period.

Consumption from large commercial and industrial, small commercial, domestic, street lighting and electric mobility hit all-time highs in the year ended June 2025, a clear indicator of Kenya’s expanding economic activity.

The local generation crisis has been worsened by a freeze which has left Kenya Power relying on existing plants and deepened reliance on Ethiopia and Uganda to ensure steady supply.

The freeze, imposed in 2018 and later extended by Parliament in 2023 pushed the Ministry of Energy and Kenya Power to warn of a looming crisis unless the ban was lifted.

MPs rescinded the ban last week paving the way for Kenya Power to onboard new power plants.

KCB net profit for nine months of trading ended September grew 3.4 percent to Sh46.02 billion, with the growth trailing rivals like Equity and Cooperative Bank.

The net earnings grew from Sh44.5 billion posted in a similar period a year earlier and came on the back of net interest income-which is mainly earned from loans- rising 12.4 percent to Sh104.34 billion from Sh92.8 billion.

The profit slowdown is linked to a decline in non-interest income and the absence of earnings from National Bank of Kenya (NBK)-a subsidiary KCB sold on May 30 this year to Nigeria’s Access Bank.

‘Despite a tough operating environment in all our markets, we have delivered a strong performance showing the resilience of the Group. We continue to execute our business strategy that is anchored on ‘Transforming Today Together’ and build an agile business that is targeted at transforming the lives of our customers and delivering value for our shareholders and all other stakeholders,’ said Paul Russo, chief executive officer at KCB Group.

Non- interest income fell by 10.1 percent to Sh45.09 billion, mainly on the back of foreign exchange trading income dropping 40.1 percent, to Sh8.24 billion from Sh13.76 billion.

The lender said digital channels helped ring-fence non-funded income which came under pressure from reduced foreign exchange earnings and decline in fees and commission from Democratic Republic of Congo’s subsidiary due to closure of branches in the eastern part of the country.

The review period saw KCB’s operating expenses rise 2.1 percent to Sh87.35 billion.

The marginal rise in expenses was on the back of staff costs rising by 7.3 percent to Sh31.49 billion and the provisioning for loan losses increasing by 2.6 percent to Sh18.25 billion.

Group non-performing loans (NPLs) ratio improved to 17.8 percent from 18.5 percent during the review period, when the stock of gross loans un-serviced for at least three months fell to Sh215.3 billion from Sh225.69 billion.

KCB linked the improved NPL ratio on loan recoveries and the sale of NBK to Nigeria’s Access Bank Group in a deal valued at about $106.9 million (Sh13.81 billion). Subsidiaries contributed 32.4 percent of the net profit during the period under review, down from 36.6 percent in the previous year.

The reduced share of subsidiaries’ contribution in net earnings came on the back of net profit from KCB Bank Kenya rising by 6 percent to Sh33.79 billion from Sh31.75 billion.

The most profitable business outside Kenya, TMB, saw its net profit fell 1 percent to Sh7.62 billion. Rwanda’s BPR posted a 16 percent rise in net earnings to Sh2.77 billion, while the Tanzanian unit posted a 15 percent rise to Sh2.35 billion. KCB Uganda posted a four percent rise in net profit to Sh1.37 billion.

The group’s Sh46.02 billion net profit means it is trailing its closest rival Equity Group, which posted a 32.6 percent in net earnings to Sh52.1 billion from Sh39.2 billion.

However, KCB Group chairman Joseph Kinyua said the lender is optimistic that ‘we will close the year strong’.

‘The group is well positioned to navigate the impacts in the operating environment to deliver the best outcome for all our stakeholders,’he said.

The High Court has declared the Isiolo County Appropriation Act, 2025 unconstitutional and nullified the county’s Sh7.3 billion budget, citing multiple violations of constitutional provisions on public participation and legislative process.

The judgment followed a petition by Speaker Mohamed Roba Koto and nine Members of the County Assembly (MCAs), who challenged the legality of the budget’s passage in July this year.

However, recognising the potential disruption to the county government’s financial operations, the court suspended the nullification order for three months to allow for corrective action. During this period, the county government must restart the budgetary process from scratch, this time ensuring full compliance with constitutional requirements. This includes conducting meaningful public participation across all wards, maintaining proper records of legislative proceedings and submitting verifiable documentation at each stage.

‘The Isiolo County Assembly and the County Executive Committee Member for Finance are directed to regularise the legislative process and re-enact the Isiolo County Appropriation Act, 2025 within the three-month suspension period, in strict conformity with the Constitution,’ said the judgment.

This temporary reprieve allows the county government to continue functioning while working to rectify the constitutional violations identified in the judgment.

The suspension recognises the potential chaos that could ensue if all county financial operations were halted abruptly, particularly regarding staff salaries and ongoing development projects.

The contested Act, published on July 25, sought to authorise the spending of Sh7.3 billion out of the County Revenue Fund.

The petition argued that the county government had rushed through the budgetary process without following proper procedures or consulting residents adequately.

The verdict exposed systemic failures in how the budget was prepared and enacted, highlighting the absense of crucial documentation that should have accompanied such a significant financial decision.

Central to the court’s decision was the finding that public participation – a constitutional requirement for all county budgets – had been reduced to a mere formality.

The county executive had allocated just three days for consultations across Isiolo’s 10 wards, an impossibly short timeframe given the county’s vast geography and low literacy rates.

‘This court is not convinced that the CEC Finance was , within those two days, and in the manner that it was done, was in a position to collect, analyse and effectively incorporate the views of the public,’ said the judge.

The court noted that public notices appeared only in newspapers, ignoring radio broadcasts -critical in a county where literacy levels stand at 49 percent, far below the national average of 82.9 percent.

‘As per county government’s current integrated development plan the county’s literacy level is at 49 percent against the National Average of 82.9 percent. Thus, the advertisement through the newspaper was inadequate in view of the prevailing literacy level,’ stated the court.

The judgment found the county officials had failed to produce authentic Hansard records, proving the budget had been properly debated in the assembly, submitting instead an uncertified document of questionable authenticity.

Critical minutes from committee meetings and attendance registers were conspicuously absent, leaving the court unable to verify whether proper legislative procedures had been followed.

The judge described these omissions as fatal to the budget’s legitimacy, emphasising that constitutional processes cannot be treated as optional formalities.

The case exposed deep divisions in Isiolo’s leadership. The respondents -led by Deputy Speaker David Lemnantile- claimed the petition was politically motivated, stemming from a feud between Speaker Roba and Governor Abdi Guyo.

However, the court rejected this argument outright. The judgment said that regardless of political tensions, constitutional compliance remains non-negotiable.

“This is not about political rivalry but blatant disregard for the law,” the court said in the verdict that reinforces Kenya’s constitutional safeguards on fiscal responsibility and citizen participation in governance.

It added: ‘The rule of law is not an option for those who govern and the governed. The moment any of the parties step outside it, injustice, anarchy and oppression are inevitable results’.

KCB Group and Equity Group were ranked among the top 10 banks in Africa, with high stocks of non-performing loans being the only blemish in their performance.

KCB was ranked third overall, while Equity was fifth in a ranking conducted by The Banker, a Financial Times publication.

The rankings are pegged on different metrics, including the size of a bank’s tier one capital, profitability, growth, liquidity, operational efficiency, return on risk and asset quality.

The two banks were among the top 10 banks on the continent in all metrics except asset quality.

The Banker defines asset quality as a measure of bad debts compared to the total loan book. The loan loss provisions made by a bank in comparison to its profitability are also considered in defining asset quality.

‘We have developed a model that scores and ranks banks in eight key performance categories, using 17 ratios, and assigns an overall best-performing bank score and ranking,’ said The Banker.

‘The model only uses performance ratios and year-on-year percentages and basis points changes, so the size of a bank has no influence on its best bank ranking position,’ added The Banker.

Guaranty Trust Bank of Nigeria, which also operates in Kenya, was ranked first, with Capitec Bank of South Africa second.

Commercial International Bank of Egypt, which entered Kenya in 2023 after acquiring Mayfair Bank, ranked fourth.

KCB and Equity outperformed larger banks on the basis of better financial ratios, ranking 13th and 15th on the continent based on the size of their tier one capital.

‘KCB, Kenya’s largest bank, posted a 54.9 percent increase in tier one capital in dollar terms for 2024, rising from 22nd to 13th place as a result,’ the publication said.

Equity’s tier one capital grew by 38.4 percent, resulting in its ranking 15th by size, up from position 19 a year earlier.

Equity ranked as the fastest-growing bank on the continent with a score of 8.31 against a maximum of 10. Growth is measured by changes in assets, loans, deposits and operating income.

KCB ranked second in terms of soundness and leverage metrics. Soundness refers to a bank’s capital level in relation to its loan book, while leverage is the ratio of total deposits to total loans.

KCB’s non-performing loans were Sh189.1 billion, accounting for 17.2 percent of its Sh1.09 trillion loan book, as at the end of June 2025.

Equity had Sh71.2 billion in non-performing loans, representing 17.5 percent of its Sh406.8 billion loan book during the same period.

KCB had set aside Sh12.4 billion in loan loss provisions as at June, while Equity incurred Sh7.3 billion in provisions.

Kenya’s banking industry has been struggling with piling bad loans, forcing banks to set aside huge loan loss provisions that are eating into their profitability.

Total non-performing loans stood at Sh672.6 billion as at the end of December 2024 and have since grown to Sh731.8 billion by August this year.

Banks have been taking an aggressive approach to collecting payments from defaulters, resulting in an increased number of court cases and engagements with auctioneers.