Security or surveillance? How amended cyber law could reshape Kenya’s online space

President William Ruto last week signed into law the Computer Misuse and Cybercrimes (Amendment) Act, 2024, in what has been widely interpreted as a move to give the State broader powers to police online spaces in addition to enhancing penalties for digital offences.

The law, assented to last Wednesday amends the 2018 Computer Misuse and Cybercrimes Act to cover emerging threats such as SIM-swap fraud, phishing, and cyber harassment.

While the signed version was yet to be publicly published by the time of going to press, the changes are largely based on a legislative Bill tabled in the National Assembly in August last year.

Analysts at Nairobi-based legal firm Manwa OH Advocates have described the law as a pivotal shift in Kenya’s digital governance, one which extends the State’s enforcement reach while introducing heavier compliance burdens on businesses.

Under the amendments, the National Computer and Cybercrimes Coordination Committee (NC4) gains powers to direct service providers to block websites or mobile applications deemed to promote illegal activity, terrorism, or extreme religious practices.

‘.seeks to give the NC4 an additional function of issuing directives on websites and applications that may be rendered inaccessible within the country where the website or application promotes illegal activities, child pornography, terrorism and extreme religious and cultic practices,’ read the draft copy.

The publicly-available Parliamentary version allowed such orders to be issued without prior court approval.

‘This grants significant government control over online content and raises the need for companies hosting platforms to align with content moderation standards,’ observes Manwa OH Advocates.

The new law also introduces a new offence targeting unauthorised SIM-swap transactions. A person who alters or takes ownership of another person’s SIM card with the intent to commit a crime faces up to 10 years in prison or a Sh5 million fine.

Read: AI unfair competition: Why Kenya needs to adopt protectionist policy

At the time, Wajir East MP who had sponsored the legislative paper noted that the amendments sought to curb rising mobile-based fraud affecting banks, fintech players, and digital payment platforms.

In addition, the enactment raises the penalties imposed for cyber harassment, with offences such as online stalking or conduct that induces self-harm now attracting up to 10 years in prison or a Sh5 million fine.

The Bill had also proposed to prohibit the spread of ‘false’ or ‘misleading information’ that causes public panic or threatens national security.

However, the vague wording of the ‘false information’ clause has drawn criticism from civil rights groups, who are apprehensive that it could be deployed as a tool to silence journalists and whistleblowers.

The High Court has previously suspended similar provisions in the 2018 law for infringing on the freedom of expression.

The current amendment further expands the scope of obligations for operators of critical information infrastructure such as banks, telcos, and utilities, requiring them to localise data storage, conduct annual cybersecurity risk assessments, as well as establish internal operations centres.

All cyber incidents must be reported to NC4 within 24 hours.

According to Manwa OH Advocates, the requirements ‘align with global data governance standards but impose steep compliance costs, especially for fintech and telecom operators.’ Non-compliance could attract fines of up to Sh10 million or prison terms of up to 20 years in severe cases.

Kenya’s tightening of cybercrime laws comes amid a sharp rise in digital fraud and a growing State appetite to regulate online activity.

In recent years, banks, telcos and government agencies have faced escalating breaches that have exposed vulnerabilities in payment systems and public databases.

Data from the Communications Authority shows that detected cyber threats rose to 842.3 million during the quarter ended September 2025, up from 657.8 million recorded during the period between July and September last year, driven by phishing, SIM-swap fraud, and ransomware targeting institutions handling financial data.

Mobile money services, which move more than Sh8 trillion annually, remain a prime target for fraud syndicates exploiting weak verification systems and insider collusion.

The 2018 Computer Misuse and Cybercrimes Act was Kenya’s first attempt to address hacking, identity theft, and online harassment, but enforcement has remained uneven.

The High Court in 2020 suspended several sections of the law over free speech concerns, leaving regulators with limited tools to act against emerging online crimes.

Milestones in sustainability journey

Milestones are essential for organisations on their sustainability journey because they help them to measure and monitor their performance while providing opportunities to make corrections along the way.

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Understanding the milestones on the sustainability journey will empower organisations to take thoughtful actions to implement sustainability in the organisation.

When viewed over a time horizon, organisations can equally assess the progress or maturity achieved against the time taken.

A good measure of not just progress but the resources taken and benefits realised.

This journey would typically involve five major milestones for an organisation, with variations required for tailoring and revisions to suit an organisation’s unique context.

The first milestone for organisations is ‘Purpose Alignment’. It is the most critical phase and a necessary first step on the journey of sustainability transformation. This step is where organisations determine their why for sustainability and integrate sustainability into their purpose holistically in a manner that ensures it delivers long-term sustainable value creation for stakeholders.

Organisations that don’t have this alignment fail to realise tangible benefits from sustainability adoption and end up simply approaching it as a compliance burden.

The next milestone is ‘Baselining’. This phase requires organisations to perform an as-is assessment of the business to understand their current positioning, considering the sustainability purpose set for the organisation. It involves materiality assessment, gap analysis, capacity building and a definition of sustainability goals and targets.

Organisations also conduct baselining exercises across priority areas like emissions and resource utilisation.

The subsequent milestone is ‘strategy and roadmap’ development. It involves planning the integration of sustainability as an enabler of the organisation’s business growth strategy and establishing governance structures to support it.

The outcome of this phase also includes an implementation roadmap for the organisation with timelines.

The fourth milestone is ‘implementation’. The implementation milestone is the phase where sustainability gets cascaded across the functional teams of the organisation. It also involves technology implementation considerations, including processes and controls.

The final phase is ‘reporting and assurance’. This phase represents the outcome of the earlier milestones achieved by the organisation.

It involves sustainability reporting that complies with standards and frameworks, assurance readiness considerations, communication, continuous improvement and refinement to the reporting process and maturity over time.

Kenya to incur higher Europe trade costs on Red Sea attack jitters

Traders shipping goods to and from Europe will continue to experience higher costs despite the recent cessation of hostilities between Israel and Hamas in Gaza as logistics firms take a cautious approach before resuming full use of the Red Sea route.

The conflict in the Middle East, which began in October 2023, negatively affected trade when Yemeni Houthi rebels started attacking merchant ships in the Red Sea corridor in retaliation to Israel’s invasion of the Gaza Strip.

This forced shipping firms to use the longer route around the Cape of Good Hope in South Africa for safety reasons, adding weeks to transit times and cost of goods as exporters and importers passed on the higher charges to their customers.

Israel and Hamas inked a US-brokered deal last week to end their two-year conflict, but the killing of a Houthi military commander in an Israeli airstrike has raised the risk of continued attacks on shipping in the region.

‘One thing that we hope is that we will be able to use the Red Sea route, so that from a global logistics perspective that people will not be forced to waste 20 days travelling around the Cape,’ said Amadou Diallo, CEO of DHL Global Forwarding for the Middle East and Africa region.

‘It is, however, difficult to predict when we will see normalcy on the route because at the same time we have had the complication in Gaza, we still have more issues elsewhere, for instance, between China and US, Russia and Ukraine, that are also affecting global trade dynamics.’

DHL Global Forwarding is the cross-border freight arm of Germany based DHL Group.

Shipping firms also reported alternative shipping options to circumvent the Red Sea bottleneck, which involved partial transportation of goods on land across Saudi Arabia to Egypt from ports in Oman and other Persian Gulf States.

The circuitous route also applied for goods and inputs meant for African destinations, adding to the overall cost of products on shop shelves.

A detour around Africa raises fuel cost by 40 percent, according to Maersk Shipping Line, which started bypassing the Red Sea route in favour of the Cape of Good Hope in February 2025.

Due to the Middle East conflict, the price of freight for ships heading to Red Sea ports more than doubled to $6,800 per container, largely reflecting higher insurance costs.

Read: Middle East conflicts threaten Ruto’s fertiliser subsidy plan

Last year, shipping lines also introduced transit disruption surcharge of $200 for a 20-foot container and $400 for a 40-foot container, and an emergency contingency surcharge of $250 and $500 for 20-foot and 40-foot containers, respectively.

For Kenya, the biggest impact besides the higher cost of imported products was seen on the agricultural sector, where exporters of fruits, tea and coffee were forced to ship their produce over the longer South Africa route, leading to increased cases of spoilt produce and uncompetitive prices.

For more perishable products such as fresh vegetables and flowers, the cost of airfreight also went up due to increase demand for space by exporters, cutting margins for local famers and producers.

Listed agriculture firms issued profit warnings last year due to higher logistical costs. They included Kakuzi and Sasini, which said that the geopolitical tensions made it costlier and harder to supply their European markets.

For tea firms, the higher operating costs were accompanied by lower prices in the global market due to oversupply, while earnings in local currency were depressed due to the shilling strengthening against the dollar by up to 21 percent between January and December 2024.

They also reported higher cost of fertiliser and higher cost of power, which added to the cost of production for the plantations.

Revenue killer: How disorganised data is costing enterprises more than they think

Walk into any boardroom across Nairobi, Mombasa or Kisumu today, and you’ll hear the same conversations echoing as business leaders excitedly discuss their latest investments in artificial intelligence (AI), cloud migration projects, and digital transformation initiatives.

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Kenyan companies are allocating substantial budgets to cutting-edge technologies, armed with the knowledge that modern tools will unlock competitive advantage, and drive the explosive growth the country’s dynamic markets demand.

However, as these enterprises pour millions into sophisticated AI platforms, advanced analytics tools, and cloud infrastructure, they’re systematically ignoring a fundamental weakness that quietly undermines every digital initiative they undertake.

Their data is chaotic, fragmented, and fundamentally disorganised. Sales information lives in one system, financial data in another, customer service records in a third, and operational metrics scattered across countless spreadsheets and standalone applications.

This isn’t merely a technical inconvenience that IT departments can eventually sort out, it’s a silent revenue killer that’s costing Kenyan enterprises millions in lost productivity, missed market opportunities, and competitive disadvantage. The harsh reality is that no amount of sophisticated technology can compensate for fragmented, siloed, and poorly organised data.

Companies with fragmented data systems are systematically handicapping their ability to compete, scale, and survive in increasingly sophisticated markets. For Kenya’s fast-scaling enterprises, this data disorganisation represents an existential threat that demands immediate strategic attention.

The compounding costs of fragmentation

The consequences of data chaos manifest across every aspect of business operations, creating inefficiencies that compound rapidly as organisations grow. Sales representatives waste precious hours manually updating multiple systems with identical customer information.

Finance teams struggle to generate accurate reports because critical data exists in disparate formats across various platforms that don’t communicate with each other. Marketing campaigns consistently fail to leverage valuable customer insights that remain trapped in isolated sales databases.

These operational cracks quickly spread into customer-facing functions. Customer service suffers dramatically when representatives lack complete visibility into client interaction histories, previous purchases, or ongoing support issues.

Operations teams make suboptimal decisions because they can’t access real-time information about inventory levels, supply chain status, or production capacity. Management operates essentially blind, making strategic decisions based on incomplete, outdated, or inconsistent information.

These problems become particularly acute in Kenya’s dynamic business environment, where companies often need to scale rapidly to capture fleeting market opportunities.

Unlike mature markets where gradual growth allows for incremental system improvements, Kenyan enterprises frequently face explosive scaling demands that expose every weakness in their data infrastructure.

A fintech startup handling thousands of daily transactions might suddenly need to process millions as adoption accelerates. If customer data, transaction records, compliance information, and operational metrics exist in separate, disconnected systems, the company faces an impossible choice: slow down growth to fix their data foundation, or scale inefficiently with massive operational overhead that ultimately limits their potential.

And this challenge is not confined to fintech alone. Similar patterns emerge across sectors. Agricultural technology companies struggle to integrate farmer data, weather information, supply chain logistics, and financial records.

Manufacturing enterprises fail to coordinate production data, inventory management, quality control, and distribution information effectively. Healthcare platforms cannot seamlessly connect patient records, provider information, scheduling systems, and billing processes.

Harnessing unified data for a sharper competitive edge

To break free from these limitations, the solution isn’t acquiring more sophisticated technology, it’s implementing unified technology architecture. Successful organisations across Africa are discovering that their competitive advantage lies not in possessing the most advanced individual tools, but in creating seamless information flow across their entire operation through integrated platform approaches.

This integration imperative reflects a fundamental shift in how businesses must conceptualise their digital infrastructure.

Rather than treating software systems as isolated tools for specific departmental functions, forward-thinking companies are recognising that their entire technology stack must function as a coherent, interconnected ecosystem that enables rather than hinders growth.

When properly implemented, unified data systems transform business operations completely.

Beyond survival: The competitive reality

All of this points to a simple truth: for Kenya’s business leaders, data organisation isn’t just about internal efficiency. It’s about competitive survival and regional expansion capability.

As the country solidifies its position as East Africa’s technology hub, companies that master data integration can serve broader African markets more effectively, while those trapped in fragmented systems struggle to expand beyond their initial market boundaries.

Raila’s unfinished business

On June 10, 2008, then President Mwai Kibaki and Prime Minister Raila Odinga launched Kenya Vision 2030, the long-term plan to transform Kenya into ‘a globally competitive and prosperous nation with a high quality of life by 2030.’

For Mr Odinga, then 63, being around to see the full 22-year journey seemed improbable. Speaking after a stirring address by youth representative Caren Wakoli, he picked up her theme with a touch of humour: ‘When you [Wakoli] get there (in 2030), tell them to remember us,’ he said, urging the next generation to carry the torch.

It almost seemed like Mr Odinga was poised to defy his own quip and reach 2030.

However, like Moses of the Bible, he was not going to live to see the symbolic Canaan he so often promised his followers: a highly industrialising nation with decent jobs, universal healthcare and shared prosperity.

The former Prime Minister died on October 15, 2025, five years before 2030, leaving some unfinished business-including many flagship projects he and the late Kibaki envisioned in the Vision 2030 blueprint.

Mr Odinga, who died at 80, was eulogised chiefly as a towering politician. Yet behind the firebrand persona-mocked by rivals as the ‘Lord of Poverty’-ran a consistent economic reform agenda across his five unsuccessful presidential bids: decentralising power and resources, building safety nets for the poor, creating jobs through manufacturing, fighting corruption and taming the cost of living.

Read: Raila’s dream of factory wealth

Two months ago, Mr Odinga revisited Vision 2030, arguing that it should be put squarely back on the table and that the National Economic and Social Council (NESC)-the think tank that helped lay the groundwork for the plan-should be revived to drive coordination.

‘So that all those flagship projects that we coined during that time can be revived and we make sure they are all moving together,’ he told the 2025 Devolution Conference in Homa Bay.

‘This will help us as a country. I am saying this as a Kenyan patriot who is thinking about Kenya-Kenya number one, Kenya number two, Kenya number three.’

Vision 2030 places heavy emphasis on infrastructure, including the Sh2.5 trillion Lamu Port-South Sudan-Ethiopia Transport (LAPSSET) Corridor meant to turbo-charge the economy through a network of seaports, airports, roads and railways.

Launched in March 2012 under the Grand Coalition government, a few LAPSSET projects are complete while many remain pending, leaving a significant infrastructure gap Mr Odinga had wished would be plugged. Lamu Port’s first three deep-water berths are operational, supported by the 113.5-km Garsen-Witu-Lamu highway.

Regionally, the Moyale One-Stop Border Post with Ethiopia is in service. Still outstanding are the standard-gauge railway (SGR) from Lamu inland, the Lokichar-Lamu crude-oil pipeline and the resort cities/airport upgrades, which remain at planning or partial-delivery stage.

Having championed the SGR concept, Mr Odinga hoped to see the line extended from Naivasha to Kisumu and onward to Malaba on the Ugandan border.

As African Union High Representative for Infrastructure, during the ‘Handshake’ era, he is understood to have accompanied President Uhuru Kenyatta to China to seek additional financing. They did not secure funds, but the current administration-working with Mr Odinga under the broad-based government-says plans are at an advanced stage to launch the SGR extension to western Kenya and onward to Uganda.

Increased manufacturing and value-addition also lay at the heart of Mr Odinga’s idyll. Since 1997, his manifestos have contained a plan to cut production costs, anchor firms in industrial parks, finance micro, small and medium enterprises (MSMEs) and enforce fair competition to unlock jobs.

The 2007 manifesto tied factories to devolved growth poles; the 2013 campaign promise synced with Vision 2030’s industrial parks and SEZs.

The manifesto of his National Super Alliance (Nasa), the pre-election political alliance that backed his presidential bid in 2017, set a 15 percent manufacturing-to-GDP target within five years; Azimio’s 2022 plan raised that to 30 percent and proposed a single business permit and ‘buy-Kenyan’ procurement.

All assumed cheaper logistics, reliable power and contract certainty. Vision 2030’s benchmark is 20 percent by 2030, but manufacturing has hovered around seven to eight percent in recent years, reflecting high energy costs and weak demand, even as services grow faster.

Mr Odinga envisaged an economy where smart agriculture, a vibrant manufacturing and social spending would cut the growing youth unemployment,

Unlike his predecessors, President William Ruto faces a generation of uncompromising young Kenyans desperate for economic opportunities, who can mobilise amorphously through social media, bypassing opposition parties and leaders.

Read: Inside Raila’s quiet business empire

With up to 800,000 young people entering the job market each year, Gen Z are more educated than their elders, but also more likely to be unemployed, according to a report by Afrobarometer, a pollster.

Mr Odinga put money behind his beliefs. In 1971, he and his father founded East African Spectre to make gas cylinders, applying his engineering training.

‘He did not consider himself just a director; he was part of us,’ said Hudson Chitala, the company’s general manager.

‘While other directors headed to the boardroom, he went straight to the factory. in fact, if you heard the noise in the factory, you knew he had come,’ added Chitala.

The Odinga family also invested in a molasses plant in Kisumu to produce ethanol from sugarcane by-products, an ambitious venture that later collapsed.

A firm believer that industry creates jobs, he often argued for temporary protection of local firms, including selective bans and higher tariffs to curb unfair competition.

On the 2022 campaign trail, as he argued for the revival of textiles and apparel, a remark about second-hand clothes (mitumba) was widely interpreted as calling them garments ‘worn by the dead,’ drawing backlash from traders.

He later framed the point as a call to rebuild local manufacturing while organising the mitumba trade. Meanwhile, his stake in LPG cylinder manufacturing and validation grew through East African Spectre, which recently opened a larger branch near the Industrial and Commercial Development Corporation (ICDC).

Under Vision 2030’s political pillar, a new Constitution was central-a long-held rallying call for Mr Odinga and a plank in his 2007 manifesto. After the defeat of the 2005 draft and his disputed 2007 loss to then President Kibaki, that dream appeared out of reach.

But a post-election truce produced a reform deal, culminating in the 2010 Constitution that created 47 devolved government and delivered his vision of resources cascading to the grassroots.

Yet 12 years since devolution took effect in 2013, Mr Odinga felt it ‘was becoming another problem,’ weighed down by transparency and accountability gaps, said Dr Scholastica Odhiambo of Maseno University. ‘He asked, what can we do better?’ she added, noting he did not necessarily support reducing the number of counties.

At the heart of his push for devolution was inclusion. This zeal endeared him to marginalised communities but rattled those at the centre who criticised redistribution policies as anti-capital.

‘His voice for economic inclusion has been loud. resources should not be only at the higher level,’ said Dr Odhiambo, noting that the new Constitution included the Equalisation Fund to uplift vulnerable communities, especially in arid and semi-arid lands. ‘He was really loved in the marginalised [communities]. He was talking their mind.’

His aggressive push for social equity-including the Sh6,000 monthly stipend for vulnerable families in the 10-point People’s Programme under the 2022 Azimio manifesto-was dismissed by critics as populist and unaffordable, given fiscal constraints. Where would the money come from for free education from pre-primary to university, universal healthcare and expanded cash transfers for the elderly and persons with disabilities?

‘I know where the money is because I have been in government for five years. I will seal all the loopholes and I will have enough money to give to Kenyans,’ he said.

Beyond Kenya, Mr Odinga was a pan-Africanist who viewed the continent’s liberation as incomplete without economic integration and shared prosperity.

As AU High Representative for Infrastructure, he championed trans-continental rail, road and energy corridors to knit Africa together, arguing that ‘Africa cannot trade if it cannot connect.’

His vision drew from the ideals of Kwame Nkrumah and Julius Nyerere-an Africa that speaks with one voice in global affairs.

A dream of a united Africa, which eluded independence leaders like Mr Nkrumah and Mr Nyerere, was also not achieved by the second crop of post-independence leaders like Mr Odinga. That is left to the next crop of leaders.

Court backs sacking of teacher for CV, pay misrepresentation

The Employment and Labour Relations Court has upheld a decision by Crawford International School to dismiss a teacher accused of falsifying her employment history and salary details during recruitment, saying that the school acted lawfully in terminating her contract for gross misconduct.

Justice Linnet Ndolo dismissed a lawsuit filed by the teacher named Ms OA, who had sought Sh9.99 million in compensation for wrongful termination and defamation.

The court found that she knowingly misrepresented her prior employment status and previous salary, which justified her summary dismissal just two months into her probationary period at Crawford International School, where she had secured a two-year contract.

Court documents reveal Ms OA was hired in September 2018 following WhatsApp interviews conducted by a recruitment agency on behalf of the school. However, weeks into her role, students accused her of bullying and harassment, prompting an investigation.

During the probe, the school discovered discrepancies in her job application. It was discovered that at the time of recruitment, she falsely claimed to be employed at a top private school as director of student advancement and teacher of English and Literature, when in reality she had already been terminated from another prestigious school for alleged integrity issues.

The court judgment shows that the employer also discovered that Ms OA had inflated her salary with the previous employer from Sh180,000 to Sh365,000-a misrepresentation the court termed a “deal-breaker.”

Its Managing Director, Jenny Coetzee, testified that Ms OA failed to disclose that she had been terminated from her immediate former job for reasons related to her competency and general conduct towards students.

Read: International School of Kenya ex-teacher sues in pay dispute

“The claimant obtained employment by deceit and the employer was within the law to terminate the employment on this ground,” Justice Ndolo said, adding that dishonesty during recruitment “breaches the faith inherent in the work relationship.”

Ms OA had argued that her dismissal was procedurally unfair, alleging the school shifted accusations mid-hearing from student complaints to her employment history.

However, the court noted she was given additional time to respond to new evidence and allowed representation during disciplinary hearings.

“The employer adhered to fairness. There is evidence that the claimant was issued with a show-cause notice, and when new evidence was discovered, she was given an extension of time to respond. Overall, I have no reason to fault the conduct of the disciplinary proceedings,” Justice Ndolo stated, rejecting claims of defamation due to insufficient evidence.

In her claim, Ms OA argued that the whole process leading to her dismissal, and the allegations forming the basis of and the reason for the termination were false, illegal, and unfair.

She said that, though the show-cause letter contained allegations made by students against her, the disciplinary hearing concerned issues of withholding material employment records and presenting inaccurate information to the recruitment agency.

Ms OA claimed that Crawford continued to give negative references to prospective employers, causing her to lose an employment opportunity.

But the court held that misrepresentation of employment history or previous salary constitutes lawful dismissal.

Citing Section 43 of the Employment Act, which requires the employer to establish a reason that would cause a reasonable employer to terminate employment, in this case, the court found there was a valid reason to terminate the employment of Ms OA.

Justice Ndolo concluded that an employee who is on-boarded based on a fictitious salary figure may be removed from employment on this account.

The case highlights the risks of Curriculum Vitae fraud in Kenya’s competitive job market, where background checks are increasingly stringent.

Court faults Twiga Foods for sacking sales officer

The Employment and Labour Relations Court has ruled against Twiga Foods Limited for unlawfully terminating the contract of a sales employee over alleged poor performance, citing a lack of due process and failure to provide measurable performance benchmarks.

Justice Linnet Ndolo ordered the agribusiness firm to pay former sales representative Maxton Duke Kibira Sh1 million, comprising six months’ salary compensation and refund of unlawful salary deductions after finding the termination substantively and procedurally unfair.

Mr Kibira, a sales representative, was fired on December 13, 2018, via a letter citing “performance below set expectations,” including unbanked revenue and low sales realisation rates.

However, the court noted that Twiga Foods violated labour laws by ignoring due process.

The court dismissed Twiga Foods’ claims that Mr Kibira consistently underperformed, noting the company failed to produce his job description or objective performance metrics to justify the December 2018 dismissal.

Read: Twiga Foods to fire more staff after operations freeze

‘The Respondent’s witness, Beatrice Maiyo, (legal manager), was unable to point out any proof of poor performance on the part of the Claimant. More significantly, the Claimant’s job description, which would have formed his performance benchmark, was not availed,’ Justice Ndolo observed.

‘The court was therefore at a loss as to how the verdict of poor performance was arrived at,’ she stated.

The judgment emphasised that Kenyan labour law requires employers to give employees clear performance improvement plans over two to three months before termination. Twiga Foods only held one documented meeting with Kibira weeks before firing him.

The court also condemned Twiga Foods for deducting Sh426,000 from Mr Kibira’s salary over alleged unbanked revenues without evidence or his input. The court noted that some of the deductions went beyond half of the claimant’s salary.

‘The decision to surcharge the claimant appears to have been unilateral. In fact, as confirmed by the Respondent’s witness, there was no document to show how the surcharge figures were arrived at,’ said the judge.

Justice Ndolo ruled that such surcharges require a fair hearing under Section 41 of the Employment Act.

“By surcharging the Claimant and terminating him for the same issue, Twiga violated the rule against double jeopardy,” the judge stated.

Mr Kibira had accused Twiga Foods of subjecting him to unrealistic sales targets, constant station transfers, unpaid overtime and a hostile work environment.

Twiga had denied wrongdoing, insisting deductions were on account of a bonus the claimant did not qualify for. It further denies that the claimant worked overtime.

The court dismissed these arguments, noting the company’s failure to reconcile the disputed deductions or justify overtime denials.

While the court declined to award overtime claims due to insufficient proof, it upheld his grievances on unlawful deductions and procedural flaws in his dismissal.

The costly mistakes golfers keep making

If you visit any of Kenya’s golf courses at the weekend, you’ll see familiar faces from boardrooms and C-suites striding across the fairways. These are men and women who have built companies, closed billion-shilling deals and steered industries. Yet many of them fall into avoidable traps when they pick up a club, which keeps their handicaps high.

Professional golfer Simon Njogu, who is currently competing in the Professional Golfers Kenya (PGK) Equator Golf Tour, says that this paradox is no coincidence; it mirrors the very mindset that drives success in business. The only difference is that, unlike in business, money can’t buy better scores in golf.

Logistics firm fails to stop over Sh1m tax demand on stolen BMW

A clearing and forwarding company has been ordered to pay duty, interest and penalties totalling more than Sh1 million for a luxury sports utility vehicle (SUV) that it claimed was stolen en route to Uganda.

The Tax Appeals Tribunal dismissed Seaways Kenya Limited’s application, stating that the firm had not met the conditions for cancelling the transit bond after claiming that the BMW X5 had been stolen at gunpoint.

Share of salaries in county budgets hit three-year high

The share of expenditure on salaries in county budgets rose to a three-year high in the 12 months to June 2025, highlighting the deepening struggles by the devolved units to free up cash for development projects.

An analysis of the expenditure by the 47 devolved units shows that 46.8 percent (Sh470.74 billion) of their budgets was spent on paying salaries and allowances in the year under review. The last time this share was higher was in the year to June 2022 at 47.4 percent.