Category: Business Daily

The Kenya Railways Corporation (KRC) is aiming to increase its presence in the courier business, hoping to capitalise on the current demand for services in this sector, which is currently dominated by an informal delivery network built around upcountry matatus.

The State-owned rail firm has applied for a national courier business permit, signalling KRC’s plans to expand parcel services beyond the Nairobi-Mombasa SGR corridor where it rolled out earlier this year.

A permit approval from the Communications Authority (CA) would allow the State Corporation to collect, sort, transport and deliver parcels and documents across Kenya under a national intra-country courier licence.

‘We’ll do the bulk of the deliveries on the Nairobi-Mombasa line, but we’re also extending to our other routes. We’re not doing last-mile deliveries so clients will pick the parcels from our stations,’ said KRC managing director Philip Mainga in a phone interview.

‘We’re also looking to partner with other courier operators who’ll pick the parcels and do last-mile deliveries.’

KRC launched a dedicated same-day parcel service between Nairobi and Mombasa earlier this year, using the SGR to move consignments between the two cities.

The rail firm says it will use railway stations as collection and distribution points while leaving the final leg of deliveries to customers or partner courier firms.

The approach allows KRC to concentrate on the long-distance movement where rail has an established network while avoiding the cost and operational complexity of building a nationwide last-mile fleet.

The proposed model comes as the courier market undergoes a structural shift from letter delivery towards parcels and logistics, even as overall domestic volumes remain volatile.

Latest data by CA shows that domestic parcel traffic fell 6.1 per cent to 3.7 million in the quarter ended March, down from 3.9 million in the preceding three months.

This came as domestic letters recorded a sharper contraction, falling 20.1 per cent to 636,566 from 796,578 over the same period.

The decline in letters reflects the continued substitution of physical correspondence by email, messaging platforms and other digital communication, leaving parcels as the more relevant growth segment for postal and courier operators.

The State Corporation is entering the market as e-commerce expands demand for delivery services.

Matatus have emerged as a low-cost alternative for moving parcels between Nairobi and upcountry towns, putting pressure on conventional courier operators.

The sector has also seen competition emerge outside the conventional courier model as matatus and buses become widely used to move parcels between towns along established passenger routes.

Operators on upcountry routes offer a network of collection points through transport stages, giving traders and individuals an alternative to formal courier branches.

The model has also been adopted by newer logistics businesses, with some platforms using the existing matatu network to move parcels while providing tracking and delivery guarantees.

KRC’s entry also comes as Kenya’s courier industry adjusts to the growth of online commerce, which has increased demand for movement of goods from sellers to customers.

Kenya’s digital economy has expanded the role of delivery networks for small businesses selling through websites, social media and online marketplaces, making logistics an increasingly important part of the retail chain.

The government’s own review of the postal and courier market structure identifies e-commerce and digital platforms among the forces reshaping the sector, noting the shift from traditional letter mail towards parcel and logistics services.

The CA has been reviewing the licensing framework to address changes in market concentration, competition, service segmentation and the emergence of digital platforms.

The regulator’s latest market review is intended to partly remove entry barriers and clarify licensing categories as competition increases.

The regulator says the market is moving towards a parcel-driven and logistics-oriented model as traditional postal traffic loses ground.

‘As the market evolves from traditional letter mail to parcel-driven and logistics-oriented models, our regulatory approach must also adapt to remain relevant and forward-looking,’ said CA Director-General David Mugonyi.

That shift has opened space for operators with existing transport infrastructure to enter the market, such as KRC, which already has railway stations, trains and established freight operations along several corridors.

The corporation has also been seeking to expand the commercial use of its railway network beyond passenger services and traditional freight.

KRC has announced plans to reopen and develop additional railway routes, including the Gilgil-Nyahururu branch, while rehabilitation of the Voi-Taveta line is under way.

As companies pour millions of shillings into influencer marketing, disputes over contracts, deliverables and payment are increasingly following the industry’s rapid growth. One such disagreement landed in court, with media personality Willis Raburu accusing East African Breweries Plc (EABL) of failing to pay for work linked to the Furaha City Festival.

The Milimani Commercial Magistrate’s Court has ordered EABL to deposit Sh10 million in a joint account held by lawyers for all parties pending the hearing of a commercial dispute filed by Raburu.

Senior Principal Magistrate A. Nyoike issued the order while declining Raburu’s bid to suspend or revoke EABL’s operating licence over the alleged unpaid contractual fees. The court held that such an order amounted to a mandatory injunction, for which the applicant had not met the required legal threshold.

Raburu, through his company Steizon Limited, sued Game Changer Marketing Limited and EABL, claiming he was engaged to provide influencer marketing, branding, event coordination and digital promotion services for the Furaha City Festival held in December 2024 at a fee of Sh10 million.

He argues the fees were not paid, yet he fully delivered the agreed services, including producing more than 60 social media reels and over 100 static posts, coordinating influencers and managing event logistics. He further says he submitted a post-event report and made repeated payment demands.

Game Changer denied engaging Raburu for the Furaha event, maintaining that its only role was in the earlier Chrome Wabebe Campus Caravan campaign, for which Raburu had already been paid after EABL approved the costs and issued a purchase order.

EABL also disputed liability, arguing that the Furaha event was the culmination of the Wabebe campaign rather than a separate engagement and that no second purchase order or executed contract existed for the claimed Sh10 million.

In his ruling, Magistrate Nyoike however said, ‘the conflicting evidence must be tested at the hearing.’

The court also dismissed EABL’s objection that the suit was barred by the doctrine of sub judice, finding that the company had failed to demonstrate that a related High Court case was still pending after Raburu showed it had been withdrawn.

However, despite declining to compel immediate payment of the disputed Sh10 million, the magistrate ordered EABL to deposit the amount as security in a joint account operated by the parties’ advocates pending the determination of the suit.

High income status within a generation is now official policy. Yet at the current growth, Kenya won’t get there until well into the next century. The gap is about savings and investment, not vision.

In an address on July 30, President William Ruto invited the country to a National Conversation to write a development charter that will succeed Vision 2030.

Behind it sits the working group report chaired by Prof Peter Anyang Nyong’o and Prof Hiroyuki Hino. The phrase it uses is unambiguous: a First World, high income and industrialised nation within one generation.

Before we debate the route, we should be honest about the distance.

The World Bank classifies an economy as high-income when gross national income per person exceeds a threshold that is adjusted annually for inflation. For now, that threshold is $14,375. Kenya is at roughly $2,400. The threshold rises by around two percent a year.

Kenya’s economy grew by an average of 4.9 percent a year between 2010 and 2024, against a population growing at close to two percent.

That is about three percent per person per year.

Compound that against a threshold rising at two percent and Kenya reaches high-income status in roughly 180 years – around the year 2200. To arrive by 2063 instead, income per person would have to grow by about seven percent annually for 37 years, which implies annual GDP growth of roughly nine percent.

Vision 2030 set a target of 10 percent and delivered 4.9. Our best single year since the 1970s was 7.1 percent, in 2007. The economy fell to 1.5 percent the following year.

Since 1990, only 34 middle-income economies have made it to high income, and more than a third of those did so through EU accession or newly discovered oil.

Sub-Sahara has one high-income economy, Seychelles, a state of about 130,000 people. Vietnam was reclassified by the World Bank as upper-middle income this month, 35 years after its reforms began. Kenya remains lower-middle income.

The ambition places Kenya where most countries fail, in a region it has never been done at scale, on a timetable faster than the fastest recent performer has managed.

Every economy that has made this leap did so on the back of extraordinary investment. The East Asian tigers ploughed between a quarter and two-fifths of national output back into productive assets for decades.

Vietnam and South Korea still run gross capital formation around 32 percent of GDP. Kenya’s stands at 16.8 percent, below the world average of 22.3 percent and well below our own 1978 peak of 29.8 per cent. Gross national savings hover between 12 and 16 percent.

Public debt has passed Sh13 trillion, roughly 69 percent of GDP against a statutory anchor of 55 percent due by 2028. Treasury says debt service could absorb close to 91 percent of ordinary revenue in 2026/27 financial year.

To its credit, the report understands the productivity of half of the equation. Its central argument is about sequence rather than ambition: land reform, then agricultural productivity, then labour intensive manufacturing for export, then the absorption of technology.

Manufacturing has fallen to about 7.2 percent of GDP against a Vision 2030 target of 15, and 83.6 percent of employment sits in the informal sector.

By grounding the charter in Article 43, which guarantees health, housing, food, water, social security and education, he shifts development from a preference of those who govern to an obligation owed to the governed. A charter, unlike a plan, sets standards a government can be measured against.

The report is quiet on where the investment comes from, and quieter on land, listing secure tenure without confronting the redistribution that made the Asian sequence work.

There is also a timing problem: the working group proposes launching the Vision by the end of 2026, while the Conversation begins on August 12. Four months is not a national consensus.

The test for the National Conversation is narrow. Does it produce numbers Kenyans can hold governments to: an investment rate, a savings target, a manufacturing share of GDP, a debt-service ceiling, a date? Get the numbers into the charter and the ambition becomes a plan. Leave them out and we will be reading a fourth grand vision in another 20 years, asking once more why the last one did not hold.

Investors have been denied a premium return on the first infrastructure bond issuance in a year after the Central Bank of Kenya’s (CBK) reopened papers that rank among the lowest in returns in the market.

In the August 2026 sale, the CBK has reopened three previously issued bonds that pay annual interest of 11.75 percent, 12.67 percent and 12.74 percent, avoiding more lucrative options for investors whose annual return ranges from 13.7 percent to 18.5 percent.

These rates are also at par with the net returns for other ordinary bonds that have been issued or reopened in recent months, meaning there is no advantage to be gained by buyers who had kept their capital in hand waiting for the infrastructure papers.

The CBK has in recent months reopened long-term bonds that carry annual interest of between 12.9 and 14.2 percent. Net of withholding tax of 10 percent, these papers pay investors between 11.3 percent and 12.8 percent.

Unlike ordinary bonds, infrastructure papers are not levied the withholding taxes of 10 or 15 percent on interest.

Previous infrastructure bond sales tended to pay a premium return to buyers compared to other securities, due to a combination of the tax free status and relatively high annual interest rates.

This premium resulted in large oversubscriptions whenever they were issued in the past, with some sales realising bids in excess of Sh200 billion against targets of between Sh50 billion and Sh90 billion.

The previous infrastructure bond that was issued in August 2025, for instance, realised a record Sh323.4 billion in bids, against its target of Sh90 billion. The cash offered to the government by investors was nearly equivalent to the Sh327 billion it cost to build the Mombasa-Nairobi phase of the standard gauge railway.

The infrastructure bonds account for the most lucrative securities issued by the government in the last five years, led by an 8.5-year bond sold in February 2024 at 18.46 percent, and a 6.5-year bond issued in November 2023 at 17.93 percent.

To get similar returns from taxed bonds, the annual interest rates would need to be 20.51 percent and 19.92 percent.

Other high paying infrastructure bonds issued recently include a seven-year paper sold in November 2022 at 15.84 percent, a 17-year security sold in March 2023 at 14.4 percent and a 14-year bond floated in November 2022 at 13.94 percent.

The CBK avoided these high paying bonds when picking the papers to reopen for the August 2026 sale that is targeting Sh150 billion. It instead went for a 16-year bond issued in October 2019 at 11.75 percent, an 18-year paper from April 2021 at 12.67 percent and a 21-year bond from September 2021 at 12.74 percent.

Reopening the relatively long dated bonds at government-friendly rates fits in with the CBK’s policy of lengthening the maturity profile of government domestic debt while keeping borrowing costs low amid a growing public debt burden.

For retail investors who put up bids of Sh1 million or less, the reopened bonds represent relatively short securities due to amortisation clauses that allow the CBK to repay part of the principal ahead of full maturity.

Amortisation in a bond means the staggered repayment of the principal amount within the life of a bond, usually done in order to lessen the burden of a large bullet settlement when the paper matures fully.

On the 16-year bond, the government will repay 50 percent of principal in October 2030, while the 18-year bond will settle half of its principal in April 2030.

All investments below Sh1 million will however be repaid in full at the amortisation date, meaning that the bonds are effectively three or four-year securities for investors who fall under this category.

Kiru Tea Factory Company Limited has asked the High Court to allow it to join a constitutional petition by Citibank Kenya, which seeks to stop police investigation into the approval and disbursement of a $2.02 million (Sh261 million) loan.

The farmers-owned company, which is managed by the Kenya Tea Development Agency (KTDA), says it was excluded from the bank’s court proceedings that halted the Directorate of Criminal Investigations (DCI) probe into the loan facility.

In its application to join, the company says having lodged the complaint that triggered the DCI investigation, it should be heard before the court determines whether the probe can proceed.

Citibank moved to court in June this year, maintaining that the DCI was unlawfully criminalising a commercial lending decision involving the loan advanced to the Murang’a tea factory.

Citibank, N.A. Kenya is a branch of Citibank, N.A., a federally chartered National Banking Association, organised and existing under the laws of the United States of America.

The bank said the DCI summons contained “vague, unparticularised allegations” and sought to investigate an alleged offence of “negligently accepting a credit application”, which it argued is unknown to the criminal law.

But Kiru factory, in its court papers, says the interim orders issued on June 15 directly affected its complaint, yet it was neither named as a party nor allowed to respond before the court temporarily stopped the investigation.

‘The petitioner deliberately excluded Kiru Tea Factory Company (KTFC) from the proceedings and obtained orders it ought to have known would affect the rights of KTFC. The Board of Directors of the applicant (Kiru) never authorised, applied for, or approved the loan of $2,020,000 (Sh261.38 million) from Citibank N.A.,’ says the deponent of an affidavit field by Kiru.

According to KTDA’s official records, Kiru Tea Factory was commissioned in 1993 and serves more than 8,000 smallholder tea farmers through 52 buying centres in Murang’a County.

The factory says those growers have a direct interest in the outcome of the bank’s petition because they ultimately repaid the disputed loan.

Kiru asks the court to join it as an interested party and permit it to respond to Citibank’s petition.

Kiru’s advocate argues the case seeks to halt investigations arising from the company’s own complaint and therefore directly affects its constitutional rights.

The factory says it reported the matter to the DCI after commissioning audits and reviewing documents relating to the loan.

Kiru’s directors say investigators were examining allegations that the facility was obtained without lawful authority and that the proceeds did not benefit the company. Those allegations have not been determined by the court.

Kiru says the investigation goes beyond recovery of a commercial debt. It argues police are examining how the facility was procured, whether corporate documents used to secure it were authorised and who ultimately benefited from the money. The company says it wants investigators allowed to complete that work.

Citibank, however, presents a different account in its constitutional petition. The bank says the DCI is investigating its CEO in Kenya, , over the approval and disbursement of the loan, effectively criminalizing an ordinary banking transaction.

It argues the alleged offence of “negligently accepting a credit application” is unknown to criminal law and that the summons violates constitutional protections.

Earlier court filings show the DCI obtained magistrate’s court warrants seeking Citibank account-opening records, statements, RTGS instructions and other banking documents linked to the disputed facility.

Kiru argues it has an identifiable legal and constitutional interest because the petition seeks to stop investigations arising from its complaint.

“KTFC’s cause is at the heart of the dispute, and its interest sought to be defeated by the petition is not peripheral,” a director of Kiru said in the affidavit. “KTFC is best placed to articulate its interest.”

The petition is scheduled to be called in court on September 17.

Commercial banks are betting on traders and builders as the country’s drivers of economic expansion, channelling more than half of fresh credit into commerce and construction businesses.

Trade, building and construction sectors accounted for Sh195.5 billion, or 54.22 percent, of new net credit in the year to May 2026, data by the Central Bank of Kenya shows, while manufacturers continued repaying loans.

This came in a period when bank lending to the private sector rose by Sh360.6 billion compared with Sh75.2 billion the year before.

Trade emerged as the biggest beneficiary after absorbing Sh153.5 billion in additional credit, or 42.6 percent of all new private-sector lending created during the year, signaling where lenders expect business activity and economic growth to strengthen.

The shift in lending suggests banks expect Kenya’s economy to be powered by commerce, retail activity, infrastructure projects and agricultural production rather than factory expansion or logistics.

‘Improved uptake of credit across sectors is expected to support growth, particularly in trade, building and construction, agriculture and consumer durables,’ CBK Governor Kamau Thugge said after the June Monetary Policy Committee meeting.

Construction, trade and agriculture, Dr Thugge said, were recording increases in bank lending, reflecting stronger demand for credit in those sectors.

Building and construction received Sh42 billion in additional credit in the year to May, agriculture Sh46.6 billion and consumer durables Sh42.1 billion, reflecting a pattern that favours sectors linked to domestic demand, government projects and household spending.

The lenders made these bets after more than a year of gradual monetary easing in borrowing costs, with the weighted average lending rate falling to 14.5 percent in May from a peak of 17.22 percent in November 2024.

The lending rates, however, remained relatively elevated, sitting above the roughly 12 percent levels in early 2022.

That means banks expanded credit before the cost of money returned to the lower levels that prevailed before the 2022-2023 global supply-chain disruptions triggered a wave of central-bank interest-rate hikes, suggesting lenders are selectively directing funds toward sectors they believed would generate stronger growth and more reliable repayments.

Manufacturing was one of only three major sectors where credit shrank, falling Sh38.6 billion to Sh547.6 billion despite overall private-sector lending expanding by 9.3 percent.

Transport and communications lending declined by Sh28.9 billion, while real estate remained largely flat, indicating lenders remain cautious about sectors exposed to high operating costs and slower investment cycles.

The contrast highlights a growing divide inside the country’s productive economy, with banks favouring businesses that generate cash quickly over capital-intensive industries requiring longer investment horizons.

The CBK governor said the manufacturing contraction resulted from net loan repayments in April and May, meaning existing borrowers paid more debt than they borrowed during those months.

‘In the case of the manufacturing sector, there were net loan repayments in both April and May, which explains the contraction in credit in both of those months,’ Dr Thugge said.

‘It is expected that this will recover in the coming months.’

Even with that explanation, the bank lending figures show financiers committed substantially more capital to commerce than to manufacturing, underscoring where lenders currently see stronger opportunities and lower risk.

Trade is often considered one of the fastest-moving sectors for bank lending because businesses require working capital to finance inventories, imports, distribution networks and day-to-day commercial activity.

The increase in lending to traders suggests banks expect consumer demand and business transactions to remain resilient despite persistent cost pressures across the economy in the wake of unresolved Israel-US war with Iran.

Construction represents the second major pillar of that optimism, according to the industry data.

Credit to the sector jumped 26.2 percent, reflecting expectations that affordable housing projects, infrastructure works, settlement of pending government bills and public-private partnerships will sustain building activity.

The resurgence follows the Ruto administration’s decision to restart hundreds of road projects that had stalled under an estimated Sh650 billion backlog of unpaid bills owed to local and international contractors.

More than 500 road projects resumed from 2025 after the Roads ministry negotiated a return-to-work arrangement backed by an initial Sh123 billion payment, restoring contractors’ cash flows and renewing demand for bank financing.

Dr Thugge says the industrial sector is expected to remain resilient largely because of construction activity and government-backed investment programmes.

Agriculture delivered one of the strongest performances, with credit rising 32 percent to Sh192 billion during the year to May.

Banks have traditionally been cautious about agricultural lending because of weather-related risks, making the latest increase particularly significant.

Dr Thugge attributes the improved outlook to favourable weather conditions which are expected to support agricultural growth through 2026 and 2027.

That combination of stronger farm lending and higher trade financing points to an economy increasingly anchored in food production, distribution and domestic commerce.

Consumer durables lending also expanded, suggesting banks remain willing to finance household purchases despite elevated living costs.

Together with a 4.9 percent rise to Sh591.6 billion in lending to private households, the data indicates that domestic consumption remains a key component of the credit recovery.

On the other hand, manufacturing and transport remain vulnerable to higher electricity and fuel costs, expensive imported inputs and weaker industrial investment, pressures that continue to weigh on borrowing demand and repayment capacity.

Dr Thugge warned in June that higher energy prices were expected to affect manufacturing, transport and storage, accommodation and food services, and wholesale and retail trade.

Banking industry executives say factories are still struggling to regain momentum despite policy efforts aimed at boosting production.

‘Manufacturing has never really fully recovered since Covid days. There’s policy work that is being done to support it, but there is still a lot of work to be done there,’ KCB Group Chief Financial Officer Lawrence Kimathi said in March, in reference to a sector that accounted for 14.8 percent of the lender’s gross loan book last year.

The Kenya Association of Manufacturers’ 2026 Manufacturing Priority Agenda identifies multiple pressures holding back industrial expansion, including heavy taxation, high electricity costs, weak global competitiveness and cash-flow constraints.

Manufacturers also face expensive imported raw materials, levies such as the Import Declaration Fee and Railway Development Levy, delayed VAT refunds, and competition from counterfeit and contraband goods.

Those structural challenges partly help explain why factory borrowing remains weak even as lending rates have eased and banks expand credit to faster-growing sectors.

The latest figures, therefore, point to a recovery in private sector credit that is uneven rather than broad-based.

The data shows banks are not withdrawing from the economy, but are reallocating capital toward activities they believe will expand faster and generate stronger cash flows.

The future of HIV response depends on more than funding medicines and technologies. As governments take greater ownership of HIV programmes, they must also sustain a community centred approaches that have underpinned progress over the last four decades.

As the global HIV community gathers in Rio de Janeiro for the 2026 International AIDS Conference under the theme Rethink. Rebuild. Rise, we find ourselves at a defining moment.

Like never before, science has produced innovative HIV prevention tools with the potential to cut new HIV infections. Emergence of long-acting HIV prevention technologies, including long-acting injectable PrEP, marks another major milestone in the fight against the virus.

Yet new technologies only achieve public health impact when people trust them, can access them and choose to use them.

Kenya’s rollout of oral PrEP in 2017 offers an important example. Awareness and curiosity were initially high, but sustaining uptake proved more challenging. It became clear that making prevention technology available was not enough as people also needed to trust and understand it before feeling more confident using it.

As a technical partner supporting the Ministry of Health and NASCOP in introducing and scaling up oral PrEP, Lvcthealth helped generate evidence that shaped Kenya’s national rollout. During the IPCP oral PrEP demonstration project among adolescent girls and young women and female sex workers, continuation on oral PrEP declined from nearly 100 percent at initiation to about 30 percent within three months.

Working with communities to understand why people were discontinuing oral PrEP, we found that the barriers had little to do with the medicine itself.

We also found that stigma, misconceptions, concerns about confidentiality and low perception of HIV risk often shaped people’s decisions more than the scientific evidence behind the intervention. These findings informed provider training, demand generation and community engagement strategies, ensuring the national rollout better responded to people’s realities.

Working alongside communities, we developed trusted information materials, engaged community gatekeepers, and created spaces for honest dialogue about HIV prevention.

These conversations went beyond encouraging people to use oral PrEP and helped us understand how HIV prevention fit within people’s aspirations, relationships and everyday lives, while building confidence in oral PrEP and informing approaches that continue to shape HIV prevention programmes today.

We have continued applying these lessons through studies supporting introduction of new PrEP technologies under the MOSAIC consortium. Demand-generation tools co-created with young people are now supporting Kenya’s rollout of long-acting injectable PrEP, helping ensure these innovations reach the adolescents and young people who stand to benefit most.

These experiences have also contributed to global evidence on HIV prevention. A recent study published in The Lancet HIV and co-authored by Lvcthealth researchers reinforces what communities have long demonstrated that meaningful community engagement is essential to ensuring HIV prevention programmes are trusted, responsive and effective.

These lessons matter because the next phase of the HIV response will look very different from the last. As countries take greater ownership, there is a real risk that the conversation focuses primarily on sustaining medicines, diagnostics and new prevention technologies. Those investments are essential, but they are only part of what has driven progress.

We must also rebuild trust by ensuring communities are not passive recipients of innovation, but active partners in shaping how new technologies are introduced, delivered and sustained.

Community voices should inform not only what interventions are offered, but how they are implemented, so they respond to people’s realities, priorities, and aspirations.

Putting communities at the centre means much more than consulting them. It means listening before programmes are designed, co-designing solutions alongside communities and continuously adapting services based on their evolving needs and feedback. It is through these partnerships that policies become more responsive, and health systems become more resilient.

If you spend any actual time on the ground in places like Kitale, you quickly realise how detached our conversations about agricultural financing are when they happen in air-conditioned boardrooms in Nairobi and other world capitals.

Out in the fields, the statistics look like Mama Wafula. She does not need a weather app to tell her the rains have changed; she can see it in her maize stalks. Her problem is not a lack of data but a lack of cash. She needs a realistic way to pay for certified seeds or a solar pump before her topsoil turns to dust.

Yet international venture capital tells a different story. For the past decade, tech hubs and global summits have promoted the idea that building an app and refining an algorithm can solve poverty. Investors embraced the narrative, pouring more than $1 billion into Kenyan fintechs on the promise that instant mobile credit would transform livelihoods. It has not.

The 2026 Kenya National Bureau of Statistics Economic Survey shows the economy remains resilient, but agricultural growth slowed to 3.1 percent as erratic weather disrupted production. When climate shocks hit, purely digital lending begins to fail.

Farming does not follow a neat 30-day repayment cycle, yet most lending apps rely on short-term unsecured loans.

Expecting rigid repayment schedules to support an industry where nearly 80 percent of farmers depend on rainfall is not innovation. It is a structural design failure.

Commercial banks largely avoid smallholder farmers because they consider them too risky. Fintech firms step in with quick but expensive loans that rarely match crop cycles, trapping many households in debt instead of helping them grow.

If agriculture is to realise its potential, we must stop treating automation as a silver bullet.

We need a hybrid model that combines digital efficiency with human relationships and local knowledge. Micro-finance institutions like Juhudi Kilimo have demonstrated this for years.

Rather than offering unsecured cash, they finance productive assets such as dairy cows and irrigation equipment.

They have channelled more than Sh14.5 billion into rural communities, reaching half a million households, with about 70 percent of clients being women who are often excluded from conventional bank lending. Their success rests on community peer groups that overcome long-standing structural barriers.

An app can transfer money in seconds, but it cannot tell whether a farmer has bought counterfeit seeds or show them how to use a drip irrigation kit.

Government platforms such as the Kenya Inte-grated Agriculture Management Information System have registered more than seven million farmers, but data alone does not grow food. Real progress comes when digital systems are backed by local field officers who provide training, build trust, promote financial literacy and share climate-smart farming practices.

Fintech is a powerful accelerator, but it is not a cure-all. A financial system that truly supports farmers must combine smart digital tools with people who understand the realities of life in the field.

The Kenya Bureau of Standards (Kebs) has suffered a fresh blow after the High Court rejected its push to impose factory taxes on a book publisher, marking a back-to-back defeat for the agency.

The court rejected an appeal by Kebs, seeking to revive a Sh52 million standards levy against book printer Oxford University Press East Africa, saying that book publishers are not manufacturers and cannot be subject to the levy under the Standards Act.

This is the second such verdict in favour of book publishers in a fight against the monthly Kebs factory tax, which is charged at 0.2 percent of the monthly turnover of goods manufactured or services offered, with the Standards (Standards Levy) Order 2025 capping it at Sh4 million per annum for five years, with an exemption for manufacturers with an annual turnover of less than Sh5 million.

In April 2026, the High Court upheld a tribunal’s decision to reject a factory tax claim by Kebs against Moran (E.A) Publishers, saying that the book publisher outsources printing services and doesn’t qualify as a manufacturer.

In its ruling, the High Court dismissed an appeal by Kebs and upheld an earlier decision of the Standards Tribunal that freed Moran from the multi-million-shilling demand.

The dispute stemmed from demands issued by Kebs in January and March 2024, seeking Sh52.1 million in levies and penalties covering the period between 2017 and 2023.

Moran challenged the claim before the Standards Tribunal, arguing it is not a manufacturer and, therefore, not liable to pay the levy imposed under the Standards Act.

And now, the High Court has sided with Oxford University Press East Africa, saying publishers are not automatically manufacturers and Kebs failed to prove the publisher carried out such activities that attracted the levy under the Standards Act.

The court upheld an earlier Standards Tribunal decision that cancelled Kebs’ demand for Sh52.1 million in alleged unpaid standards levy and penalties issued against the educational publisher in January 2024.

The dispute began in 2023 after Kebs demanded the money from Oxford University Press East Africa for unpaid Standards Levy and penalties covering 2017 to 2023. Kebs argued that Oxford qualified as a manufacturer because it exercised control over the production of books despite outsourcing the printing.

Oxford challenged the demand before the Standards Tribunal, maintaining it was a publisher rather than a manufacturer because independent printing firms carried out the physical production and had already paid the applicable standards levy. The Tribunal agreed with Oxford in July 2024, prompting Kebs’s appeal.

The dispute centred on whether Oxford qualified as a manufacturer because it commissioned, published and distributed books, even though independent companies handled the physical printing and binding.

Kebs argued the law gives a broad meaning to manufacturing and said Oxford exercised overall control over creating finished books despite outsourcing production.

Oxford maintained it was a publisher rather than a manufacturer because third-party printers carried out the printing and binding and remitted any applicable standards levy.

It publishes textbooks, dictionaries and other educational materials for schools across the region, but contracts independent firms to print and bind its books.

The court agreed that the Standards Act gives an expansive definition of manufacture but found that alone was insufficient to impose the levy.

“I agree with the appellant that the definition of manufacture under section 2 of the Standards Act is expansive and is not confined to the conventional transformation of raw materials into finished goods in a factory,” the court said.

However, he added that the wider definition did not remove KEBS’ obligation to establish the factual basis for liability before demanding payment.

“The appellant was required to establish the factual activities undertaken by the respondent which brought it within the statutory process of manufacture,” the court said.

Court records showed Oxford produced publishing agreements with authors and contracts covering paper supply, printing and binding services.

The evidence indicated independent suppliers in Kenya and abroad physically printed and bound the books before Oxford marketed and distributed the finished publications.

The court said commercial responsibility for bringing books to market did not automatically make a publisher a manufacturer under the Standards Levy Order.

“There is a distinction between being commercially responsible for bringing a product to market and actually engaging in the statutory process of manufacture,” it said.

It ruled that Kebs did not present sufficient evidence that Oxford carried out manufacturing activities contemplated under the law.

A decades-long property boom on the outskirts of Nairobi, including Kiambu, Kitengela and Ngong, is coming to an end as home prices drop and land costs soften.

HassConsult, a property agency which compiles a quarterly property index, says that house prices in the satellite towns have dropped in the past two quarters to June, while land cost grew 1.4 percent – the slowest in eight years.

This is a departure from a market structure that saw housing and property prices on the outskirts of Nairobi rise annually in double digits over a period of nearly two decades since 2002.

Housing had been one of Kenya’s fastest-growing sectors in the decade to 2019, with returns from real estate outpacing equities and government securities.

But equities, bonds and money market funds have risen to the top as developers struggle to sell units to a market that is balking at meeting the offer prices.

Eight out of 10 towns whose house prices have been tracked by the realtor over 18 years recorded a decline during the quarter ended June, led by Ongata Rongai, where the cost of homes dropped 2.7 percent to Sh15.6 million and 2.5 percent to Sh19.4 million in Ngong.

Ngong recorded the largest drop in land prices at 2.5 percent in the quarter under review, with Limuru, Athi River, Kiambu, Kitengela, Syokimau and Tigoni all reporting declines.

‘Despite resilient occupier demand, satellite towns continue to face greater price pressure than Nairobi’s suburbs, reflecting the sensitivity of their buyer base to rising household costs and tighter economic conditions,’ said Sakina Hassanali, the HassConsult co-CEO and creative director.

The property craze saw coffee plantations in the capital’s suburbs uprooted to pave the way for gated housing estates and shopping centres, creating thousands of construction jobs.

But a soft economy, a leap in commercial interest rates and costly property prices have upended the market, wiping out developers’ and land dealers’ returns.

This has seen developers cutting back or postponing new construction as high-net worth investors put billions of shillings in the Nairobi bourse, government securities and money market funds.

The Nairobi Securities Exchange (NSE) has posted returns of 31 percent since the start of the year.

This reaffirmed the Nairobi bourse as the shortest route to wealth in an economy that has oscillated between strong and soft growth as investors increasingly turn to passive investments instead of pouring money into startups.

Kenya’s soft economy has left workers with a lower disposable income as employers have become hesitant to offer salary increases to cover inflation.

Inflation-adjusted earnings or real wages – a barometer for measuring employees’ purchasing power- grew by 2.0 percent last year, marking the first time since 2020 that growth in workers’ earnings has surpassed the increase in consumer prices.

Consequently, a regularly paid worker, or wage employee, saw his or her monthly real earnings increase marginally to Sh56,566 last year from Sh55,450 in 2024.

The earnings are, however, still lower than in 2020, when they stood at Sh62,256, meaning workers’ earnings have suffered an erosion of Sh5,690 compared to six years ago, excluding the effects of the new housing and health levies.

Infrastructure improvements, including new roads, provision of electricity to poor areas and improving security in crime-ridden areas from the early 2000s, drove land prices higher.

This raised expectations of even higher prices, fuelling the property boom.

Analysis of Nairobi land prices by HassConsult shows that in the year to March 2026, land prices in the satellite towns grew at an average of 4.3 percent, down from 9.93 percent in the year to March 2025.

Over five years, the average price per acre has gone up by 50 percent, from Sh22 million to Sh33 million, and has effectively doubled from Sh16 million per acre over 10 years.

This means that a person buying a quarter-acre piece of land to build a home is now being asked to pay Sh8.3 million on average in the areas surrounding the city, up from Sh5.5 million in 2021 and Sh4 million in 2016.

But the red-hot market is chilling.

Housing developers say the pace of building has cooled in recent years, after nearly two decades of rises that nearly tripled values.

Real estate analysts feel this underlying demand will prevent an all-out crash.