SOURCED FROM CURRENT NEWSPAPERS AND JOURNALS
A push for alternative systems to dollar-based payments has intensified with regional platforms prepping to drive continental trade, amid concerns over time and cost involved in trading using the US currencies
Last week, a payment system backed by the African Export-Import (Afrexim) Bank was rolled out in Nairobi, targeting to connect Kenyan traders with their counterparts across borders, through the Africa Trade Gateway (ATG).
MPs have approved a sessional paper on the privatisation of Kenya Pipeline Company (KPC), where the government will retain a 35 percent ownership in the company.
This, even as opposition MPs vowed to move to the High Court to block the privatisation, claiming an ambush by the Executive.
Rwanda’s national carrier, RwandAir, has launched a new Zanzibar-Mombasa route, hoping to tap the coastal tourism boom to grow its fortunes.
The airline will operate the new route four times weekly, linking its Kigali hub with two of East Africa’s most sought-after leisure destinations. The flights will be served by a Boeing 737 aircraft, marking RwandAir’s return to Mombasa after a six-year pause.
The expansion is part of RwandAir’s strategy to establish Kigali as a competitive regional hub that rivals Nairobi, Dar es Salaam, and Addis Ababa in connecting East Africa to global travel and trade corridors. ‘Returning to Mombasa and introducing Zanzibar is another step forward in our ambitious growth journey,’ said Yvonne Makolo, RwandAir’s CEO.
She added that the route will expand opportunities for both leisure travellers and regional commerce.
Zanzibar and Mombasa are among the region’s most popular coastal destinations, which draw in international visitors annually. Zanzibar, in particular, has seen a tourism recovery that has attracted investors in high-end hospitality, luxury villas, and beach resorts that cater for European, Middle East, and intra-African travellers.
Additionally, Mombasa has historically been Kenya’s gateway to the Indian Ocean as a tourist hotspot and a logistics hub through the port of Mombasa. However, it has been forced to reinvent itself amid rising competition from Zanzibar’s more aggressively marketed resort economy.
The airline’s new route will face competition from Kenya Airways (KQ) and Jambojet, which already have a strong presence on the coastal routes.
KQ currently flies daily between Nairobi and Zanzibar, with frequencies reaching 13 flights per week, including some days that have double services. Jambojet, KQ’s low-cost subsidiary, launched the Mombasa-Zanzibar route in July 2024. It began with four flights per week and has since expanded to as many as six per week, with the airline targeting daily flights during peak holiday seasons.
Other airlines include Precision Air and Air Tanzania, which have dominated the local Tanzania routes, while Ethiopian Airlines has also used Addis Ababa as a connecting hub for Zanzibar-bound travellers.
The coastal leisure market is proving resilient even amid global economic headwinds, with Zanzibar recording a steady rise in arrivals from Europe and the Gulf states. Airlines are banking on the sustained demand for short-haul regional tourism that has been fuelled by a rising African middle class and intra-African travel spurred by the African Continental Free Trade Area (AfCFTA).
The windfall returns of 2024 from Treasury bills, government bonds, and money market funds appears to have ended. With yields drifting lower, investors are being forced to rethink how they position their portfolios.
Naomi Atera, a corporate finance analyst at Rock Advisors, says this means leaning into riskier asset classes, particularly equities listed on the Nairobi Securities Exchange.
Make Money, a podcast series, hosted by Kepha Muiruri, from Business Daily Africa unravels ways to be financially savvy. Get practical tips and advice on how to increase your income, build wealth, and achieve financial freedom in Kenya. Whether you’re just starting out or a seasoned investor, we’ve got something for everyone.
‘Every artist was first an amateur.’ – Ralph Waldo Emerson
We love to celebrate creativity when it shines on a stage or hangs in a gallery, but rarely do we speak of the nights when it had to pay the rent.
The government plans to double the maximum compensation to policyholders of collapsed insurance companies to Sh500,000 per claim in a move to shield customers from losses.
The National Financial Inclusion Strategy (NFIS) for 2025-28, which has been prepared by key State players in the financial sector, including the Insurance Regulatory Authority (IRA) and Central Bank of Kenya, says raising the ceiling from the current Sh250,000 will help promote stability.
“In the beginner’s mind there are many possibilities, but in the expert’s mind there are few,” said Shunryu Suzuki.
Don’t read this if –you are expert in luxuriating in a warm comfortable bubble bath of sameness.
Why is it that managers are taught to differentiate, yet they don’t? Are you running stuck in the same spot? Can a blue ocean approach capture customers you never knew existed? Is it naïve to think that one just push a button and, AI — part fad, part trend — can replace the hard work of critical thinking? Paradox is, the more companies compete, the more they look the same. When one scratches below the surface of Kenya’s crowded banking, insurance, hotel and hospitality, and professional services sectors, it’s very hard to tell one organisation from another.
With over abundant consumer choices and superfluous apps, upgrades and add-ons and features, brands and product offerings have become nearly identical as the efforts to outdo each other have pushed them into a dizzying herd of indistinct options.
Stuck in the soap opera of season 1, episode 1
Imagine watching a captivating popular drama series, talking about a season 1 episode, when the rest of the world is in season 7.
Why are we continually playing a game of catch up? Can one shift from playing the part of the dumb ‘wanna be’ all knowing make believe expert? Helps to avoid preconceptions when addressing a business issue, similar to how a true beginner would approach things.
Having a beginners mindset allows for more possibilities, creativity, and a deeper understanding — by letting go of what one already knows, being open to new blue ocean perspectives and experiences.
Blue ocean strategy
Want to launch a successful business? Is it possible to avoid wasting time on competing for market share? Ideal is to focus on creating new value, expanding the current market space.
If you can create new value, you will find yourself in a highly profitable ‘Blue Ocean’ where the competition is irrelevant. This is the thinking of W. Chan Kim and Renee Mauborgne, first published in their 2005 book: Blue Ocean Strategy.
If two people are sitting by the side of the road selling tomatoes, do you join them as the third tomato seller? That’s the temptation. Competing — thinking that one can be just a little bit different, drop the price slightly, give one away free, offer juicy ripe tomatoes, or sit closer to the matatu stop. That’s the easy conventional thinking, the default programming on how to do business.
Blue ocean strategy asks: How can you create value by addressing the needs, problems that customers face? And, go after ‘non-customers’ that others have not thought of. Market leaders like, for example, Tesla, South West Airlines, Ikea, and Cirque du Soleil all followed a blue ocean approach, attracting customers who the competition could not reach.
Even the money transfer platform, M-Pesa, the financial backbone of the Kenyan economy is an example of a blue ocean style approach. In 2024, 59 percent of the Kenya’s gross domestic product flowed through the phone app in your pocket, that has a 90 percent market share.
Four steps to value innovation
Value innovation is at the core of blue ocean strategy. Aim is to create an innovative new product at a remarkably low price. First step in value innovation is selecting your target audience.
Instead of focusing on ‘regular’ customers within your desired market – the existing customers everyone else is competing for — focus on the customers on the edge of your market. These are the infrequent buyers and customers in adjacent market spaces, who either avoid your shop, or who have never heard of your market.
First step is to have a beginner’s mind and see differently. Focus on the needs, the problems faced by your potential consumers.
Next step in value innovation is to look at the typical business model in your market and ask four questions: 1) What processes can we eliminate? In other words, what adds cost, but really isn’t required? 2) What standards can we reduce? 3) In contrast, what quality benchmarks can be raised? 4) What ways of doing things, in systems and processes, can we incorporate from adjacent sectors – industries to create a new experience? Here one takes best practices that ‘Wow’ customers from outside of the conventional ‘business as usual’ space.
Coming up with a blue ocean strategy is tough. It requires solid facts and figures analysis, and big injection of ‘out of the box’ creative thinking. But the rewards are considerable, if you can create your own market, no one else is in.
The law of hype
Perhaps one should pray your competitors stick with the hype — all the meaningless fluff — with words like: transformation, future ready, AI- enabled and high stakes leadership. Notice that when things are going well, a company doesn’t need the hype. When you need the hype, it usually means you’re in trouble.
‘No one can predict the future, not even a sophisticated reporter for the Wall Street Journal. The only revolutions you can predict are the ones that have already started.
Over the years, the greatest hype has been for those developments that promise to single-handedly change an entire industry. Real revolutions arrive unannounced in the middle of the night and kind of sneak up on you,’ advised Al Ries and Jack Trout.
Avoid the path well trodden, have a beginner’s mind and break some rules.
Harvard Business School professor, Youngme Moon talks about those to watch out for: ‘In field after field, past experiences have taught us, that the ones to pay attention to, are the ones who understand the rules so well that they understand the urgency to break them.’
For years, with its low operating costs and strong profit margins, Joseph Karuga’s beekeeping and honey aggregating venture was a sweet business.
He was a happy entrepreneur. Then, as demand grew, shortages and unreliable supply left him frustrated – until he decided to build the solution himself.
Prime Minister Anutin Charnvirakul has defended the government’s push to roll out the “Khon La Khrueng” co-payment economic stimulus scheme, dismissing criticism that the scheme is a thinly veiled attempt at pre-election campaigning.
Speaking during the government’s policy statement to parliament on Tuesday, Mr Anutin stressed that the administration has only four months in office and therefore must act swiftly on measures deemed feasible and beneficial.
“There is no such thing as rushing. There is only working quickly, transparently and in the people’s best interest,” he said.
He maintained that the co-payment scheme is designed around public participation, with citizens contributing half the cost and the state subsidising the rest.
“If people do not join, the project has no effect. But if they do, spending will circulate and help stimulate the economy,” he added.
When asked about accusations of premature electioneering, Mr Anutin replied that every party engages in political messaging in parliament.
“Debate itself is also a form of campaigning,” he said, before laughing off further questions about concerns over the use of taxpayers’ money.
Opposition criticism was led by Sirikanya Tansakun, deputy leader of the People’s Party, who said the government’s policy statement lacked clarity and urgency. While acknowledging the administration’s time and budgetary constraints, she said its role should be to manage the country responsibly until the next election without making irreversible decisions or exploiting public funds.
She further questioned why it was deemed necessary for unspent stimulus funds from the previous government, which had already helped reduce the deficit and borrowing needs, to be now deployed in full by the current administration.
As business, government and nonprofit leaders debate the future of climate action ahead of the United Nations Climate Change Conference (COP30) in Brazil, the global economy remains vulnerable to acute and chronic climate-driven shocks whose impact could be more severe than that of the 2008 global financial crisis. At a time when many governments and businesses continue to underestimate and underprice physical climate risk, we must remember that neither financial markets nor regulators are always right. What if their current complacency about climate risks is catastrophically wrong?
The 2008 financial crisis and its aftermath showed how fast our expectations can be shattered. In the mid-2000s, deregulation and simplification were the norm: balance sheets were run thin, and profits and losses ran high. Financial engineering boomed as risks were packaged, diluted, and obfuscated, and as credit was given where it hadn’t been earned.
In the face of all this, expressions of concern were drowned out by the din of transactions. But the signs were there. The fundamentals were not right.
By late 2008, the global economy was teetering on the brink of collapse. In the space of days, longstanding banking giants were swept away. Only government bailouts prevented the entire financial system from melting down.
The post-crisis banking sector looks very different from the one that preceded it. Owing to tougher rules and tighter oversight, good governance and resilience restored trust in the banking sector. Long-term investors — pension funds and insurance companies — patiently endured years of expensive recovery before value was restored and dividends resumed. If the banks had gone, so, too, would those holdings, and most of today’s financial system with them.
The post-crisis era was marked by collective humility and acceptance of systemic risk. This was reflected in the Financial Stability Board’s recognition in 2015 of climate change as perhaps the greatest systemic threat of all.
Ten years later, however, our systems and processes remain ill-equipped to measure and manage the systemic risks posed by climate change. With the focus on climate issues slipping down investors’ agendas, this is a dangerous lapse. From broken supply chains and damaged assets to infrastructure shocks, public health crises, and community disruption, many businesses are already feeling the profound impact of climate change.
Nor is the problem confined to headline-grabbing disasters. Subtle, chronic effects are quietly eroding value, often in ways that our systems are ill-equipped to detect or manage. Once again, the fundamentals are not right.
Data from NASA underscores this point. US satellites show that the intensity of extreme weather events is now double the average recorded in the 2003-20 period. This trend has tragic consequences for human well-being. In Africa, for example, 23 million people faced acute hunger in 2023, owing to record droughts.
The global economy is also taking a beating. Research by the World Economic Forum finds that weather-related damage to businesses, infrastructure, and other fixed assets may have almost tripled since 2000. The bill for the last decade topped $2 trillion, with costs in 2022-23 alone reaching $451 billion.
Yet rather than take steps to mitigate these risks, many investors, corporations, and governments continue to incentivise activities that compound them. Leading companies must battle to convince their boards and investors to buy into forward-looking strategies. Banks — the traditional stewards of opportunity — are struggling to manage lending risk associated with new and emerging technologies. The business case for pre-emptive resilience and innovation just isn’t clear enough to overcome the allure of the status quo. In other words, markets are getting things very wrong once again.
One exception is the insurance industry. Experts at pricing risk, these firms are learning fast. Between 2023-24, climate-related disasters forced insurers to shell out $143 billion in claims payments. More and more of them are doing the math and concluding that climate coverage simply doesn’t add up. They must either hike premiums to exorbitant levels or exit the disaster-risk market altogether.
The latter scenario is all too likely. Gnther Thallinger, a board member at the global insurer Allianz, recently warned that “entire regions are becoming uninsurable” as key asset classes degrade “in real time”. If markets haven’t realised this, that is because it takes time to work through the system.
The parallels to past crises are clear. Again, expressions of concern are being drowned out. This time, though, the stakes are higher, the effects are more widespread, and the consequences will be irreversible. The global economy has a massive blind spot, and unlike in 2008, there is no one on the winning side of the short bet. We all will lose.
Of course, there is a difference between a systemic blind spot and an ordinary one. We know the spot is there, but our financial system cannot address it until it is translated into monetary terms. For this, we need to mobilise executive action across the private sector to improve how we measure, manage, and respond to climate risks. Working with capital providers, standard setters, and policymakers, we need to align actionable information with the need to allocate capital towards climate-change mitigation and adaptation.
But having the numbers is not enough. To paraphrase Ernest Hemingway, climate collapse is a process that happens slowly, then all at once. Businesses and investors must create and maintain the capacity for rapid change within our organisations and across our value chains and spheres of influence. This starts with humility and acceptance of systemic risk.
The 2008 financial crisis shocked the world and demonstrated that nothing can be taken for granted. The stakes now are far higher, and there can be no bailouts. We must pursue pre-emptive action, and we must do it immediately. ©2025 Project Syndicate