Author: David Indeje

Aliko Dangote has put a number on East Africa’s biggest industrial gamble. A spokesman for Dangote Industries has confirmed that the refinery planned for the Kenyan coast will cost as much as 17 billion dollars, according to Bloomberg, ending months of speculation over the true scale of the project. A Pledge Years in the Making The confirmation traces back to a promise Dangote made in person. He pledged to the leaders of Kenya and Uganda that he would build a replica of his 700,000 barrel a day refinery outside Lagos in East Africa, and Bloomberg reports construction would take about…

Kenya’s Supreme Court has stopped the state from selling off a portfolio of Cytonn linked properties, buying the company’s investment partnerships more time to argue their case at the country’s highest judicial level. A five judge bench delivered the ruling on 3 July 2026, halting the Official Receiver from enforcing vesting orders over nine properties tied to Cytonn Investments Partners entities. The ruling arrives after six years of litigation stretching back to 2020, when Cytonn’s high yield investment products first collapsed under the weight of pandemic era defaults. What the Court Actually Decided The bench, led by Deputy Chief Justice…

Kenya’s private sector economy stopped shrinking in June, snapping a run of three straight monthly contractions, according to the latest Stanbic Bank Kenya Purchasing Managers’ Index released Friday. The relief came at a cost: businesses raised their selling prices at the fastest pace ever recorded by the survey. The headline PMI climbed to 50.0 in June, up from 46.6 in May. A reading above 50.0 signals improving business conditions from the previous month, while anything below points to deterioration. Landing exactly on the neutral mark tells its own story: Kenyan firms have stopped the bleeding, even if they haven’t yet…

Kenya’s High Court has stripped a government committee of its power to block websites without a judge’s sign off, and thrown out a criminal offence that rights groups warned could jail people for online speech based on nothing more than speculation. Justice Patricia Nyaundi delivered the ruling on 2 July 2026 at the Milimani High Court, resolving six consolidated petitions filed against the Attorney General, the Communications Authority, and other state respondents. The Law Society of Kenya led the case as the lead petitioner, with other petitioners including sitting MP Babu Owino. The Kenya National Commission on Human Rights and…

Kenyans burned more fuel in the first three months of 2026 than they did a year earlier, and they reached for LPG cylinders even more often than that. The numbers, released at the Petroleum Institute of East Africa’s (PIEA) Q2 2026 State of the Oil Industry Briefing on Monday in Nairobi, point to an economy that kept moving even as global oil markets wobbled. The briefing, themed “Strengthening Energy Security and Supply Resilience in a Dynamic Global Environment,” reviewed performance for the first quarter of 2026 (Q1 2026), since official GDP figures from the Kenya National Bureau of Statistics for…

Soldiers surrounded Uganda’s largest independent newsroom before dawn on Sunday, cutting power to its studios and sealing every exit. By morning, the man who ordered it, Chief of Defence Forces Gen Muhoozi Kainerugaba, had moved from shutting down television stations to hunting an executive by name. Soldiers Surround The Newsroom Overnight Security personnel deployed shortly after midnight at the Nation Media Group Uganda offices in Namuwongo and at the Kampala Serena Hotel, where the broadcaster’s studios sit. Staff who tried to report for work found the gates blocked. By 5am, NTV Uganda and Spark TV had gone dark, replaced by…