Author: David Indeje

Kenyan mobile money users will directly send and receive money across three networks at no additional cost beginning this April. “Kenya now joins 15 other countries across the world that have successfully implemented wallet-to-wallet interoperability. This is a significant step for the mobile money operators in Kenya,” read a notice published in the Kenyan dailies. “With such tremendous achievement, the move to launch mobile money interoperability can only be seen as another great step towards furthering financial inclusion,” the statement adds. “The three mobile money operators: Airtel, Telkom and Safaricom have come together to offer the customer mobile money Interoperability.…

The Central Bank of Kenya (CBK) continues to reiterate that interest rate caps have undermined the conduct of the monetary policy Committee.In its draft report, ‘The Impact of Interest Rate Capping on the Kenyan Economy’ that calls for public comments states that using bank-level data covering the period before and after the interest rate capping law, coupled with selected macroeconomic indicators, our analysis shows that interest rate caps have started to yield negative effects which include the following:First and foremost, the capping of interest rates has infringed on the independence of the central bank and complicated the conduct of monetary…

Kenyan borrowers got a reprieve after the Central Bank of Kenya reduced the benchmark lending rate to 9.5 per cent.This means borrows will now pay interest rates of 13.5 per cent instead of 14 per cent and lowers the minimum deposit rate to 6.65 per cent (70% of CBR).The Monetary Policy Committee: “Concluded that there was scope for easing its monetary policy stance in order to support economic activity. Consequently, while noting the risk of perverse outcomes, the Committee decided to reduce the Central Bank Rate (CBR) to 9.50 percent from 10.00 percent.”Besides the stable condition of inflation, foreign exchange market, supported by…

Retail businesses, finance, banking, and investment have been revealed as the most profitable sectors for generating wealth in Kenya,  according to data provided by Wealth-X for the Knight Frank Wealth Report 2018. The 12th edition of The Wealth Report percentages revealed that the retail businesses (18%); finance, banking and investment (18%); industrial businesses (8%); and manufacturing (6%).  The majority of Kenya’s affluent are self-made (56%), 5% have inherited, while 39% have made wealth both from inheritance and their own enterprises. Further, it highlighted that Kenya’s high net worth investors with KSh 500 million in assets increased by 16 percent in 2017…

The informal sector acts as an important shock pillar for Kenya’s economy gripped by a fairly lengthy period of sluggish jobs and income growth. It employs a significant amount of the people who are supporting the majority of the households in the country their purchasing activities of the various household consumables and capital goods significantly contribute to the Value-Added Tax. The sector contributes in excess of 35 per cent to the Gross Domestic Product and employs close to 80 per cent of the workforce. It includes home businesses, domestic workers, street vendors, small-scale artisans, car repairs, bakeries, and livestock traders…

The youth in Kenya are defined as those between the ages of 18 to 35 years.   “Kenya is a very youthful country. The median age is estimated at 19 years, and about 80 percent of Kenya’s population is below 35 years,” according to the 2016 Kenya Youth Survey Report by the Aga Khan University survey that sought to understand the values, attitudes, concerns, and aspirations of this critical segment of the population.     August 2017, the Business Daily wrote that Kenya’s ratio of youth (aged 15-24) to the population stands at 20.3 per cent, above the world’s average of 15.8…