Author: Khusoko

A national competition for public and private Kenyan secondary schools will give a Ksh1.5 million scholarship with a special interest in science, technology, engineering and math (STEM). The 1st and 2nd runners up will get Ksh 750,000 and Ksh 150,000 respectively and a laptop each. The competition, dubbed InterswitchSPAK, was announced Wednesday through a partnership between the Ministry of Education, UNESCO, NACOSTI, key stakeholders and integrated electronic payments and commerce company Interswitch. InterswitchSPAK competition gives secondary schools in the 47 counties a chance to nominate their best six Form 3 STEM students for the competition. The competition has been initiated…

The private sector in Kenya contracted in March, in 16 months according to Markit Stanbic Bank Kenya Purchasing Managers’ Index (PMI) with a score of 51.0. The reading pointed to the weakest expansion in private activity since November 2017 when conditions last deteriorated. “This represented the softest expansion in 16 months, despite new business from abroad increasing sharply.” That’s down from 51.2 in February, Any reading above 50 indicates growth slightly below the PMI rate of 50 that separates expansion from contraction. source: tradingeconomics.com “The drop in the PMI doesn’t really come as a surprise as agricultural productivity is usually…

Leading Pan-African Internet and connectivity service provider, SEACOM has announced a partnership with Microsoft to enable Kenyan firms to link to the Microsft data centers in South Africa. The private connection dubbed Azure Expressroute will link companies to the data centers without going through the public internet, reducing the risk of security breaches. “The Seacom subsea cable, which connects Kenya to South Africa, offers a fibre express route that carries Terabytes of capacity with speeds offered to business customers from as low as 50MBps up to 10Gbps,” Seacom’s managing director Tony Tugee said. “In addition to this, Seacom’s recent acquisition…

Kenyan farmers will soon have their own market where they sell produce directly to consumers, cutting off the traditional value chain that is replete with middlemen. The Nairobi Farmers Market, which is under construction in the upmarket Runda Estate, will contain 45 stalls that are exclusively operated by farmers. This borrows from international practice where most cities have farmers markets that supply produce directly from the farms to the consumers. While some provide temporary selling space for different farmers on a day-to-day basis, others lease out permanent shops that are operated by individual farmers who take the space on a…

Female entrepreneurs do not make business decisions in a vacuum. Rather, their business decisions differ systematically from those of male entrepreneurs because they are constrained by factors in a way that men are not. World Bank’s Profiting from Parity- Unlocking the Potential of Women’s Businesses in Africa report presents nine underlying constraints and explores the evidence on why the factor matters and the extent to which it contributes to the gap in business performance. Contextual factors Legal discrimination: Female entrepreneurs cannot have equal economic opportunity if a country’s laws restrict a woman’s ability to own and run a business. Women…

The managing director, Samuel Waweru and chairman, Dr. Steve Mainda of mortgage financier HF Group’s banking subsidiary, HFC Limited, have retired. The firm announced on Monday that Mainda has been replaced by Kaushik Manek. “The board of directors wishes to notify the public that Dr Steve Mainda retired as non-executive director and chairman of HFC Limited. Dr Mainda continues to sit as chairman of HF Group PLC, the non-operating holding Company,” said the announcement by HF.