Author: Khusoko

Kenya’s music audience is more engaged than ever. By the end of 2025, Kenyan listeners had streamed over 200 million hours of music and built millions of personalised playlists. On average, a 26-year-old streams 124 different artists every month, with interest in indigenous languages surging by 101 percent locally, according to the latest data by Spotify. These numbers reveal a curious, highly active audience, one that is eager to discover, support, and celebrate local talent. Despite this impressive engagement, the industry continues to struggle to match the creative and commercial impact of African powerhouses like Nigeria and South Africa. Only…

In many high-income countries, even a small number of tuberculosis (TB) diagnoses can generate headlines and prompt a rapid public health response. Recent situations in U.S. cities such as Seattle and San Francisco illustrate this, where media coverage has focused on the number of children being tested after TB disease was identified in a school. In sub-Saharan Africa, these situations are viewed through a different lens. While some regions experience relatively low levels of TB disease, others face substantial challenges. Several countries in East and Southern Africa—including Ethiopia, Kenya, Uganda, Nigeria, and South Africa—remain among the high TB-burden settings globally, with significant variation in drug-resistant TB…

TITLE: Struggling to read and write BY: SAMUEL RASTO At 9 years old, Achieng sits quietly at the back of her Grade 3 classroom in a rural public primary school. When asked to read a short English passage aloud, she hesitates, struggling to pronounce simple words. Though she has been enrolled in school since Grade 1, reading a full paragraph independently remains a challenge. At 9 years old, Achieng sits quietly at the back of her Grade 3 classroom in a rural public primary school. When asked to read a short English passage aloud, she hesitates, struggling to pronounce simple…

Across Africa, a quiet but powerful transformation is underway. Governments, regulators, and innovators have spent the past decade building the foundations of a more inclusive digital financial ecosystem, through investments in digital payments, digital identity systems, and modern data infrastructure. These developments are often described through the lens of Digital Public Infrastructure (DPI), the digital rails that enable economies to operate more efficiently, expand financial access and accelerate innovation. Yet the true significance of this infrastructure lies not only in the technology itself, but in what it enables. This was a central theme of conversations at the  Inclusive Fintech Forum…

There’s a quiet assumption among many young Kenyans that health insurance is something you think about later, after you’ve “made it,” after you’ve settled, after life feels more stable. For Gen Z, bold, entrepreneurial, digitally savvy, and financially aware, youth can sometimes feel like protection enough. But in today’s Kenya, that assumption is increasingly risky. Health challenges no longer wait for a certain age. Lifestyle diseases, mental health pressures, road accidents, sports injuries, and sudden illnesses are affecting young adults in their 20s and early 30s more than ever before. At the same time, medical costs in private hospitals continue…

As Kenya prepares to host the Kenya International Investment Conference (KIICO) in a few weeks, global investors are increasingly asking not why Kenya, but why now. The answer lies in a convergence of digital readiness, talent availability, infrastructure maturity, and policy alignment that has positioned the country as a credible base for globally integrated technology and business services. In an era where global business is increasingly digital, location decisions are shaped less by geography and more by capability. Companies seek environments where people, systems, and regulations can support operations at scale. Kenya stands out because many of these conditions are…