Author: David Indeje

Stanbic Holdings Plc delivered a great year in 2025, embedding sustainability so deeply into its operations that the word “compliance” no longer fits. What emerges from its 2025 Sustainability Report is a portrait of a bank that has moved from reporting on ESG to building its entire business model around it. Trade financing surged to KShs 133 billion, nearly 50% above its KShs 90 billion target. The D.A.D.A women’s platform crossed KShs 49.5 billion in cumulative loans disbursed. Over 200,000 trees were planted in a single year. For the first time, the Board formally adopted IFRS S1 and S2 disclosures,…

Kenyan households received KSh 931.8 billion in remittances between June 2024 and May 2025. According to the 2025 Remittances Household Survey, the first nationwide study of its kind, conducted by the Kenya National Bureau of Statistics in collaboration with the Central Bank of Kenya and Financial Sector Deepening Kenya. The number tells part of the story. Who sends, who receives, how the money moves, and what families spend it on tells you far more about the state of Kenya’s economy than any figure alone can. The Survey That Changed What We Know For years, Kenya measured remittance inflows through commercial…

Across Africa, people still want news. The problem is they trust it less, encounter it differently, and rely on platforms their parents never heard of. The Reuters Institute Digital News Report 2026, released by the University of Oxford and covering nearly 100,000 respondents across 48 markets, paints a picture that should alarm editors, rattle newsroom managers, and compel media investors to reconsider everything. Trust in news fell in 29 of the 48 markets surveyed, reaching its lowest point since the Reuters Institute began tracking the metric in 2015. The global average now sits at 37%, down 3 percentage points in…

The Middle East conflict has moved from a distant geopolitical crisis to a direct drag on Kenya’s balance of payments. Elevated crude prices are swelling the national import bill, disrupting shipping routes and forcing businesses to pay more for fuel, machinery and raw materials, costs that flow straight through to the current account. The Central Bank of Kenya projects the current account deficit will widen to 3.0% of GDP in 2026, up from 2.1% in 2025. That would push the nominal deficit from $3.10 billion to $4.30 billion in a single year. Commercial analysts are less optimistic. NCBA Research warned…

Kenya, Uganda and Tanzania presented their 2026/27 budgets to parliament on Thursday under unusual pressure, as investors watched closely to see how each government planned to absorb cost shocks from the Middle East conflict while holding debt to manageable levels. The timing matters. East Africa is seen as highly susceptible to the impact of the war, given the region’s reliance on petroleum and fertiliser imports — a vulnerability that prompted the African Development Bank to cut its regional growth forecast for 2026 by half a percentage point. The three budgets differ sharply in strategy. Kenya is focused on fiscal consolidation…

Minority shareholders of WPP Scangroup voted for board change at the company’s AGM on Monday. WPP Plc blocked every resolution. Of the 432,155,185 shares eligible to vote, 306,664,160 participated, a turnout of 70.96% across 976 registered voters. On the three board change resolutions under Agenda 8, 63,501,851 shares — just over 20.7% of votes cast — backed the removal of directors. Every one of those votes came from independent shareholders. WPP Plc’s 243,109,708 shares voted against, and the resolutions failed. The numbers in reverse: more than 99% of the independent shares cast supported the resolutions. WPP’s block, representing 79.29% of…