Author: David Indeje

Absa Bank Kenya has launched Absa Next, a digital financial app built around everyday spending, saving and borrowing rather than the account and branch model that defines its main banking app. The bank unveiled the product at an event in Nairobi attended by its board, its regional leadership and customers who took part in building it. A Product Built Through Customer Testing, Not a Boardroom Absa framed the launch as a departure from how it normally develops products. Instead of designing internally and releasing to the market, the bank says it spent close to three years running the idea past…

Safaricom has turned M-PESA into more than a way to send money. It is now a place to save, invest, and even buy shares. The platform is called Ziidi, and it has three parts: Ziidi MMF, Ziidi Shariah MMF, and Ziidi Trader. Here is what each one does, in plain terms. The growth has been fast. By September 2025, Ziidi MMF had 1.15 million customers and KES 12.6 billion in savings. By the end of Safaricom’s 2026 financial year, over 2 million people had made their first savings deposit through Ziidi, and 84,000 Kenyans were trading shares from their phones.…

Kenya’s central bank wants the power to make banks and payment providers hand customer data to licensed outside firms. The change would bring open banking to one of Africa’s largest digital payments markets. The National Treasury and the Central Bank of Kenya (CBK) have published the draft National Payment System Policy and the National Payment System Bill, 2026. The Bill repeals the National Payment System Act, Cap. 491A, which dates from 2011. The Policy sets the aim: payments that work across providers, protect customers and reach more people. The Bill turns that aim into law on competition, consumer and data…

Quickmart, Kenya’s second largest modern grocery retailer, has announced plans to list on the Main Investment Market Segment of the Nairobi Securities Exchange, subject to regulatory approval. The move would make it the first major grocery chain to newly join the bourse as a going concern in years, at a time when Kenya’s retail sector has a thin and troubled history on the exchange. What the Offer Involves The listing will take the form of an offer for sale rather than a fresh capital raise. Sokoni Retail Kenya Limited (“SRKL”), which currently holds all of Quickmart’s issued share capital, plans…

East African economies posted mixed results in the 2026 edition of the Africa Risk-Reward Index, a report Control Risks and Oxford Economics Africa published this year to measure how the continent’s 24 largest markets balance risk against investment reward. Ethiopia posted the sharpest gains of any East African market, while Kenya’s fiscal position kept the country exposed despite a marginal risk score improvement. The index combines a risk score and a reward score for each country, drawing on political and economic risk analysis alongside growth forecasts, economic structure and demographics. The report frames 2026 around what its authors call a…

President William Ruto has declared war on Kenya’s raw mineral exports. Speaking to reporters in Kisumu on Monday, he announced that shipping unprocessed gold out of the country will soon become illegal, part of a broader plan to keep more mineral wealth inside Kenya’s borders. The government will build at least three gold refineries, in Kakamega and Nairobi, and give the Central Bank of Kenya first priority to buy domestic gold under a new purchasing programme. Ruto framed the move as catching up with continental peers rather than breaking new ground. “We’re going to make it illegal for anybody to…