Author: David Indeje

Kenya’s private sector economy stopped shrinking in June, snapping a run of three straight monthly contractions, according to the latest Stanbic Bank Kenya Purchasing Managers’ Index released Friday. The relief came at a cost: businesses raised their selling prices at the fastest pace ever recorded by the survey. The headline PMI climbed to 50.0 in June, up from 46.6 in May. A reading above 50.0 signals improving business conditions from the previous month, while anything below points to deterioration. Landing exactly on the neutral mark tells its own story: Kenyan firms have stopped the bleeding, even if they haven’t yet…

Kenya’s High Court has stripped a government committee of its power to block websites without a judge’s sign off, and thrown out a criminal offence that rights groups warned could jail people for online speech based on nothing more than speculation. Justice Patricia Nyaundi delivered the ruling on 2 July 2026 at the Milimani High Court, resolving six consolidated petitions filed against the Attorney General, the Communications Authority, and other state respondents. The Law Society of Kenya led the case as the lead petitioner, with other petitioners including sitting MP Babu Owino. The Kenya National Commission on Human Rights and…

Kenyans burned more fuel in the first three months of 2026 than they did a year earlier, and they reached for LPG cylinders even more often than that. The numbers, released at the Petroleum Institute of East Africa’s (PIEA) Q2 2026 State of the Oil Industry Briefing on Monday in Nairobi, point to an economy that kept moving even as global oil markets wobbled. The briefing, themed “Strengthening Energy Security and Supply Resilience in a Dynamic Global Environment,” reviewed performance for the first quarter of 2026 (Q1 2026), since official GDP figures from the Kenya National Bureau of Statistics for…

Soldiers surrounded Uganda’s largest independent newsroom before dawn on Sunday, cutting power to its studios and sealing every exit. By morning, the man who ordered it, Chief of Defence Forces Gen Muhoozi Kainerugaba, had moved from shutting down television stations to hunting an executive by name. Soldiers Surround The Newsroom Overnight Security personnel deployed shortly after midnight at the Nation Media Group Uganda offices in Namuwongo and at the Kampala Serena Hotel, where the broadcaster’s studios sit. Staff who tried to report for work found the gates blocked. By 5am, NTV Uganda and Spark TV had gone dark, replaced by…

Kenya’s micro-enterprise economy runs on the energy of millions of small traders, most of them women. These entrepreneurs sell produce at dawn, restock shelves by afternoon, and navigate cash flow with no safety net. Yet until recently, most managed their business and personal money in the same mobile wallet, with no clean record of what they earned, spent, or saved. A joint case study by Safaricom and the GSMA’s Connected Women programme documents how Pochi la Biashara, Safaricom’s merchant digital financial service, launched in 2020, is reshaping how women micro-entrepreneurs in Kenya manage money, protect income, and build a path…

East Africans are visiting restaurants more often, and what they want once they sit down has changed. Diners now expect healthier options, faster service, and an experience that justifies leaving the house, and that shift is forcing restaurants, and increasingly the supermarkets competing with them, to rethink everything from menus to where they open next. Dining Out Is Becoming a Habit, Not an Occasion Research from Mordor Intelligence tracking Africa’s foodservice sector found that dine in still represented about three quarters of restaurant transactions in 2025, while delivery is forecast to grow faster than any other channel through 2031. That…