Author: David Indeje

Kenya’s tea industry posted a market value of Sh218.79 billion in 2025, recovering from years of oversupply and depressed prices to record its strongest performance in recent memory. Export earnings climbed to Sh186.91 billion, up 2.87 percent from Sh181.69 billion the previous year, according to the Tea Industry Performance Report by the Tea Board of Kenya. Export volumes told an even stronger story, jumping 9.81 percent to 652.80 million kilogrammes from 594.50 million kilogrammes in 2024. Domestic sales grew 6 percent to Sh19.13 billion, pushing total marketed tea value up 2 percent from Sh215.21 billion. The gains came after a…

Kenya’s fight over the Computer Misuse and Cybercrimes Act enters a new chapter. The Bloggers Association of Kenya (BAKE) filed a notice of appeal at the Supreme Court on Thursday, pushing the legal contest over digital speech laws to the country’s highest court. The deadline to lodge the full appeal falls on 16th April 2026. Why the Fight Continues The move follows a Court of Appeal ruling on 27th February 2026 that declared Sections 22 and 23 of the Act unconstitutional. Those sections, widely used to prosecute content creators under “false publication” charges, fell after a joint petition by BAKE,…

M-PESA no longer lives in a separate app. At Decode 4.0 in Nairobi, Safaricom unveiled My OneApp, a single platform that folds the standalone M-PESA app and the MySafaricom app into one experience, marking the most significant product shift the company has made since M-PESA launched eighteen years ago. Esther Waititu, Safaricom’s Chief Financial Services Officer, had opened by introducing Sarah, the company’s AI humanoid robot, to a room packed with developers. Sarah danced. Sarah waved. Sarah later walked Waititu to the edge of the stage before the session ended. The moment was deliberate. The day before had been full…

Jennifer Gatero’s new feature film opens at Nairobi Cinema on April 11, asking one question that cuts through every romantic relationship: when love breaks down, do you walk away or do you fight to find your way back? Back to Us follows former lovers Amana and Kwame, brought together on a coastal trip to Watamu by mutual friends. Old wounds surface. Unresolved feelings pull at both of them. What happens next forms the emotional core of a film shot almost entirely on location along the Kenyan coast. Why Gatero Set the Story in Watamu The film grew out of a…

Safaricom has moved beyond the idea of local innovation. At the close of Decode 4.0, the company unveiled Decode 5.0, formally titled De{c0}de 5.0: The Rise of Africa’s AI Supergrid, signalling a shift from building standalone products to laying shared digital infrastructure across the continent. The announcement reframes Safaricom’s ambitions. Rather than a single-market telco refining its own platforms, the company now positions itself as the backbone of a connected African technology ecosystem, one that developers, businesses, and governments can build on together. Eight Markets, One Framework Decode 5.0 spans Kenya, Ethiopia, Tanzania, Lesotho, the DRC, Mozambique, South Africa, and…

The Communications Authority of Kenya (CA) assesses mobile network quality as a core consumer protection function. For FY 2024–2025, the Authority evaluated all three licensed operators — Safaricom, Airtel Kenya and Telkom Kenya — across every one of Kenya’s 47 counties. The framework, introduced in 2017, combines field tests, network data and customer surveys into a single weighted score. Crucially, the assessment is regulator-conducted, making it the authoritative measure of network performance in the Kenyan market. Safaricom scored 89.72% overall, achieved 90.36% in field drive tests, the highest figure recorded across all operators  and met the CA’s quality targets in…