Author: David Indeje

Kenya’s mainstream advertising market spent the first half of 2026 catching its breath. After a strong close to 2025, advertisers pulled back sharply between January and June, dropping total spend to KES 29.53 billion, according to the Reelanalytics Kenya Media Landscape Report H1 2026. This is  a 24% fall from the KES 38.7 billion recorded in H2 2025. Yet it still sits 7% above the KES 27.6 billion spent in H1 2025, a detail that separates this slowdown from a genuine collapse. “Total advertising expenditure reached KES 29.53 billion, down 24% from H2 2025, but still 7% above H1 2025,”…

Anyone can start a relationship well. We show up early for dates, reply to texts within minutes, and offer the best version of ourselves. Ending a relationship tests something deeper. How you leave someone says as much about you as how you arrived. Ghosting, picking fights to force a breakup, or fading out until the other person gets the message all cause damage that lingers long after the relationship ends. The person left behind starts to doubt their worth. They carry that doubt into whatever comes next. And you carry something too: the quiet weight of having chosen the easy…

Kenya’s shopping centres are finding new tenants in unlikely places. As shoppers pull back on discretionary spending, pharmacies, car dealerships and family entertainment venues are stepping in to fill the gap left by struggling department stores and fashion retailers. That is the picture painted by Knight Frank’s H1 2026 Kenya Market Update, which tracks a market under pressure from public demonstrations, rising prices and a weaker consumer wallet. Developers are responding by moving away from big regional malls and building smaller, neighbourhood focused centres instead. Petrol station complexes, redeveloped city centre buildings and community malls are now attracting a wider…

Kenya is building a digital record for its livestock. The Animal Identification and Traceability System, known as ANITRAC, will follow an animal from birth through vaccination, ownership changes, movement and eventual slaughter. The goal is to turn a largely informal meat trade into a system that regulators, buyers and processors can actually verify, and that can compete for higher paying export markets. What to know ANITRAC assigns every registered animal a unique digital identity, replacing paper records, memory and declarations made at the slaughterhouse door. Kenya produced 613,627 tonnes of meat worth about KSh397 billion in 2024, according to Agriculture…

Kenya’s informal trade with its neighbours slipped into a deficit for the first time in the two survey cycles, as weaker agricultural harvests curbed both exports and cross-border market activity, new government data shows. The Kenya National Bureau of Statistics (KNBS) reports that the total volume of unrecorded trade at thirteen border points shared with Uganda, Tanzania, Ethiopia and Somalia fell 16.7 percent, from Ksh 299 million in December 2024 to Ksh 249.1 million in June 2025. The figures cover two separate 14 day survey windows, one in each reference month, rather than a full calendar year. The 2025 Informal…

I did not have a name for it at the time. I just knew that I had gotten very good at reading her mood before she even said a word: the tone of a “hey,” the length of a pause before she replied, whether “let’s talk later” meant later that night or three days from now. I told myself this was just how she was. Busy. Private. Not big on constant communication. What I did not let myself say out loud, for a long time, was that I had quietly become a detective in my own relationship. Looking back, I…