As 2022 ended, Kenya’s banking sector continued to record profits as the country recovered from the pandemic and enjoyed a peaceful general election. For instance, KCB and Equity bank recorded an increase in their net profit for the first nine months of 2022 by 21.4% and 28%, respectively, to Sh30.6 billion and Sh34.4 billion. The sector will continue enjoying steady profits in 2023 as credit agency Moody’s expects the sector’s outlook to remain stable. According to Moodys, the banking sector will continue to record strong profitability, high liquidity, and solid capital amid rising problem loans. Kenya’s economic growth will remain…
Author: NLM writer
By Antony Mutunga Since 2020 Kenya’s tourism sector has been recovering after the pandemic caused significant losses due to the COVID-19 restrictions. In 2020, the total revenue from tourism stood at Sh98.68 billion ($781 million), a decrease from the Sh 176.68 billion ($1.4 billion) recorded in 2019, according to data from the Kenya Tourism Federation. According to the Kenya Annual Tourism Sector Performance Report 2022 by the Tourism Research Institute (TRI), the revenue from the tourism sector has continued to increase. Revenue from the industry surpassed $2 billion last year despite still being below pre-pandemic levels. From data on the…
In April 2021, the Central Organization of Trade Unions (COTU), in a press statement, surmised Safaricom CEO, Peter Ndegwa’s tenure in a terse statement – as a danger to workers’ rights. Through its Secretary General, Francis Atwoli, COTU detailed what it termed as a mission to restructure its mode of management while ‘doing away’ with some of its employees, and invited the board to step in to rein in Mr NDegwa. “Even though, as COTU (K), we don’t have control over the management style employers adopt from time to time, we are highly concerned about the prospects of job security…
In January this year, the High Court allowed potentially millions of Safaricom subscribers to join a class action suit against the telco over a clause in the SIM card registration rules that allows the corporate to collect bank details of mobile phone users. The suit sought to strike out Clause 3.2.1 in the data privacy statement, which subscribers filled as part of the re-registration process, which states that the telecoms operator can “collect and store information including credit or debit card information, information on bank account numbers, Swift codes or other banking information”. Justice Chacha Mwita allowed lawyers Wilfred Nderitu…
The status quo, with East Africa’s largest company losing billions in market valuation thanks to shoddy leadership, is clearly untenable. By NLM Writer In March last year, Safaricom Ethiopia tweeted out an interesting claim: that 50% of Kenya’s GDP is processed through their M-Pesa ecosystem. This was no idle claim, either: Safaricom’s mobile money platform has transformed the way business is done in Kenya and around the developing world. Within Kenya and the region, its integration into the economy has been massively disruptive and transformative. Before M-Pesa, millions of Kenyans were unbanked, with the banks totally uninterested in doing any…
The shilling’s dwindling value reveals the intense pressure on the economy, as a burgeoning US dollar forces the country to spend its precious foreign reserves to support runaway forex rates. The drop in the shilling’s value has affected inflation, foreign investments, and the price of imported commodities, posing economic issues for Kenya and its people. Many countries, including Kenya, rely on the US dollar as their primary trading and investment currency since it is the world’s reserve currency. Due to the rising demand for US dollars, the dollar’s value in relation to the Kenyan shilling has increased. The Kenyan shilling’s…
Are you gradually losing your purchasing power? Here is what that broad rise in food and commodity prices portends Inflation is an essential economic indicator. Central banks and financial markets scrutinize inflation as it heavily influences their decision-making. It also plays a pivotal role in the value of currencies. As currency markets react to inflation data, exchange rates change. Inflation is characterized by a broad rise in the prices of goods and services across different economic sectors, eroding consumer and business purchasing power. For context, your shilling will not go as far today as last month. To understand the effects…
By NLM Writer Conversations on food security usually center on staples, such as maize, because our country’s sustenance depends on them. However, since our farming depends on specific crop varieties bred and adapted to low-input farming, our vulnerability to food insecurity is compounded by the absence of substantive diversification. Diversifying our farmed crops may hold the key to our country’s food and nutrition insecurity, rural prosperity, and the resilience of our agricultural systems. Crop diversification is an important coping mechanism for income, production, and marketing risks. By diversifying, farming households can spread production and economic risk over a wider range…
By Anna Collard It is now possible to use a publicly available artificial chatbot to generate a complete infection chain, possibly beginning with a spear phishing email written in entirely convincing, human-like language and eventually causing a complete takeover of a company’s computer systems. Researchers at Checkpoint recently created such a plausible phishing email as a test. They only used ChatGPT, a chatbot that uses deep learning techniques to generate text and conversations that can convince basically anyone that it was written by a real person. In reality, there are many potential cybersecurity dangers wrapped up in this impressive technology…
The continent is seeing a big shift in bio-manufacturing, potentially reducing dependence on vaccine imports and build self-reliance in its health sector. By Bonface Orucho A bid for self-sufficiency in the health sector is largely seen targeting vaccine imports and is elevating Africa’s bio-manufacturing industry, according to numerous recent reports which also point to improved healthcare capabilities. “The COVID-19 pandemic highlighted the urgent need for Africa to accelerate its vaccine manufacturing capabilities,” said Olilo Patrick, a Genetic Engineer at the Kenya Medical Research Institute, Centre for biotechnology research and development. During the pandemic, vaccine access was almost impossible to most…