The CEO of Keroche Breweries Limited, Tabitha Karanja, is an entrepreneur extraordinaire. She was brave enough to get out of the proverbial comfort zone, took risks, and remained focused on the bigger picture. Her battle for beer started off with a meagre Sh100,000, an amount she put to productive use, and what has now transformed into a Sh7 billion behemoth. Ms Karanja is one of the notable business leaders creating significant economic impact in the region. This was seen during the 6th Annual Gathering of the African Leadership Network 2015 Summit that was held in Marrakesh where her firm was named Africa’s Best…
Author: Editor
Entrepreneurship is the capacity and willingness to design, develop, organize and manage a business venture along with the accompanying risks. Entrepreneurship is crucial to the growth of a country’s economy. The world’s largest economies have mainly grown as a result of a national entrepreneurial culture. An example of such a country that embraced the entrepreneurial culture is Singapore. We have picked Singapore as an example because of some similarities – both countries gained independence at about the same time, Kenya in 1963 and Singapore in 1965, and each had total GDP of about $1 billion at independence. Entrepreneurship received attention…
BY VICTOR ADAR Have you ever asked yourself the role that a social enterprise plays in today’s society? Or, why enterprises set up on such models flourish? You most likely have seen Ikotoilets across many streets in town. At these toilets, people can not only answer to the call of nature but also engage in other business such as buy airtime, groundnuts or beverages. Initially being run by the government, not many Kenyans thought these toilets would land on the hands of private investors and still continue offering the social services they are known for. Duncan Onyango is the man…
BY IVAN EPSTEIN Sub-Saharan Africa’s telecoms infrastructure has improved in leaps and bounds over the past few years, thanks to new undersea cables, national fibre links and mobile data services. Even though applications such as email and social media have taken off, Africa has lagged global trends in the adoption of more bandwidth-hungry apps such as cloud computing, remote working and video. The reason for this is simple: 2G and even 3G connectivity isn’t always fast and reliable enough for more demanding applications. Add in the high costs per-megabyte for cellular data in many parts of the continent and it…
Airtel, launched its Free Internet for Schools Programme late last month in Kisii County by connecting 20 schools to the internet for free. Speaking at Kenyoro Mixed Secondary School where he launched the programme, Education Cabinet Secretary Dr. Fred Matiang’i said that the ongoing exercise by Airtel to connect more schools to the Internet for free is a huge boost to the education sector in Kenya that will go a long way in helping students do better in school and prepare them for lifelong success. “It is encouraging to see Airtel take this initiative with the objective of enhancing the…
The government will not let business rivals to take the law in their hands, Principal Secretary for Interior Dr Kibicho Karanja has warned. He said this while receiving the official report from the task force that was formed to investigate the dispute between traditional taxi drivers and Uber online taxi operators that has been spiraling every sunrise. The chairman of the task force Mr. Wang’ombe Kariuki who is also the Director-General of the Competition Authority of Kenya presented the 60- page report to the PS at Harambee House. In his remarks after officially receiving the report, PS Kibicho said the…
Diamond Trust Bank Group (DTB) and one of Kenya’s leading insurance companies, Jubilee Insurance, have agreed to enter a partnership which will see them promote life insurance policies to its client base. The partnership launched a specialist model that will see them improve the awareness of life insurance to Kenyans. The signing ceremony was done by the DTB chief executive, Nasim Devji and the Chief Executive Officer (C.E.O) of Jubilee Insurance Company Kenya, Patrick Tumbo, at the Jubilee Insurance Centre, in Nairobi last month. Chief executive, Nasim Devji was enthusiastic about the partnership saying the launched specialist model was a…
David Wanjala Corruption takes various forms including graft, bribery, embezzlement and extortion and, according to Stanford Graduate School of Business, it leads to a diminished business climate especially when the public trust is eroded. Sadly, in Kenya, the vice is manifest in all its forms intensely you cannot point out one as the least or leading form. That is the extent to which our economy is exposed. It is so bad that any development taking place is by happenstance with most ongoing projects being leftovers of the last regime. It is a replica of the first term in office of…
BY KENYATTA OTIENO I came cross the term ‘core business’ first when I was a student leader in University. The Vice Chancellor was responding to our agitation for more bed space to accommodate the increasing number of students. According to the good professor, accommodation was not a core business of the university. He proposed a system where they will lease out the hostels to private investors so that he can concentrate on the core function of the university, which is to disseminate knowledge. The word came home again recently in my discussions about lack of interest in sports sponsorship from…
By Jaafar S. Abdulkadir Islamic finance industry that started modestly as a niche market in the 1950s in the Muslim countries of Malaysia and Egypt has been growing significantly into a multi-billion dollar industry with a huge impact globally. The remarkable growth of Islamic finance can be attributed to growing demand for alternative mode of finance that widens the choice for investors and governments that have proactively created the enabling environment to promote the diversification of their financial markets. In terms of functionality and the objectives of realizing financial intermediation, Islamic banking and finance is not any different from the…