Author: Victor Adar

The debt servicing cost has continued to rise. The latest revenue and net expenditures for the nine months of 2022/2023 FY ending March 31, 2023 show the debt-burden to total revenue stood at 56.4%.  The total debt service in FY’2021/2022, according to the National Treasury, increased by 17.6% to Sh917.8bn, from Sh780.6bn in the 2020-2021 fiscal year. Equally, debt service to revenue ratio was estimated at 47.9%, 17.9% points higher than IMF’s recommended threshold of 30.0%, but 2.1% points lower than 50% debt service to revenue ratio recorded from 2020 to 2021. This signals difficult years ahead. The numbers are…

Mr Bakkari will oversee operations in Kenya, Tanzania, Uganda, Rwanda, Burundi and Ethiopia French cosmetics company L’Oréal has appointment Yassine Bakkari its new managing director for East Africa, with his predecessor Serge Secre taking on a new role as MD for South Africa.Mr Bakkari’s appointment comes at a time when the cosmetics behemoth is on ambitious plan to implement its sustainability programme, establishing its vision with a focus on the impact of its products during use phase. Prior to joining East Africa, Bakkari was the operations director for L’Oréal Middle East where he developed an omnichannel transformation of the group’s…

BY PERMINUS WAINAINA In mid-February this year, I received an email from one company director requesting us to recruit for them. His staff did not return to work, and others are currently serving their notice, while the most recent ones he hired the month before are poor performers. Such unfortunate events are common, which is a pity because most companies do not understand how recruitment works. I realized that the most significant gap was in their recruitment process – it resulted in a waste of time replacing employees and getting bad hires who cost the team morale and productivity, ultimately…

Increased access to cancer surgery will improve cancer care and outcomes By Dr Miriam Mutebi Across the world there is an increasing incidence and mortality of cancers, particularly in low and middle income countries, such as Kenya. The recent Lancet commission on cancer in sub- Saharan Africa in 2021, showed that over the past 30 years, there has been a doubling in cancer incidence, with over half a million deaths in 2020. This number is predicted to double by 2030 thus underscoring a need for urgent action.The expected rise in the number may be attributed to a combination of factors…

Generative Artificial Intelligence (AI) describes algorithms that generates different types of data such as text, audio and video. Then there are the likes of Open AI DALL-E (that creates images from text captions), GitHubs CoPilot (that speeds up the writing of code by assistance from AI programmer) and the most recent, Open AI ChatGPT. The latter has been trending big time, recording about 100 million users as at January this year. This year has also seen another generative AI, Microsoft’s Vall-E’s AI Text To Speech system (TTS), join the fray.Going by the trends, AI-powered tools and services could transform how…

By Mikhail Marchenko Digital lending ecosystem is rapidly growing thanks to increased financial inclusion, smartphone penetration and easy access to the internet. However, with the growth comes a lot of security systems challenges to fintechs. Good news is that, JuicyScore, a tech firm that offers an array of anti-fraud solutions and risk assessment tools that help banks and fintech businesses deal with application fraud, account takeover, multi-accounting, and transaction fraud, has unveiled an app that will help companies, especially offline digital players, cope with the many risks. Through the tech company’s app labeled “JS App”, any offline business is capable…

By Victor Adar Life without a job is tough. Imagine tuition fees, accommodation, living expenses, and spending, say, four years of your life to earn a university degree only to end up being unemployed and with a mountain of loans…  That’s the reality that most graduates grapple with after completing their studies. And, it is the ever-unpredictable job market that inspired the setting up of Moringa School. Audrey Cheng and Frank Tamre, founders of Moringa School, saw the need to bridge the gap between the employed and the unemployed technical graduates by empowering those who join their accelerator program to make…

The Capital Markets Authority (CMA) in collaboration with Sanduku Investment Initiative, Association of Pension Trustees and Administrators of Kenya (APTAK) and the Nairobi Securities Exchange (NSE) has made significant progress towards the creation of a  Kenya National REIT (KNR). KNR is aligned to the Government’s  Economic Transformation Agenda to deliver affordable housing  units across the country. The affordable housing programme will be executed under the Sanduku Investment Initiative, which will also include infrastructure. KNR will register all REITs (Real Estate Investment Trusts) for the development of affordable housing and infrastructure through Special Purpose Vehicles. It is a funding initiative for Kenya’s Economic…

BY ANTONY MUTUNGA In Africa, Kenya is the third country to rely on Real Estate Investment Trusts (REITs) as a financing instrument after Ghana and Nigeria. Categorized in three types, REITs are used by firms to source funds to build, or acquire real estate assets which they would sell or rent to generate income for the investors.They include; Income Real Estate Investment Trust (I-REITs) which entails investors pooling funds together to acquire long term income generating real estate including housing, commercial and other real estate, Development Real Estate Investment Trusts (D-REITs) that rely on acquiring real estate with an aim…

The Kenyan shilling continues to fall against the US currency spelling trouble for businesses in the country. Over the last 10 years, it has depreciated at a 10-year compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 3.7% to an all-time low of Sh125.6 as at February 17, 2022 from Sh87.3 over the same period in 2013. This is attributed to various factors such as an ever-present current account deficit, increasing debt levels and the rising prices of commodities such as crude oil prices as Kenya remains a net importer. The economic disruptions occasioned by the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020 significantly caused volatility…