Topic
Inflation, interest rates, FX, fiscal posture, GDP. The aggregate view of Kenya's economy.
8 pieces in this topic
The World Bank's 1980 diagnosis of Kenya's manufacturing pattern — protected, import-substituting, oriented to a wider East African market that had just collapsed — and why its prescription, sound as it sounded on paper, set one-sided rules.
“Eastern Africa more than doubled its share of African GDP — 7.4% in 1990, 15.7% in 2024. It was also the only African region that grew through COVID, at +1.2% real on a GDP-weighted basis, against a world average of −2.7%.”
“Of every shilling Kenyans set aside for retirement, more than fifty cents now sits in government paper. The pension industry has stopped being an investment system and started being a financing system.”
The Access to Government Procurement Opportunities programme reserves 30% of public procurement for youth, women, and PWDs. Five years of KNBS data (2018–2022) shows where it's working, where it stalled, and where it's quietly off-balance.
“For 34 years, across crises, policy reversals, and economic cycles, Kenyan banks have maintained a lending-deposit spread averaging 9.51 percentage points. The institution has always been the winner.”
From 307 agents and 20,000 accounts in 2007 to 473,000 agents and 89.5 million accounts in 2025. Here is what 18 years of CBK data shows about the infrastructure that reshaped Kenya's economy.
It's not February, despite Valentine's Day. 15 years of diaspora remittance data reveal December dominance, a COVID shift that never reversed, and a North American corridor worth $2.9B annually.
“Sessional Paper No. 10 was Kenya's first major economic policy document — and it remains remarkably revealing.”
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