Kenya macro

Kenya's KES 3 Trillion Wage Economy: Nine Years of Earnings Data, Unpacked

“Private sector education wages fell KES 50 billion in a single year. The hospitality sector got the headlines. Private schools absorbed a shock of almost identical scale — and almost no one discussed it.”

Sessional Paper No. 10 and its long shadow: an economic reading of the 2026 Madaraka Day address

“For six decades, Sessional Paper No. 10 of 1965 codified the exclusion of Northern Kenya. The 2026 Madaraka Day address presented the numbers behind the attempt to reverse it.”

Kenya's NHIF collected KES 40B and paid out KES 38B — here's what nine years of data says about the fund's health

“In 2019 the fund paid out KES 1.22 for every shilling it collected — a loss ratio of 122%. COVID briefly repaired the books, but for the wrong reasons.”

Reading the World Bank's first structural adjustment program for Kenya

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.

Africa's economic map redrew itself: GDP by sub-region and bloc, 1990–2024

“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%.”

The Pension Trade: How Kenya's Retirement Money Became a Government Bond Fund

“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.”

AGPO: five years of Kenya's 30% procurement programme, in the data

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.

The Bank Always Wins: 34 Years of Kenya's Interest Rate Data

“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.”

Kenya's Mobile Money Revolution: 18 Years of Data

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.

Which Month Do Kenyans in the Diaspora Send the Most Money Home?

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.

African Socialism and the Economic Foundations of Kenya

“Sessional Paper No. 10 was Kenya's first major economic policy document — and it remains remarkably revealing.”