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Economic Growth Without Household Relief
Kenya's #1 newsletter among business leaders & policy makers
It's Brian from The Kenyan Wall Street.
In today's newsletter:
The economy is growing, but is the impact being felt in households?
Our columnist delves into how Kenya can extend its industrialization goals to the devolved units.
Economic Growth Without Household Relief
By Fred Obura
Kenya’s economy is growing, but households are not feeling it, a disconnect that is becoming harder to explain away with GDP charts and inflation graphs. Real wages are falling, jobs are being created in sectors that offer little security, and “stability” is increasingly experienced as higher prices paired with thinner pay packets. The Institute of Public Finance (IPF) warns that fiscal discipline that protects balance sheets but erodes living standards is a brittle kind of success. As donor funding retreats, especially in health, the strain is shifting quietly to counties and households, where out-of-pocket costs fill the gaps left by shrinking budgets. With elections approaching, the risk is that Kenya enters the next political cycle boasting growth while nursing a deeper, more combustible economic fatigue at home.
Read the article here >>>>>
The Geopolitics of Wheat
By Chelsy Maina
Kenya’s wheat supply has become an unlikely theater of global power politics, with Russia opening a new export route that highlights how grain now sits at the center of Africa’s geopolitical balancing act. As disruptions from the Ukraine war persist, Moscow is positioning itself as a dependable supplier to food-importing nations, even as Kyiv accuses it of weaponizing access to staples. For Kenya, where domestic wheat production meets only a fraction of demand, the calculation is pragmatic rather than ideological: secure supply first, diplomacy second.
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OPINION: A County Industrialization Fund Could Unlock Kenya’s Manufacturing Potential
A textile manufacturing warehouse
By Nicasio Karani Migwi
Kenya’s industrial problem is not ambition but geography: factories, capital, and jobs remain trapped in a few urban enclaves while rural counties supply labour and political slogans. Would a County Industrialization Fund would flip that model, treating devolution not as an administrative exercise but as an industrial strategy? The idea borrows from history. China’s township factories and Asia’s export zones, but applies it to Kenya’s most stubborn fault line: uneven development. If it works, the country’s manufacturing revival would begin not in Nairobi boardrooms, but in places long written off as peripheral.
Read the opinion piece here >>>>>
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Today in History
Chinese authorities locked down Wuhan, halting buses, subways, ferries, and long-distance transport while mandating masks in public, as the city of 11 million grappled with over 570 reported coronavirus cases and 17 deaths. The travel ban quickly expanded to surrounding cities, marking a pivotal early stage in a crisis that would spread globally.