Kenya’s stablecoin rules get a softer touch

Good evening. It’s Brian from The Kenyan Wall Street.

These are our top financial stories today…

Kenya’s Stablecoin Rules Get a Softer Touch

By Brian Nzomo

Kenya has softened one of the most controversial parts of its new stablecoin framework, reducing the minimum paid-up capital for issuers from KSh500 million in the draft regulations to KSh300 million after consultations with industry participants. The concession lowers the cost of entering the market, but it leaves the architecture of the regime largely untouched. 

Stablecoin issuers will still face strict reserve, reporting and redemption requirements, while the Central Bank retains wide-ranging powers to suspend issuance, halt redemptions or require licensed exchanges and wallet providers to stop offering particular stablecoins. The regulations also preserve rules requiring a portion of reserves to be held in Kenyan banks and the remainder invested in approved reserve assets, signalling a preference for keeping backing assets within the domestic financial system. 

Together, the changes suggest policymakers are willing to make the framework more commercially workable, but not at the expense of the tight oversight and financial safeguards they see as essential to bringing stablecoins into Kenya's regulated financial sector. 

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Forex Traders finish in the red in 2025

By Harry Njuguna

Kenya's online forex traders lost a combined KSh7.12 billion in gross trading losses last year even as the number of active trading accounts almost halved to 152,110, according to new CMA data. While the proportion of losing accounts improved to 77.6% from 90.9% a year earlier, total losses climbed 46.6%, suggesting the traders who remained in the market suffered much larger losses on average. Clients made KSh1.25 billion in gains against the losses, leaving a net loss of KSh5.87 billion, with traders losing roughly KSh5.69 for every KSh1 won. Exness, HF Markets, Pepperstone and FXPesa accounted for nearly 87% of all reported client losses. Despite weaker client outcomes, licensed forex brokers improved their own financial performance, cutting aggregate corporate losses by 74% as several firms returned to or maintained profitability.

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OPINION : The Missing Infrastructure Slowing Africa’s Green Century

By Sellah Bogonko

Africa's green transition has never been short of ambition; it has been short of the conditions needed to turn ambition into industry. Despite holding vast critical mineral reserves and some of the world's best renewable energy resources, the continent still attracts only a small fraction of global clean-energy investment as high borrowing costs, debt burdens, and policy uncertainty discourage capital. The result is that clean electricity alone is doing little to solve Africa's larger economic challenge of creating jobs, building manufacturing capacity and moving young workers into productive industries. As governments, investors and business leaders look to accelerate the transition, the bigger question is no longer how much renewable power Africa can generate, but whether it can build the financial and industrial foundations to turn that advantage into lasting economic growth. 

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