M-KOPA : A Taste of Profit

Hello 👋🏽 It's Brayo from The Kenyan Wall Street

After years of chasing growth at any cost, M-KOPA has finally turned a profit; a symbolic victory for one of Africa’s most closely watched fintechs.

Brian Nzomo writes…

The Nairobi-based lender has evolved far beyond its solar roots, stitching together a continent-wide credit network that lets millions of low-income earners buy phones, lights, and now even motorbikes on credit. Behind the headline profit lies a quiet transformation: the company’s books are steadier, its risk systems sharper, and its ambitions wider.

Its focus is shifting toward electric mobility, where it’s financing fleets of e-bikes that promise lower costs for riders and cleaner air for cities. That bet could become a defining pillar of its next chapter. There’s also a growing business in refurbished smartphones, part of M-KOPA’s push to pair financial inclusion with sustainability.

In a region where most credit stories end in default or disillusion, M-KOPA’s turnaround is a glimpse of what African fintech might look like when scale meets discipline.

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CIB Kenya : Betting on Small Business

By Fred Obura

In an industry obsessed with balance sheets, CIB Kenya is trying something that may seem unfashionable.

The lender, born from Egypt’s most profitable private bank, is rewriting its Kenyan playbook around cash flow rather than collateral, betting that a tea farmer’s steady sales or a trader’s daily receipts tell a truer story than a land title ever could.

The approach is meant to fuse Cairo’s financial muscle with Nairobi’s entrepreneurial pulse, threading capital through small businesses that have long lived outside the banking system.

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The Central Bank Rate Eased to 9.25%

By Harry Njuguna

The Central Bank of Kenya (CBK) has again lowered its key rate, not with fanfare but with the measured calm of a government that knows recovery must be coaxed, not commanded. Each quarter-point trim seems less about crisis response than about faith that cheaper credit will one day translate into real confidence. Inflation is subdued, the shilling steady, yet the country’s heartbeat remains faintly cautious. The numbers look tidy on paper, but the economy they describe feels like one holding its breath. Monetary policy, for now, seems less a lever of change than a quiet ritual of reassurance.

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Insight 

Why Businesses are Migrating from Industrial Area to Tatu City SEZ

By Chelsy Maina

For decades, Nairobi’s Industrial Area has been the city’s beating economic heart. It was crowded and almost seemed indispensable. However, its pulse has begun to fade. Rising land prices, crumbling infrastructure, and suffocating bureaucracy have sent manufacturers searching for new ground. Many are now finding it in Tatu City, a Special Economic Zone just outside the capital, where reliability and order replace the old chaos. What began as a property experiment is fast becoming the country’s new industrial frontier, one warehouse and data center at a time.

Read more details here »»»»»

Happening This Week

The Kenyan Wall Street and Schneider Electric are hosting a c-suite roundtable on Thursday, October 9th from 7:30-11:00am at the Capital Club of East Africa.

This roundtable focuses on bringing through leaders and industry experts together at the Capital Club of East Africa to discuss how industries such as ICT, manufacturing, mining, and others are leveraging technology and how that transition is paying dividends for Kenyan companies.

Featuring industry leaders : Senior leadership from Schneider Electric East Africa, Raymond Kitunga, the Deputy MD of SPIRO, and Snehar Shah, CEO of IX Africa Data Centres. .

Since this event is invite-only and exclusive to a limited number of people, please be sure to RSVP in the link here »»»»»

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NSE Gainers & Losers 

The NSE Investment Challenge is a fun, interactive, and educational platform designed to teach you how to invest on the Kenyan Stock market using a real-time trading simulation.

✅ Virtual capital to trade

✅ Live market data

✅ Learn real investing skills

✅ Open to students & young professionals

💰 Cash prizes for the top performers 

Click here to join this amazing opportunity 🎉

For up-to-date market insights and data from the NSE, join our Whatsapp channel here »»»»»

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