Safaricom: An Extra Mile Ahead

Hello 👋🏽 It's Brian from The Kenyan Wall Street.

In today's newsletter, we break down and analyze Safaricom’s half-year financial results. Moreover, we also examine if African countries have a chance at succeeding in global and intra-continental commerce after the expiry of AGOA.

Safaricom : An Extra Mile Ahead

By Harry Njuguna

Safaricom’s financial results no longer shock anyone. Each reporting season, the company reasserts its quiet monopoly on optimism. Many firms at the Nairobi bourse experience upswings and downswings, but the green house retains its market dominance on a string of impressive gains.

Financial Snapshot 

🟢 Net income rose 52% to KSh 42.8 billion, the highest interim profit in the company’s history.

🟢 Mobile data revenue surged 18.2%, surpassing voice revenue at KSh 41.09 billion for the first time.

🟢 M-PESA revenue climbed 14% to KSh 88.1 billion.

🟢 Group EBITDA grew 34.9% to KSh 101.3 billion.

🟢 In Ethiopia, service revenue more than doubled to KSh 6.19 billion, with over 11 million active users and 3.4 million already on M-PESA.

Read the full financial analysis here >>>>>

Graph of the Day 

The Arithmetic of Nairobi's Services 

By Brian Nzomo

For years, Nairobi’s fees — from parking, market stalls, trade licences — have felt like numbers pulled from a hat. Now, City Hall says it wants to make every charge reflect the real cost of service, from garbage collection to building approvals.

It sounds like a bureaucratic revolution wrapped in spreadsheets, promising that no one will pay more, or less, than what governance actually costs. The idea is tidy, almost technocratic, and strangely hopeful. But whether this new arithmetic survives politics is the question every taxpayer will be waiting to calculate.

Read the full article here >>>>>

The Price of Online Silence

By TKWS Reporter

In Tanzania, five days without internet during a tense election have cost more than US $238 million, yet the true damage is harder to measure. Markets stalled, mobile payments froze, and conversations that once thrived online went dark. The blackout, followed by a months-long ban on X, has become less about censorship than about the cost of disconnection in an economy built on digital trust. Civil society calls it a setback for democracy; businesses call it a catastrophe.

Read the full article here »»»»»

OPINION: Africa’s Trade Future Beyond AGOA Looks Bright

By Maxwell Okello

As Washington debates the future of the African Growth and Opportunity Act (AGOA), a deeper question hangs over the continent: what happens when the trade lifeline begins to fray? 

Across Kenya’s textile floors and Nigeria’s export corridors, uncertainty is no longer just economic, it’s existential. Yet beneath the unease runs a quiet confidence that Africa’s next chapter will not be written in Washington, but in Nairobi, Accra, and Lagos, where new continental and bilateral frameworks are already taking shape.

The shift from dependency to self-determined trade is slow and uneven, but unmistakable. What emerges from this transition could redefine not only how Africa trades, but how it sees itself in the global economy.

Read the full article here >>>>>

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NSE Gainers & Losers 

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On Your Watchlist

Yesterday's Poll Results 

Based on your experiences over the past one month, would you say that power outages have become too problematic (possibly affirming that load shedding is going on)?

🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩 Yes (85%)

🟨⬜️⬜️⬜️⬜️⬜️ No (15%)