Safaricom: Buying Time on the Internet

I am Brian from The Kenyan Wall Street…

In today's newsletter edition, Safaricom has brought in something new. Instead of buying data bundles, you can buy how long you wanna browse. Meanwhile, one of Kenya’s most remarkable bankers gets a regional promotion…

Safaricom : Where Time Will Determine Data Usage

The telco is testing whether minutes, not megabytes, can win back restless customers.

By Brian Nzomo

Safaricom has unveiled a curious new experiment in pricing, one that swaps out the old yardstick of megabytes and gigabytes for something more elemental: time itself. Instead of rationing out data, the company is now offering bundles that unlock the internet in hourly windows, a structure designed to appeal to students, hustlers, and content creators who prize predictability over math.

The launch comes at a moment of unease for the market leader, which has seen its once-unchallenged grip on subscribers erode under pressure from rivals and changing consumption habits. To its defenders, time-based access is a democratic tool, handing control back to users who simply want to log on and stay there, without the anxiety of watching their balance drain.

To skeptics, it looks more like a defensive maneuver, a way of slowing the slide in market share while squeezing more value out of a restless, price-sensitive base. What is clear is that Safaricom is trying to reset the clock on how Kenyans experience the internet, even if it means rewriting the rules. Read more >>>>> 

President Ruto Renews Advocacy For African Credit Rating Agency

By Fred Obura 

At TICAD 9 in Yokohama, President William Ruto sharpened his case for an African Credit Rating Agency, a bid to loosen what he calls the financial straitjacket imposed by the West’s rating giants. He argued that Africa’s economies are routinely misread, punished with inflated borrowing costs that bear little resemblance to local realities. AfCRA, still nascent, promises not to replace Moody’s or S&P but to add a voice attuned to regional nuance and continental ambition. The project dovetails with Ruto’s broader refrain: Africa must trade more with itself, unlock its farms, and court investors on terms it helps set. Whether that vision ripens into policy or remains a conference talking point will hinge less on speeches abroad than on discipline and trust at home. Read more »»»»»

Banking & Credit

Stanbic’s Oigara Gets a Promotion

By Harry Njuguna

Joshua Oigara’s latest ascent at Stanbic Bank feels less like a promotion than a signal, a carefully arranged note in a score that’s been playing quietly in Nairobi’s financial circles for years. His move is not just geographic, or even corporate, it suggests a test of patience, a waiting room where ambition and expectation share the same uncomfortable chairs. Around him, the institution calibrates its watch, knowing that in banking the future is rarely announced; it leaks, gesture by gesture, into the present. What seems a career step today may read, in hindsight, as the preface to a greater coronation or the start of a longer exile. Read full article »»»»»

Family Bank’s Net Profit Up 39% in H1 

By Chelsy Maina

Family Bank is no longer content to play a quiet supporting role: its latest half-year numbers read like a mid-tier lender straining toward the spotlight. The profits are bigger, the balance sheet heavier, and the whisper of a stock market listing louder.

Here is how the bank performed: 

🟢 Net profits climbed nearly 39% to KSh 2.28 billion.

🟢 Interest income swelled past KSh 11 billion.

🟢 Deposits rose 26% to KSh 150.4 billion.

🟢 Non-interest income added nearly KSh 2.7 billion.

🟢 Assets touched KSh 192.9 billion.

Read full financial analysis here »»»»»

Capital Markets 

The Bond Appetite Continues : CBK Exceeds Tap Sale Target

By Harry Njuguna 

The Central Bank of Kenya, in what was meant to be a modest tap sale of infrastructure bonds, ended up hauling in nearly KSh 180 billion. Coming only days after a record-shattering reopening, the move signals both insatiable investor appetite for tax-free paper and a government willing to stretch orthodoxy to mop up liquidity wherever it hides. To the market, this looked less like a small top-up and more like a full reissue, cutting away the scarcity investors once relied on. What remains is a growing pile of long-term bonds, louder than the projects they were meant to fund. In Kenya, where debt management is as much show as substance, the CBK has shown that its rules bend more easily than they hold. Read here >>>>>

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 🎉

OPINION: From Aid to Trade — Charting Africa’s Self-Reliant Future

By Hennie Heymans

The sudden freeze of U.S. aid to Africa has rattled governments and health programs alike, but this can be seen as less a crisis than an unmasking of truths long whispered about dependence. Heymans argues that the continent’s future lies not in the fickle largesse of Washington but in the sturdier architecture of trade, where farmers, entrepreneurs, and innovators write their own balance sheets. The African Continental Free Trade Area, with its promise of scale and self-determination, looms as both symbol and scaffolding for this pivot. Yet between that promise and reality stand the familiar obstacles: corruption, fragile infrastructure, uneven governance, and a youth population whose potential is too often wasted. Read this piece here »»»»»

Also Read 

Stories you missed 

♦️ Economy. Kenya’s economy may be on the mend, but two critical sectors; manufacturing and health, are buckling under financial strain, threatening to drag down the broader recovery.

♦️ Banking. Standard Chartered (StanChart) Bank Kenya posted weaker half-year earnings as lower interest and non-interest income weighed on performance despite stable asset quality and deposit growth.

♦️ Health. Kenya’s Pharmacy and Poisons Board (PPB) has issued a sharp warning over the rising misuse of Ozempic, a diabetes medication increasingly sought after for weight loss.

♦️ Companies. Kakuzi Plc has posted mixed half-year results for the period ended June, with revenue growing sharply but profitability falling on weaker avocado valuations and lower tea prices.

♦️Gender Parity . Four in ten Kenyan women in rural areas report owning a house, compared to just two in ten urban women, according to a new report from the Kenya National Bureau of Statistics (KNBS).

On your watchlist

Keep up with what’s happening on our X and LinkedIn pages. Stay updated with the latest financial news on our website The Kenyan Wall Street.