The Kwale Minerals Gambit

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

In today's newsletter edition, we take a look at why the U.S is strategically focusing on a firm with mineral interests in Kenya. Also, renting or opting for a mortgage — which is better?

The Kwale Minerals Gambit

By Brian Nzomo

Washington has found a new frontier in Kenya’s prospective minefields. In the quiet hills of Kwale, where baobabs shadow the soil, Australian firm RareX Limited has staked interest in Mrima Hill and has drawn the gaze of the U.S. Strategic Metals; behind it, the full weight of Washington’s critical minerals agenda.

A recently inked understanding between the Australian miner and the American refiner signals more than co-operation. The partnership folds Kenya, almost incidentally, into the West’s long campaign to loosen Beijing’s grip on the materials that make modern life, from fighter jets to smartphones, hum.

Mrima Hill may soon yield more than rare earths; it may tell a subtler story about who owns the future’s foundations.

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The Uneven Climb on Devolution’s Ladder 

By Fred Obura

Nairobi sits confidently at the summit of Kenya’s new County Competitiveness Index, its glass towers and arterial roads symbolizing the country’s uneven climb toward modernity.

Below it, Kiambu, Nyeri, and Murang’a cluster as distant contenders, while the northern counties such as Wajir, Tana River, Marsabit, linger in the margins, where roads end and opportunity thins.

The report, stitched together by the Ministry of Investments and Trade, offers both diagnosis and mirror: a nation divided by its own geography of progress. Human capital, it notes delicately, is destiny; the counties that teach and build thrive, the ones that wait are left behind. What Kenya now faces is not a lack of ambition, but the slow, uneven work of turning potential into parity.

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Rent vs Mortgage in Nairobi: Which Option Makes More Sense?

By Lulu Kiritu

In Nairobi, the question of rent versus mortgage has become a quiet referendum on modern adulthood. The city’s restless pulse makes permanence feel expensive, yet renting forever feels like treading water while others build wealth.

Mortgages promise stability but demand servitude and decades tethered to interest rates and the hope that tomorrow’s salary can outpace today’s debt. Renting, meanwhile, buys freedom but nothing tangible, only the right to move again when the lease runs out. In the end, Nairobians aren’t just choosing where to live; they’re deciding what kind of life to build, anchored or agile, owned or owed.

Read the full article here >>>>>

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