Walking on a tight rope

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

In today's newsletter,

• Businesses are in a calculative mode as they attempt to balance rising costs and diminishing sales.

• Airtel Africa has big plans for 2026. What are the expectations?

• The Law Society of Kenya (LSK) heads to their presidential elections. Who are the three opponents who intend to steer the legal vessel?

Walking on a tight rope

By Harry Njuguna

Kenyan businesses began the year in expansion mode, but with noticeably less swagger, as rising taxes, import charges, and technology costs swelled operating bills. Growth cooled from December’s pace, suggesting that activity remains positive yet increasingly cautious. Many firms chose to temper price increases despite higher input costs, wary of testing consumers in sectors already showing softer sales. The early mood of 2026 is not exuberance but calculation; a private sector advancing carefully, determined to protect margins in a tightening environment.

Read the details here >>>>>

What is Airtel Africa Cooking?

By Fred Obura 

Airtel Africa is sketching an expansive future: a public listing for its mobile-money arm, a satellite partnership with Starlink to close stubborn rural gaps, and a tentative step toward crypto services. In Kenya, where it trails Safaricom, the satellite play doubles as strategy and symbolism…a way to promise reach without laying endless fibre. The fintech IPO, meanwhile, reflects a continental pattern of telecom groups peeling off their faster-growing payments businesses to unlock value. And with regulators drafting new rules for virtual assets, Airtel is signaling that it intends not merely to connect Africa’s next billion users, but to mediate how they move their money as well.

Read the full article here »»»»»

INSIGHT : Inside the Race to Succeed Faith Odhiambo at the LSK

By Dennis Kaboro 

In the charged aftermath of the Gen Z protests, the campaign to succeed Faith Odhiambo as president of the Law Society of Kenya (LSK) has unfolded less like a routine professional election and more like an argument about the soul of the bar.

Charles Kanjama, the constitutional purist, casts the Society as a bulwark against state overreach, promising decibel and defiance in equal measure, while Mwaura Kabata, the institutional insider, counters that advocates need bread before banners and service before spectacle. Peter Wanyama, a legislative drafter fluent in the grammar of government, offers himself as the synthesis candidate…experienced enough within the machinery of the state to resist it, yet pragmatic about the profession’s economic anxieties.

What began as a contest of CVs has hardened into a referendum on identity: whether the L.S.K. should be a trade union, a constitutional sentinel, or the uneasy marriage of both.

Read this analysis here >>>>> 

Heads Up

On Your Watchlist 

In this snippet of the Just Money Podcast episode on Money, Investment Mistakes and the Trading Psychology with Gertrude Njeri & Stormzy Mwendwa, we dive deep into the psychology of wealth and the mechanics of saving versus investing.

Snapshots 

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Upcoming Events : InvestKenya Announces the Upcoming Kenya International Investment Conference (KIICO) 2026

Taking place at the Radisson Blu Upper Hill on March 25, 2026, the 4th Kenya International Investment Conference (KIICO) 2026 is set to be the largest and most impactful investment promotion conference in Kenya’s history. Register here »»»»»

During KIICO 2026, Kenya will also host the 2nd COMESA Investment Forum on March 26 and the Africa Green Industrialization Initiative (AGII) on March 27th.

Read more about it here »»»»»

Today in History 

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