When the Gulf Sneezes, Remittances Catch a Cold

Good evening. It’s Brian from The Kenyan Wall Street.

For the longest time, diaspora remittances have propped up households and the overall economy. The certainty that defined it has started to crumble, as some of the most dependable corridors reel from the gulf conflict.

These and more stories ahead…

When the Gulf Sneezes, Remittances Catch a Cold

By Harry Njuguna

Diaspora remittances to Kenya have turned negative on a year-to-date basis for the first time in 2026, with May inflows falling 10.4% year-on-year, the second consecutive monthly decline and a trend the World Bank had already flagged as apparent. The cause traces back to the Gulf, where roughly 500,000 Kenyans work and where the Middle East conflict and Saudi Arabia's new 15% VAT on money transfers have disrupted earnings and transfer channels alike, with the Saudi corridor alone having collapsed 25% last year. There is a reason for cautious optimism : Brent crude has fallen from a peak of US$126 a barrel in April to under US$80 as truce negotiations progress, and if that de-escalation holds, June's numbers could be the first sign of normalizing conditions in the corridor that matters most. One detail complicates the entire picture : a separate household survey found that Kenya's true diaspora inflows, once informal transfers are counted, run 43% higher than the official figures the CBK uses to track all of this.

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The Jackpot winner with an uncertain identity

By Fred Obura

A man named John Friendrich is suing SportPesa for KSh109.2 million in jackpot winnings, and the case has turned into something stranger than a payout dispute: the betting firm is now questioning whether he is who he says he is, nearly a decade after first accepting his deposits and bets. Friendrich's argument is straightforward : a regulated betting operator subject to strict identity verification rules cannot process a customer's transactions for nine years, profit from his participation throughout, and only discover a problem with his identity once he tries to collect winnings. SportPesa says it recently found evidence suggesting the birth certificate he relied on may not be his, a claim serious enough that the High Court has allowed it to be introduced as evidence, though the judge also gave Friendrich room to challenge it. The case raises an uncomfortable question for the betting industry: what is the point of Know Your Customer(KYC) rules if a company can revisit a customer's identity only when the money owed gets large enough to matter.

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The EV Company that can’t stop raising money

By Brian Nzomo

Spiro has just closed a US$270 million funding round, the kind of financial haul few African mobility startups ever see, and the speed of the raise tells its own story: US$215 million only weeks ago, then another US$55 million from a Chinese fund before the ink had dried. The company has already deployed over 100,000 electric motorcycles and 2,500 battery-swapping stations across seven countries, completed 30 million battery swaps, and built manufacturing operations in three of them. NewTrails joins a roster of investors that includes Impact Fund Denmark and FEDA, and is expected to help Spiro localize manufacturing through Chinese industrial partners, a detail that matters given the company's plans to push into Ethiopia and the DRC next. The round follows two debt facilities raised earlier this year, suggesting Spiro is now stacking equity on top of debt at a pace that signals genuine investor conviction, or genuine capital hunger, depending on how the next phase of expansion plays out. 

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