Stories that begin with something visible and ask what larger system is quietly being revealed.
For a decade the compliance desk killed every digital-asset proposal in five minutes. Kenya's 2026 licensing regime, and the discovery that a token carries a permanent forensic history while cash carries none, are turning the blockers into champions, just as dollarisation raises the stakes.
Policy & Regulation · 10 Nov 2026 · 4 min read
Between the 2026 virtual-asset and credit-provider rulebooks, Kenya has opened a licensing gate that will sort its financial sector into two camps: operators who treat supervision as a tax, and operators who build it into a moat their under-capitalised rivals cannot cross.
Policy & Regulation · 10 Nov 2026 · 4 min read
Kenya's missing middle is not unbankable; it is locked. Senior lenders sit on surplus collateral, rivals jam each other's statements, and proven borrowers stall between a KSh150,000 app loan and the KSh5 million facility their business has earned. The 2026 rulebook makes this fixable.
Policy & Regulation · 10 Nov 2026 · 4 min read
Data has become the asset regulators fight over and vendors quietly keep. When the ledger logic lives in someone else's black box, a bank discovers at renewal time that it no longer owns the intelligence its own customers paid to create.
Policy & Regulation · 10 Nov 2026 · 5 min read
National AI strategies are multiplying worldwide just as donor money is retreating, and the gap between a launch ceremony and a usable compute contract has never mattered more. For a small Kenyan firm, an application deadline is an administrative milestone, not an operating resource.
Policy & Regulation · 10 Nov 2026 · 5 min read
Copia Global’s failed administration, Miwani Sugar’s 25-year receivership, and Uchumi’s costly recovery process expose a deeper problem in Kenya’s insolvency system. Companies can spend years under administration while assets deteriorate, professional fees accumulate, and creditors wait for payment. As more technology businesses enter distress, the question is whether Kenya’s insolvency practitioners, regulators, and courts can demonstrate how much value they preserved, what their interventions cost, and how much money creditors actually recovered.
Policy & Regulation · 6 Nov 2026 · 13 min read
Generative AI is already automating the writing, coding, research and administrative work that once gave graduates their first step into formal employment. Kenya’s education system therefore faces a more immediate challenge than teaching students how to use chatbots. It must decide which human skills will still command value when machines can produce the assignment, draft the memo and increasingly perform the job itself.
Policy & Regulation · 28 Oct 2026 · 18 min read
KenGen has built Olkaria into one of the world’s largest geothermal power hubs, but the stalled $1 billion Microsoft-G42 data-centre project exposed a problem that now requires political commitment, regulatory coordination and a financing model built for hyperscale demand. Kenya must find a way to deliver hundreds of megawatts quickly, finance dedicated transmission and make technology buyers carry the cost without pushing more risk onto the Treasury or household power bills.
Policy & Regulation · 16 Oct 2026 · 9 min read
Licences that take months, rules that leave founders guessing and few safe places to test new products. FINTAK’s work with innovators and regulators across Africa points to seven fixes. Kenya’s draft payments law has just taken up one of them.
Policy & Regulation · 14 Oct 2026 · 6 min read
AI agents can now retrieve data, send files and initiate transactions without a person directing every step, creating a new problem for businesses deploying them. Kenyan law already attaches duties to organizations over customer data and automated electronic instructions, even as criminal liability for an agent’s unauthorized access still requires separate proof of intent and knowledge. The emerging governance challenge is therefore not simply what an agent was told to do, but what it was permitted to do, what it actually did and whether the institution can reconstruct the difference.
Policy & Regulation · 30 Sep 2026 · 12 min read
Uber’s exits from Tanzania, Nigeria and Uganda expose a weakness in ride-hailing that an app cannot solve alone. Fares must cover the full working journey, and a platform that leaves must account for the people who built its market.
Policy & Regulation · 28 Sep 2026 · 11 min read
Kenya’s draft National Payment System Bill would replace the 2011 law with activity-based licensing, mandatory interoperability, open-finance services and stronger Central Bank powers, while an accompanying policy proposes a national instant-payment switch. But the decisions that will shape competition remain largely unwritten, including who owns the new rail, who gets direct access, what participants pay and how a regulator that may also operate infrastructure separates those roles. Kenya has already digitised payments. It is now deciding who controls the architecture underneath them.
Policy & Regulation · 22 Sep 2026 · 22 min read