In Nairobi’s private hospitals, maternity wards now resemble surgical units. Soft overhead lights hum quietly, monitors beep steadily, and babies enter the world not through labour pains, but via precision incisions. In Kenya, a growing number of mothers are giving birth under the knife — and it’s becoming a costly trend. Over the past four years, Caesarean sections have been climbing steadily, carving out a bigger share of the country's deliveries.

Despite a modest dip, investor confidence and facilitation reforms signal long-term gains. At first glance, a decline in proposed manufacturing investments—from KSh 24.5 billion in 2023 to KSh 17.4 billion in 2024—might cause some hand-wringing in Nairobi’s policy corridors. But read between the numbers, and a different story emerges—one of quiet recalibration rather than retreat. The Kenya Investment Authority (Ken Invest), the nation’s main investment promotion agency

South Africa’s higher education landscape has changed markedly since the dawn of the 21st century. Enrolment in universities and colleges grew by nearly 60% from 2002 to 2024, reaching 980,000 students. The face of that growth is unmistakably Black: today, 77% of all students enrolled in higher education are Black Africans, up from 60% in 2002. On the surface, this appears to be a triumph of inclusion and a sign that society is finally correcting the imbalances of its aparthe

There was a time—not too long ago—when a letter meant something. A government notice, a birthday card, a bill, even junk mail. The postbox held a kind of daily promise. But in South Africa, the silent box at the gate is fast becoming an antique. According to the 2024 General Household Survey, a staggering 63% of South African households no longer receive any mail at all.

Over the past decade, South Africa has made dramatic strides in connecting its citizens to the internet. But the journey is far from equal. A closer look at the data reveals a digital revolution carried not by fibre-optic cables and home routers, but by mobile phones — and with it, a growing disparity in how people connect.

Kenya’s economy has been on a remarkable journey over the last five years, but beneath the surface of headline growth lies a fiscal balancing act that few can ignore. How does a country with burgeoning revenues manage the relentless climb of public spending? More importantly, can Kenya steer this fiscal ship without capsizing under the weight of its own ambitions?

Between 2020 and 2024, the average retail prices of Petrol (Super), Diesel, and Kerosene surged. Petrol jumped from KES 103.25 to KES 191.76 per litre, Diesel from KES 93.91 to KES 168.38, and Kerosene from KES 84.55 to KES 178.32. In percentage terms, Kerosene prices more than doubled (up 111%), while Petrol and Diesel nearly doubled, climbing 86% and 79%, respectively.

The growth of AI and digitalization is setting off a power revolution—one that is largely invisible but monumental in scale. At the heart of this transformation are data centers, the physical epicenters of the cloud. These warehouse-sized facilities, filled with blinking servers and high-performance chips, are poised to become one of the largest consumers of electricity in the U.S. economy by the end of this decade.

Kenya's merchandise trade reached a new high in 2024, hitting KSh 3.82 trillion, up 5.5% from the previous year. But beneath the headline growth lies a persistent structural vulnerability: Kenya continues to import far more than it exports. Despite a 10.4% rise in exports, imports outpaced them in absolute terms, expanding by KSh 94.3 billion—effectively erasing much of the export gain. The result? A trade deficit of KSh 1.59 trillion, barely improved from 2023’s KSh 1.60 tri

Kenya has long positioned itself as East Africa’s digital powerhouse—boasting a thriving tech scene, world-famous mobile banking systems, and an increasingly online public sector. But new data from the 2025 Economic Survey suggests that behind the country’s digital rise lies an unspoken emergency: a cybercrime wave of staggering proportions.

Kenya has turned the humble act of wheat farming into a spectacle of modern economic irony. The latest figures from the Economic Survey 2025 reveal a curious case: while local wheat production dawdled at 312,200 metric tonnes in 2024, imports swaggered into the national pantry at a whopping 2.3 million tonnes. That’s right — Kenya imported seven times more wheat than it produced.

In the decades since the early 1990s, Kenya’s banking landscape has been transformed—not by revolutions, but by mergers. According to Central Bank of Kenya (CBK) records, 57 mergers and acquisitions have been approved between 1989 and 2024. These transactions tell a broader story of regulatory reform, economic cycles, and institutional adaptation.

Between 2020 and 2024, electronic waste generated in the country rose from 46,211 to 53,559 metric tonnes—a staggering 15.9% increase in just four years. This rise, propelled by rapid digital adoption, is a paradox of progress: while mobile money, smartphones, and smart appliances have improved lives, their end-of-life handling presents a growing environmental and public health crisis.

In the span of just four years, internet access in this unnamed economy has leapt from 91.7 to 110.3 subscribers per 100 inhabitants, marking a 20.2% increase and crossing the symbolic threshold of universal penetration by 2023. This expansion in internet connectivity—spanning both wireless and fixed broadband—signals a deeper transformation in how the population communicates, transacts, and consumes information.

In Mombasa, beneath the ebb and flow of the Indian Ocean, a powerful network of undersea fibre-optic cables is reshaping the nation’s economic destiny. With names that could be mistaken for interstellar missions—2Africa, PEACE, LION2, and the soon-to-launch Africa-1 (2026)—these high-capacity arteries are the unsung heroes of Kenya’s broadband boom.

In a world brimming with technological triumphs and medical marvels, one of the greatest victories of modern public health—measles vaccination—stands at an uneasy crossroads.

60 kilometres southeast of Nairobi, a city is rising from scratch—not from ruins or sprawl, but from vision. Where once there was only...

In a world increasingly defined by its information density, clarity is no longer a luxury — it's a necessity. In 2024 alone, the average number of daily online newspaper visitors in Kenya surged to 5.4 million, a 9.8% year-on-year increase. At the same time, traditional print readership is in freefall. English-language daily newspapers — once a bastion of public discourse — saw circulation shrink by 12.3%, sliding to 37 million copies, continuing a trend that began at the daw

In the age of WhatsApp, Telegram, and Wi-Fi calls, it might seem archaic—quaint, even—to think people still make traditional mobile calls across borders. Yet for many Kenyans, especially those with relatives in regions with patchy internet or without smartphones, international voice calls remain a lifeline. That lifeline, however, comes at vastly different costs depending on where you're calling.

Kenya’s forests, long regarded as a key bulwark against climate change, are facing renewed commercial pressure. The 2025 Economic Survey shows a dramatic spike in state forest product sales, particularly softwood timber, which surged to 604,400 cubic metres in 2024—a more than 4 times  from the previous year.