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In 2023, Kenya reported 223 new cases of tuberculosis (TB) per 100,000 people—a rate more than 20 times higher than most wealthy countries. But a different number tells a deeper story: Kenya’s TB case fatality rate was 20% in 2023, down from 47% in 2005. Fewer are dying from TB, even as infections remain high. This drop is a quiet public health victory, built not on eradicating TB, but on improving survival. It marks a turning point: Kenya hasn’t won the war, but it has drama

Once the hallmark of solemn vows and sacraments, weddings in Kenya are undergoing a silent yet profound transformation. The traditional march down the church aisle, long viewed as the standard rite of passage, is now being increasingly bypassed—not out of heresy, but out of hard economic reasoning.

Yesterday, Treasury Cabinet Secretary John Mbadi presented his first national budget under the Kenya Kwanza administration, unveiling a bold KSh 4.3 trillion spending plan for the 2025/2026 financial year. But with only KSh 3.34 trillion in expected revenue, the numbers reveal a clear tension: ambition is outpacing affordability. The nearly KSh 900 billion gap will be bridged by debt, a choice that underscores both urgency and risk.

In a country where government opacity once seemed entrenched, something remarkable is happening: local administrations are finally letting the light in. Kenya’s County Budget Transparency Survey 2024 (CBTS), under the banner Open Budgets, Open Dialogue, by Bajeti Hub, reveals a dramatic leap in fiscal openness. Just four years ago, most counties failed to publish even half of their legally required budget documents. Today, that tide has turned. The share of key documents made

In the fight against climate change, the most dramatic transformations often unfold quietly. Kenya, with little fanfare, has staged an energy revolution. In 2024, nearly 92% of the country’s electricity came from renewable sources—a feat that puts many industrial giants to shame.

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.

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.

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 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 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.

A single chart can tell a complex story — and this one spans five years of effort to improve water and sanitation access across the country. It shows that while some indicators are on a steady climb, others have flatlined, revealing opportunities for policy recalibration.

While access to formal financial services has grown steadily for both men and women, the gender gap has stubbornly persisted—until recently. In 2024, the difference in formal financial inclusion between men and women fell to just 1.6 percentage points, down from 4.2 points in 2021, according to the latest national data.

Picture this: somewhere in Nairobi, a dusty safety deposit box lies undisturbed in a downtown vault. Inside? Share certificates worth millions—untouched, unnoticed, and unclaimed. Its owner, now halfway across the world, forgot all about it during a busy relocation. Multiply that forgotten box by thousands, and you begin to glimpse Kenya’s silent fortune: over KSh 4.3 Billion in unclaimed financial assets.

Solid waste. It’s not glamorous. But how we get rid of it—how we burn it, bury it, ignore it, or organize it—tells a deeply human story and a critical environmental one.

Imagine waking up one day to discover that your country owes over $101 billion or 13 trillion shillings in debt, but a significant portion of that money was borrowed illegally and can't be accounted for.