Kenya's flagship plan to host a <a target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer nofollow" href="https://www.techinkenya.com/articles/kenya-suspends-the-1-billion-microsoft-g42-data-center-a-bold-deal-that-the">gigawatt-scale AI data centre has stalled </a>because the national grid cannot supply it, and developers are now testing coastal, self-powered alternatives that bring a different set of regulatory questions.The $1 billion (KSh129 billion) geothermal-powered campus planned by Microsoft and Abu Dhabi's G42 at Olkaria, near Naivasha, was announced in May 2024 during President William Ruto's state visit to Washington. It was meant to anchor a new East Africa cloud region. By May 2026, reports said Treasury approval had stalled and the completion target had been missed. Officials describe the project as paused for restructuring rather than cancelled, and the sequence of events since then shows that electricity, more than data law, now decides where large-scale computing can be built in Kenya.<h2>The grid arithmetic behind the stall</h2>The numbers explain most of the problem. The full design called for 1 gigawatt (1,000 MW) of capacity, with a first phase of 100 MW. Data Center Dynamics put Kenya's total supply at about 3 GW, which would make the final build roughly a third of national capacity. Other figures are lower. Ruto himself cited about 2,300 MW of available capacity, and reporting on peak demand put the national high at 2,444 MW in January 2025.<ad-spot></ad-spot>On any of those measures, a 1 GW load is not a marginal addition. Ruto told an audience in Nairobi that switching on the facility would mean cutting power to roughly half the country. The comment, reported widely in early May 2026, was the first public admission that the project's scale had outrun the system built to serve it.Capacity is only part of the constraint. Reports on the stalled deal point to missing transmission infrastructure: a gigawatt-class load near Naivasha would need dedicated high-voltage lines that were not in place on the timeline the original announcement assumed. Geothermal output at Olkaria, operated by KenGen, is also already committed to the national grid, so dedicating steam to a single customer would have to be matched by new generation elsewhere.<h2>A commercial dispute alongside the technical one</h2>Power supply was not the only point of friction. Bloomberg and Reuters reporting, summarised by several Kenyan and international outlets, said talks stalled over Microsoft's request for guaranteed payments from the government for a fixed level of capacity, along with disagreements over how the power would be structured. The government declined to underwrite annual payments at that scale. A scaled-back version was reported to be under discussion.Officials have pushed back on the "stalled" label. John Tanui, principal secretary in the Ministry of Information, told Bloomberg that the project had not been withdrawn and that the size of the facility "still requires some structuring." Philip Thigo, Kenya's Special Technology Envoy, said the president's remarks were meant to underline the need for more generation, and that the government remains committed to reaching at least 10,000 MW by 2030. DCD reported that Ruto is seeking $38 billion in funding for energy and infrastructure expansion toward that goal.Smaller projects are still moving. EcoCloud broke ground on its Project Eagle geothermal data centre at the KenGen Green Energy Park in Olkaria in 2023, and a 60 MW project involving the local developer was reported to be under active discussion as a smaller alternative to the original plan.<h2>Water at Naivasha: a concern raised, not a documented cause</h2>Environmental questions around the Olkaria site have been raised, though they are not cited in official accounts as the reason for the stall. An Al Jazeera investigation published in August 2026 reported that Microsoft and G42 had not disclosed a project-specific water consumption figure or cooling design in their 2024 announcement, and that residents and conservation groups wanted that information made public before any construction.Existing figures show how tight the basin already is. A KenGen environmental and social impact assessment cited by Al Jazeera records 195,165 cubic metres of water abstracted from Lake Naivasha in July 2023 for domestic and commercial uses at Olkaria and Eburru, of which 153,918 cubic metres went to commercial operations at Olkaria. The assessment says abstraction was within limits permitted by the Water Resources Authority. Those figures describe current KenGen operations, not a data centre.<ad-spot></ad-spot>Silas Wanjala of the Lake Naivasha Riparian Association told Al Jazeera that the lake nearly dried up in 2010 because of over-abstraction and warned that heavy demand from new industrial users could repeat that. The Olkaria EcoCloud website states that its cooling will use water from Lake Naivasha together with harvested rainwater. Campaigners have asked for waterless or low-water cooling, wastewater recycling and community involvement in monitoring.<h2>Developers look to the coast and to their own generators</h2>With the grid-connected Naivasha route constrained, attention has shifted to projects that bring their own power. The clearest example is a proposal by Greek firm Amaco Energy Group for a $1.5 billion (KSh194 billion) AI data centre in Mombasa. Dubbed Project Hercules, it is designed to run on an independent, offshore liquefied natural gas power supply and its own cooling system, without drawing on the national grid.Amaco later announced a partnership with GE Vernova to supply gas turbines for a power barge. The company has identified Dongo Kundu and Kilindini in Mombasa as possible sites, citing the port and demand from firms at the nearby Special Economic Zone. Mombasa is also the landing point for undersea cables, with at least eight reported to be landing or planned along the coast which gives the location a connectivity advantage for latency-sensitive and international traffic.<ad-spot></ad-spot>The proposal remains early-stage. Kenya Engineer noted that the public record describes a proposal, not an approved or financed project, and that no technical fact sheet yet allows an independent engineer to test how the offshore plant would serve the onshore load. The publication also cautioned that "grid-free" does not mean infrastructure-free, since gas supply, marine works and cooling still have to be built and permitted. Amaco's CEO, Theodore Theodoropoulos, was reported to be in Kenya seeking government approval. Separately, China's Guodong Group has been reported to plan investment of up to KSh38.8 billion across data centres, fibre, cloud and smart city infrastructure, though the reports do not tie that plan to a power model.<h2>Off-grid does not mean unlicensed</h2>Developers who plan to avoid the grid still face the Energy and Petroleum Regulatory Authority (EPRA). Under the Energy Act, 2019, anyone generating electricity above 1 MW must hold an EPRA generation licence. The exemption covers generation for own use below 1 MW, and isolated mini-grids up to 1 MW, according to the Chambers Power Generation guide and EPRA's draft licensing regulations. Licence applicants must publish a 15-day public notice in at least two nationwide newspapers, giving the public a chance to object.A hyperscale facility draws far more than 1 MW, so a self-powered campus is effectively applying for a power-plant licence as well as building a data centre. Law firm Wamae &amp; Allen, in a guide on data centre readiness, argues that power is now the first legal question for investors and that the exemption promoters often cite does not cover projects of this size. The firm's reading is that Kenya's legal framework is largely in place and the grid is the binding constraint.<ad-spot></ad-spot>New rules may widen the options. EPRA has published a 2026 regulatory instrument on electricity market, bulk supply and open access. Under the access process described in the Chambers 2026 guide, a licensee or eligible consumer applies to the transmission licensee, which carries out a technical assessment within 30 days and passes its findings to the system operator for a no-objection. EPRA then has 60 days to approve the agreement. A solar-industry guide reads the framework as allowing large consumers such as data centres to sign long-term power purchase agreements without Kenya Power as the buyer, though that interpretation comes from a commercial source rather than EPRA.<h2>The policy questions on the table</h2>Three issues recur in the reporting and in stakeholder submissions, and none has been settled.<ul><li>Sequencing power and approvals. Legal advisers say developers should secure power before land and buildings. For the state, the Olkaria case raised the question of whether capacity guarantees should be granted in stages. One account said the government offered a phased approach starting at 200 MW, though that claim comes from a single secondary outlet and was not confirmed by officials.</li><li>Competition with households and industry. Wamae &amp; Allen notes that every megawatt promised to a data centre is a megawatt not available to a household or factory, which is why regulators are weighing grid reliability against investment inflows.</li><li>Ownership and control of self-contained sites. Dawan Africa's analysis argues that without clear rules on local ownership, skills, data protection and power, a gas-fired coastal campus could operate as an enclave that serves foreign investors first, with little connection to the national system.</li></ul>The Ministry of Energy and Petroleum's national plans point to a larger system. The 10,000 MW target for 2030 would more than triple today's supply, and the $38 billion funding ask has not been reported as secured. Until new generation and transmission arrive, the options for hyperscale computing in Kenya are smaller phased builds on the grid, such as the reported 60 MW EcoCloud project, or private generation that must clear EPRA licensing, environmental review and, in Mombasa's case, marine engineering that has yet to be publicly detailed.

Kenya's Data Centre Push Hits a Power Wall: Why the 1-Gigawatt Plan Stalled

Bolt has launched a paid membership for riders in Kenya about six weeks after the High Court blocked enforcement of the 18 per cent commission cap, moving the contest between ride-hailing platforms away from per-trip pricing and toward recurring customer fees and stored credit.The service, Bolt Plus, was unveiled in Nairobi on October 15. It costs KSh280 a month or KSh899 a year, and new subscribers get the first month free. Bolt is also running an introductory rate of KSh119 a month for the first six months. Members receive ride cashback credited to their Bolt Balance, free delivery on eligible Bolt Food and retail orders, priority driver matching and three free ride cancellations a month.<h2>What Bolt is selling</h2>Bolt's launch material lists cashback of 5 to 10 per cent on rides, depending on the ride category, while the company's Kenya page and other launch coverage describe it as up to 10 per cent. The cashback lands as Bolt Balance credit that can only be spent on future Bolt trips. The subscription fee includes VAT, renews automatically, and can be cancelled in the app up to 24 hours before the billing cycle ends, according to Bolt's Kenya subscription terms.<ad-spot></ad-spot>Ivy Njeri Maingi, general manager of Bolt Food in Kenya, said at the launch that a subscription works only when customers can see the value in it. Bolt operates in nine Kenyan cities, and Bolt Food works with more than 2,000 restaurants and retail outlets and over 2,500 couriers.On drivers, Bolt has been direct. Maingi said riders, drivers and couriers are not affected by the service, and that Bolt and its partners carry the cost. The company said it expects the subscription to raise app usage, which could translate into more trips for drivers and couriers.<h2>How the commission cap fell</h2>The subscription arrives in a market where the rules on what platforms can charge drivers are unsettled.Regulation 9 of the National Transport and Safety Authority (NTSA) rules for transport network companies required that the commission in a driver agreement not exceed 18 per cent of total trip earnings. The ceiling followed driver protests over commissions of 25 to 30 per cent. Uber subsequently cut its commission from 25 per cent to 18 per cent.Bolt Operations OU petitioned the High Court in 2025 to challenge the regulations, including the cap, the data retention rules and the regulator's powers. In early September, Justice Roselyne Aburili blocked enforcement of the cap, finding that the government had not produced sufficient empirical evidence that it was necessary or proportionate. The judge faulted the government for changing commission limits and licensing requirements without public participation, and that the court said commissions should be settled between the contracting parties. The Consumer Federation of Kenya (COFEK) summarised the grounds as the absence of a regulatory impact assessment and economic justification, and the gazettement of the rules while Parliament was in recess.The court did not strike down the whole framework. The judge declined to void the regulations outright because doing so would remove safety standards and driver verification checks. The judgment also halted enforcement of a requirement that platforms keep trip, driver, passenger and payment records for three years and hand them to the NTSA on demand. COFEK noted that the position could change if the government redoes the process within the year.The government has not stepped back. The Transport Ministry was in the final stages of gazetting draft 2026 amendment regulations that would set a minimum compensation per trip for ride-hailing and motorcycle-taxi drivers, and had written to the 18 licensed platforms seeking submissions by July 6.<h2>Analysis: can KSh280 buy enough loyalty?</h2>The following section is TechInKenya analysis. The arithmetic uses Bolt's published prices and cashback rates, and the platform-side figures are illustrative assumptions, not Bolt data.For a rider, the break-even point is a function of the cashback rate. At 10 per cent, a KSh280 fee is recovered by KSh2,800 in monthly ride spend. At 5 per cent, the threshold doubles to KSh5,600. On the KSh119 introductory price, the 10 per cent threshold falls to KSh1,190, and on the annual plan (about KSh75 a month) to roughly KSh750. In practice, the offer is attractive mainly to people who ride several times a week, which is the group platforms most want to keep.<ad-spot></ad-spot>The stored-credit design matters as much as the discount. Cashback that can only be spent inside Bolt gives a member a reason to open Bolt first, even when a rival quotes a slightly lower fare. Priority matching adds a service reason to stay. Both work on switching behaviour, which is the stated purpose of such bundles across the industry.For Bolt, the economics are tighter than the headline suggests. Take a hypothetical subscriber who spends KSh4,000 a month on rides, with commission at 18 per cent. Bolt would collect about KSh720 in commission and KSh280 in fees, and return KSh400 in credit. Cashback of 10 per cent of the fare consumes more than half of an 18 per cent commission on that rider's trips, so the subscription only pays if it lifts trip frequency or pulls volume from competitors. Unredeemed balances and members who underuse the benefits would improve the margin, but Bolt has not published subscriber numbers, redemption rates or the cost of the programme.The cap's removal adds a second consideration. Regulation 9, as reported, applies to the commission charged on driver earnings. A fee paid by riders sits outside that text. Nothing in the reporting indicates how a redrafted rule would treat rider-side subscriptions, but a platform that earns recurring revenue from riders has less reliance on commission rates as its main lever, which weakens the practical effect of any future ceiling.<h2>Analysis: will drivers trust it?</h2>Bolt's claim that drivers are unaffected is plausible on the narrow mechanics. Cashback is a rider-side credit and does not change the fare, so the per-trip payout is unchanged. Bolt's website also states that Bolt Plus benefits do not affect driver earnings.<ad-spot></ad-spot>Three points remain unresolved in the public record. First, priority matching changes who gets dispatched first. Drivers do not lose income directly, but riders without a membership may wait longer at peak times, and the platform's data on that effect is not public. Second, the three free monthly cancellations raise the question of who absorbs the driver's wasted trip. Bolt has not said whether drivers are compensated when a member cancels for free. Third, commission rates are now a matter of negotiation rather than a fixed ceiling, and drivers have a recent history of acting on that issue. A strike that began on November 3, 2025 switched off Uber, Bolt and Faras across major cities, and Little Cab recorded an influx of drivers and riders as a result.Driver economics are also tied to supply. Research puts active ride-hailing drivers nationally at roughly 300,000 to 350,000. A subscription that increases rider demand benefits drivers only if trip growth outpaces the growth in the number of drivers sharing it. Bolt and Ipsos' 2026 Gig Economy Report, cited by Bolt, puts average monthly driver earnings on its platform at KSh63,000, with the top 20 per cent earning up to KSh184,000. Drivers have also complained that VAT on platform commission reduces their take, as reported when Faras and Uber raised minimum fares.

Bolt Plus vs the 18% Cap: Why Subscriptions Are Becoming Ride-Hailing's New Battleground in Kenya

Microsoft has told staff at its Africa Development Centre (ADC) in Nairobi that the engineering operation will shut down, ending a seven-year effort to build a global product-development base in Kenya. Employees were informed on Monday, October 12, 2026. On the same day, Information and Digital Economy Cabinet Secretary William Kabogo met a Microsoft delegation to discuss the impact on local jobs and on investor confidence in the country's technology sector.Microsoft has not publicly confirmed the closure in those terms. A company spokesperson described the changes as "proposed" and tied them to a wider global restructuring, while saying Microsoft will keep employees in Kenya and continue serving customers in the region. The company has not disclosed how many jobs will go, when the centre will stop operating, or whether affected engineers will be offered roles elsewhere in the company.<h2>What Microsoft has said</h2>According to CIO Africa, a source who worked at the centre said employees were told the engineering centre would close. The same outlet quoted a Microsoft spokesperson as saying: "These are proposed changes that are part of the global changes within Microsoft." The company said it would continue to have staff in Kenya and support the country's digital transformation ambitions.<ad-spot></ad-spot>The company's statement says the changes have affected the engineering department in Kenya but does not use the word closure, and does not deny one either. In effect, the staff account and the corporate statement describe the same event in different terms, and the gap between them has not been resolved. Microsoft has not publicly described the Nairobi centre as closed, and that the staff claims reported by several outlets remain unconfirmed by the company.<h2>The government meeting</h2>Kabogo published an account of his meeting on X. The Microsoft delegation was led by Jeff Bullwinkel, Vice President and Deputy General Counsel for Corporate, External and Legal Affairs in Europe, the Middle East and Africa, together with the Microsoft East Africa team led by Angela Ng'ang'a, who was named East Africa country lead in August.The Cabinet Secretary said the talks covered the adoption of artificial intelligence in government, digitisation of public services, cybersecurity, digital infrastructure and skills programmes delivered through universities and other institutions. He added that Microsoft has supported the development of Kenya's National AI Policy and the wider innovation ecosystem.<div data-embed-url="https://x.com/honkabogo/status/2109605616247361922?s=20" data-embed-type="twitter"></div>On the closure, Kabogo said Microsoft briefed him on its evolving operations in Kenya in the context of its global restructuring. He said he stressed the importance of retaining local talent, protecting jobs at the Nairobi engineering centre and sustaining investor confidence. He also reaffirmed the government's commitment to a competitive and transparent investment environment. According to Kabogo, Microsoft restated its long-term commitment to Kenya, and the Ministry and the company will develop a joint action plan. No timeline, job figures or specific measures were published.It is not clear from public information whether the meeting was convened because of the closure, or whether it had been scheduled earlier.<h2>From a $100 million promise to a winding down</h2>Microsoft announced the Africa Development Centres in May 2019, with Nairobi and Lagos as the first two sites, backed by a planned investment of $100 million over five years. The Nairobi centre officially opened in March 2022 with more than 450 engineers and product leaders, and Catherine Muraga took over as managing director that June.The work done there was product engineering rather than customer support. The centre's teams covered identity systems (the infrastructure behind signing in to Microsoft accounts), Microsoft 365, Windows and devices, security and developer tools. The same building in Westlands, Dunhill Towers, also houses Microsoft Research Africa and the Microsoft Garage. Microsoft has not said whether those units are affected.<ad-spot></ad-spot>Lagos moved first. In May 2024, Microsoft said it had decided to close the Africa Development Centre in Nigeria, which opened in 2022, and that some employees there would be affected. The spokesperson at the time described workforce adjustments as a regular part of managing the business, and the company said it would continue operating in Nigeria. Reuters reported that in December 2022, Microsoft President Brad Smith had cited more than 200 engineers in Lagos and more than 500 in Nairobi. With the Lagos centre gone, Nairobi was the last of the two original hubs.When the Lagos closure was announced, Microsoft said it would not affect its Kenyan operations. Nairobi employees say they had seen signs of trouble for some time.<h2>How many jobs are at stake</h2>Between 400 and 500 engineering jobs are estimated to be at risk following plans to close the Nairobi engineering unit. Because official internal headcounts remain unreleased, exact figures vary across different reporting methods and timelines.<h2>The global restructuring</h2>The Nairobi decision follows several rounds of cuts at Microsoft. The company cut about 4,800 roles in July 2026, roughly 2.1 percent of its global workforce, mostly in sales and Xbox. The internal memo at the time said engineering teams would adjust their structure and priorities and that more changes were coming. A further 268 Xbox jobs were cut on September 22, and Microsoft shed about 6,000 jobs in May 2025.<ad-spot></ad-spot>Microsoft has not given a reason for closing the Nairobi centre, and that no public evidence directly links the closure to the global cuts, although the company's own spokesperson has framed it that way.<h2>Accounts from former staff</h2>A September 23 LinkedIn post by Kipkorir Arap Kirui, a former ADC senior product manager now at Google. He wrote about what current employees had told him: that near the end of the quarter, staff were offered a choice between a performance improvement plan and a "voluntary" exit, and that those who took the plan reportedly had six weeks to improve. Some accounts also claimed employees were restricted from showing separation agreements to independent lawyers. All of this is described as secondhand and unverified, and said Microsoft has not responded to it.<h2>Policy backdrop</h2>The closure lands as Kenya moves to formalise its approach to artificial intelligence. The Ministry of Information, Communications and the Digital Economy opened the draft Kenya Artificial Intelligence and Other Emerging Technologies Policy 2026 for public comment on July 28, with submissions closing on August 4. The draft follows the Kenya Artificial Intelligence Strategy 2025 to 2030.The draft requires AI platform providers to ensure data generated in Kenya is governed under Kenyan law, and proposes a National AI and Other Emerging Technologies Council and a Kenya AI Safety Institute. Law firm Bowmans noted in a July 31 analysis that the draft has broad extraterritorial reach and does not itself create binding obligations. The scope described by Khusoko extends to foreign companies whose AI systems are used in Kenya, cloud providers, model developers and data annotation firms serving the Kenyan market.Kabogo's account of the Microsoft meeting listed support for the National AI Policy as one of the areas of cooperation. Neither side has said how the engineering closure will affect that support.<h2>Public reaction</h2>The announcement drew immediate commentary on X. In a post quoting Kabogo's statement, user @tingaramba argued that Kenya does not need Microsoft representatives to adopt AI, saying the country has capable, unemployed young people who can do the work, and claiming that frontier large language models are trained by Kenyans. The user also accused officials of engaging large technology companies to justify public spending. The post offered no supporting figures, and the claims about model training and public spending are the commenter's own assertions rather than established findings. Kabogo's statement did not address them.<div data-embed-url="https://x.com/tingaramba/status/2109638509250142593?s=20" data-embed-type="twitter"></div>The reaction speaks to a point the ministry itself raised in the meeting: keeping experienced engineers employed in Kenya. How many of the affected staff remain in the local market, and on what terms they leave, depends on details Microsoft has yet to release.For now, the most complete account of the situation comes from the employees who were present on Monday. Microsoft has said the changes are proposed, the government has said an action plan will follow, and neither has put a number or a date on the record.

Microsoft to Close Nairobi Africa Development Centre as Hundreds of Engineering Jobs Hang in the Balance

Kenya's Energy and Petroleum Regulatory Authority (EPRA) has removed the 15,000 kilowatt-hour (kWh) monthly limit that restricted access to the dedicated e-mobility electricity tariff, allowing commercial EV charging operators to grow their power consumption without being moved into a costlier billing category.The change was published in Gazette Notice 15188 on September 18, 2026, according to amends the electricity tariff schedule EPRA first set in 2023. The notice was signed by EPRA Acting Director-General Dr. Joseph Oketch. The headline rates are unchanged: KES 16 per kWh during standard hours and KES 8 per kWh during off-peak periods, for customers supplied by Kenya Power at 240 or 415 volts.For operators, the practical effect is that a busy charging hub, battery-swap network or bus depot no longer risks losing the preferential rate simply because it has become successful.<h2>What the old cap did</h2>When EPRA introduced the e-mobility tariff in 2023, it set a monthly band of 200 to 15,000 kWh. Commercial and industrial consumption above 15,000 kWh fell under a separate category with its own tariff and demand charge. Operators crossing the line faced a penalty of up to KES 5 extra per unit.<ad-spot></ad-spot>That structure produced an odd incentive. Some operators had deliberately limited how many vehicles they served at a single station to stay under the threshold and keep the cheaper rate. Citizen Digital reported that operators had lobbied against the cap for months, citing demand that was already exceeding the monthly limit, and that EPRA had signalled the restriction could be removed by the end of the current tariff control period in June 2026.The scale of the problem was set out by the operators themselves. BasiGo runs 17 charging stations, most of which were exceeding the old limit, and more than 20 of Spiro's 500 battery-swapping stations were in the same position.<h2>"Unlimited" versus a rolling threshold</h2>The amended tariff framework replaces the fixed 15,000 kWh monthly ceiling for the e-mobility category with a dynamic Energy Consumption Threshold (ECT), rather than an outright, unconditional removal of limits.Under this revised schedule—which also applies to Commercial &amp; Industrial (CI) and Small Commercial (SC3) consumer classes—qualifying customers must first satisfy a rolling consumption threshold. Any units consumed beyond this baseline are billed under the discounted Time-of-Use (ToU) tariff, subject to the conditions outlined in the gazette schedule.The baseline threshold is determined by an operator's historical usage:<ul><li>Existing customers: Calculated using the average consumption over the preceding six consecutive months.</li><li>New customers: Calculated using the average consumption over their first three consecutive months.</li></ul>In practice, this mechanism replaces a static, uniform cap with a personalized, rolling baseline tied to each operator's actual demand. While consumption above this baseline continues to receive preferential discounted rates, access remains governed by the specific qualifications, time windows, and compliance conditions stipulated in the official gazette notice.<h2>Off-peak rules and other adjustments</h2>The off-peak rate is the part of the tariff designed to move charging demand to periods when the grid is less loaded. Off-peak on weekdays runs from 10pm to 6am. On Saturdays and public holidays it covers midnight to 8am and 2pm to midnight, and the whole of Sunday is off-peak. The KES 8 rate represents a 50 per cent discount on the energy charge, a structure in place since 2023.<ad-spot></ad-spot>For comparison, a small business using more than 100 units a month pays KES 19 per unit, and a household in the same band pays KES 18.57. Those are energy charges only and exclude pass-through costs, taxes and levies.The same notice made several other changes:<ul><li>Small commercial, e-mobility and industrial customers in categories CI1 to CI7 will have their consumption threshold calculated from the average of their first three months of billing, rather than a fixed number.</li><li>Businesses in those categories that operate at full capacity around the clock can qualify for a 5% discount on off-peak rates, once Kenya Power verifies their output.</li><li>Net metering and "power dumping" are formally defined for the first time. Customers who feed surplus renewable power into the grid are credited for half of what they export, and power pushed into the grid without prior written approval is billed at the full base tariff, even where a net-metering agreement exists.</li></ul>The changes apply retroactively from July 1, 2025. EPRA has not issued enforcement notices or retroactive billing advisories under the new dumping definition, and the notice gives no stated justification for the e-mobility change.<h2>The demand behind the decision</h2>EPRA's move follows a steep rise in e-mobility electricity use. E-mobility consumption rose 300 per cent to 5.04 GWh in the year to June 2025, from 1.26 GWh, with 69 customers on the tariff at that point.Drawing on Kenya Power and EPRA data, recent figures show:<ul><li>E-mobility electricity sales grew more than 113-fold in under three years, from 13,500 kWh in July 2023 to more than 1.5 million kWh in April 2026.</li><li>Annual consumption in 2025 reached 8,433,437 kWh, up 188% from 2,922,692 kWh in 2024. Revenue from EV charging rose to KES 125.9 million from KES 64.8 million.</li><li>EPRA's own statistics show e-mobility consumption grew 152.49 per cent in July to December 2025 against the same period a year earlier, from 1.81 GWh to 4.57 GWh. That is still only 0.08 per cent of Kenya's total electricity consumption, though it is the fastest-growing customer category the regulator tracks.</li><li>Cumulative e-mobility revenue for Kenya Power stood at KES 382 million over 34 months, with Nairobi accounting for 71 per cent.</li></ul>On the vehicle side, Registered EVs rising to 24,754 in 2025 from 796 in 2022, driven largely by electric motorcycles, buses and fleet vehicles in urban areas. The same report cited earlier Kenya Power figures showing motorcycles at 62 per cent of the electric vehicles then on the road. Charging infrastructure has grown more slowly: The Electric Mobility Association of Kenya as estimating about 300 charging points nationally as of June 2025, with Kenya Power adding a 45-station rollout across six counties plus sites in Voi, Sabaki and other corridor towns.<h2>What operators say it enables</h2>Moses Nderitu, vice president of the Electric Mobility Association of Kenya and managing director of BasiGo Kenya, said the additional headroom would let operators expand infrastructure to serve motorbikes, vans and private EVs, not only vehicles of their own brands. That would matter for a market where public charging remains thin relative to fleet growth.<ad-spot></ad-spot>For Kenya Power removing the disincentive to exceed 15,000 kWh is expected to steer more charging demand onto the utility's metered network rather than private generation or informal arrangements. The same report noted that overnight charging adds load to a grid that already curtails significant surplus generation. The utility's financial position offers context: Kenya Power posted fiscal 2026 revenue up 8.6% to KES 238.24 billion and profit up 2.1% to KES 24.99 billion for the year ended June, with management citing the tariff structure as limiting revenue growth. The utility has not linked that comment to the e-mobility change.<h2>The wider incentive picture</h2>The tariff change sits alongside other state measures aimed at electric mobility. Zero-rated VAT on electric buses, bicycles, motorcycles and lithium-ion batteries, lower excise duty on selected EVs, and a reduced stamp duty for charging stations from 2027. President William Ruto has also announced that the first 100,000 electric vehicles imported into Kenya will be exempt from import duty.Those incentives faced a scare during the Finance Bill 2026 process, when a proposal would have moved e-mobility components and solar technologies from VAT zero-rated to VAT exempt status. Parliament rejected the proposal and retained zero-rated status in the Finance Act 2026, allowing local assemblers and manufacturers to reclaim input VAT on production.

EPRA Scraps 15,000 kWh Cap on Kenya's KES 16 EV Charging Tariff

Uber Technologies has shut down its ride-hailing operations in Nigeria and Uganda, effective September 2, 2026, marking the fourth and fifth African market exits for the San Francisco based company in just over a year. The closures landed on the same day CEO Dara Khosrowshahi announced the company's largest round of layoffs since the COVID-19 pandemic, cutting approximately 3,300 jobs, or 10 percent of its global workforce.In a statement sent to riders and drivers in both countries, Uber said the decision followed "a thorough review of our business" and would take effect immediately. The company's help centres in both markets will remain open until September 23 to resolve outstanding disputes and refunds, but the ride-hailing app itself went dark the same day the notice was sent."This decision is limited strictly to these two markets and does not impact our operations across the rest of the continent," an Uber spokesperson said. "Uber remains deeply committed to Sub-Saharan Africa, where we continue to see robust growth and long-term opportunity."<ad-spot></ad-spot>The exit ends a 12-year run in Nigeria, where Uber launched in Lagos in 2014 before expanding into other cities and even introducing a boat service in 2019 to help commuters navigate the city's notorious traffic congestion. In Uganda, Uber had operated for a decade, having entered Kampala in 2016.<h2>A pattern of withdrawal across the continent</h2>Nigeria and Uganda are not isolated cases. Uber left Côte d'Ivoire in September 2025 after six years of operations, ceding the Abidjan market to Russia's Yango. It then exited Tanzania on January 30, 2026, following a prolonged standoff with the Land Transport Regulatory Authority (LATRA) over fixed fares and commission caps, a dispute that had already forced a nine-month suspension in 2022 before Uber briefly returned in 2023.With Nigeria and Uganda gone, Uber's African footprint has narrowed from nine countries to five: South Africa, Kenya, Ghana, Egypt and Morocco. The company entered the continent through Johannesburg in 2013, and South Africa alone still accounts for roughly 25 of the cities where Uber operates in Africa.<ad-spot></ad-spot>The underlying pressures in Nigeria and Uganda mirror those that pushed Uber out of Tanzania and Côte d'Ivoire: rising fuel and vehicle maintenance costs, intensifying competition from Bolt, inDrive, SafeBoda and other regional platforms, and recurring driver disputes over fares and commission structures. In Nigeria, the removal of the fuel subsidy in 2023 and the naira's depreciation sharply increased operating costs for drivers, and in March 2026 drivers working across Uber, Bolt and inDrive staged protests arguing that platform prices no longer covered their expenses. Ibrahim Ayoade, general secretary of the Amalgamated Union of App-Based Transporters of Nigeria, told BusinessDay he was surprised by the timing given that Nigeria had previously been identified as a growth market for the company.<h2>Layoffs, remote work cuts, and a robotaxi pivot</h2>The market exits landed alongside a sweeping internal restructuring. Khosrowshahi told staff in a memo that Uber would eliminate about 3,300 roles, reduce the number of employees positioned seven or more reporting layers below the CEO by 20 percent, and cut the number of "micro-teams" with only one or two direct reports by nearly half. Uber had approximately 34,000 employees worldwide at the end of 2025, according to its annual report filed with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission, meaning the cuts affect roughly one in ten employees globally.The restructuring also tightens Uber's approach to remote work. The company will require most remote staff to relocate closer to an office, concentrating much of its workforce around hubs in San Francisco and New York, and will limit fully remote employees to less than 1 percent of its total headcount going forward. Uber said it would also reinforce compliance with its existing hybrid work policy, which requires three days a week in the office.Khosrowshahi framed the changes as an effort to make the company "simpler and faster" and to "create more capacity to invest in our future," pointing to plans to redirect savings toward growth initiatives and autonomous vehicle development, an area where the company has signalled investment exceeding 10 billion dollars. The cuts follow narrower reductions earlier in 2026, including a 23 percent cut to Uber's People and Places division in June and a 10 percent reduction in its Community Operations customer service group in July.Notably, the layoffs come during a period of financial growth rather than contraction. Uber reported gross bookings of 58 billion dollars for the quarter ended June 30, 2026, up 24 percent year over year, with revenue of 14.2 billion dollars, up 12 percent, and non-GAAP net income growing 29 percent to 1.7 billion dollars. The restructuring, therefore, appears oriented toward organisational efficiency and reinvestment priorities rather than a response to weakening demand.<h2>What it means for Kenya's ride-hailing sector</h2>Uber has given no indication that it intends to leave Kenya, and the company has publicly separated the Nigeria and Uganda decisions from its operations elsewhere on the continent. Still, the exits carry lessons for a market where regulatory debate over ride-hailing has intensified. A senior Uber executive, speaking to Capital FM Kenya on condition of anonymity, said regulatory uncertainty was already shaping investment decisions locally. "So already, what we're finding is the appetite to invest in Kenya is reduced," the executive said, adding that a recent investment request for the Kenyan market had been turned down.<ad-spot></ad-spot>The comment lands as Kenyan authorities weigh tighter oversight of the sector, including proposals under consideration on minimum driver compensation and fare structures. A TIFA Research survey released in August estimated that between 300,000 and 350,000 drivers are active in Kenya's ride-hailing industry. Bolt raised its fares in Kenya by about 6 percent in May, citing higher fuel and operating costs, an adjustment that illustrates the same cost pressures that have strained Uber's economics elsewhere on the continent.Africa's broader ride-hailing market continues to expand despite Uber's retreat. According to Mordor Intelligence's Africa Ride-Hailing Market Analysis, the sector is projected to grow from 2.53 billion dollars in 2025 to 2.64 billion dollars in 2026, reaching 3.25 billion dollars by 2031. That growth is being driven by wider smartphone penetration, expanding mobile money infrastructure and continued investment in digital mobility platforms, factors that have made the continent attractive even as individual operators like Uber recalibrate where they choose to compete.For drivers in Nigeria and Uganda, the immediate concern is transition rather than long-term market dynamics. Many already operate across multiple platforms, meaning supply could migrate quickly to Bolt, inDrive and SafeBoda. Uber has not disclosed compensation or exit packages for affected drivers in either country, saying only that it has been in touch with active drivers to extend support during the transition period.

Uber's African Retreat Deepens as Nigeria and Uganda Exits Coincide With Global Job Cuts

Two of the biggest distribution platforms for publishers announced sweeping changes to how they pay creators this week, and neither change favours the people who have spent years building an audience on them. X (formerly Twitter) is retiring its Creator Revenue Sharing programme entirely, while YouTube is doubling the eligibility bar for its Partner Program (YPP). Together, the announcements land just months after TechInKenya reported on how <a target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer nofollow" href="https://www.techinkenya.com/articles/google-broke-the-web-it-built-now-its-selling-you-the-pieces">Google's AI Overviews and AI Mode have already cut into referral traffic for publishers </a>worldwide, including in Kenya. The pattern is becoming difficult to ignore: platforms that publishers depend on for reach and revenue can, and do, change the rules with little warning.<h2>What X Changed</h2>X announced on August 7 that it would stop accepting new applications into its Creator Revenue Sharing programme immediately, according to the company's post on its X Creators account. Existing members will not lose money already owed to them. X said they will receive three final payouts under the old system: one on August 14, another on August 28, and a final payment around September 11 covering earnings through September 7, when the legacy programme officially closes.<ad-spot></ad-spot>From September 8, existing Revenue Sharing participants can begin applying for the replacement, called the Original Content Rewards Programme. X's head of creators, Allegra Jacchia, said the old system's incentives had become "misaligned," encouraging accounts to farm engagement through reposted or recycled content rather than produce anything new.The new programme changes what gets paid, not just how much. Payouts will be calculated on qualified impressions from Premium subscribers viewing original content specifically in the home timeline, rather than the broader engagement metrics the old system used. To qualify, creators will need an active Premium subscription themselves, at least 500 verified followers, and roughly 500,000 home timeline impressions from verified users over 90 days, according to X's published criteria.The shift narrows the paying audience considerably. X's own subscriber filings put Premium membership at roughly 4.4 million users as of March 2026, against a platform with hundreds of millions of monthly users. That means payouts now depend on a slice of the audience that, by design, includes people who pay specifically to avoid seeing ads. Publishers who built X followings around aggregation, trending commentary, or high-volume posting under the old ad revenue share model will need to re-qualify under stricter, narrower rules, or lose the income stream entirely.<h2>What YouTube Changed</h2>YouTube's announcement, made via an official blog post this week, raises the entry bar for the YouTube Partner Program for the first time since 2018. Currently, a channel qualifies for monetisation with 1,000 subscribers and either 4,000 hours of public watch time over the previous year, or 10 million Shorts views within 90 days. From February 1, 2027, new applicants will need double those thresholds: 8,000 watch hours or 20 million Shorts views.Crucially, the change applies to new applicants, not to creators already inside the Partner Program. Existing YPP members will be grandfathered in, though YouTube says they will need to accept updated terms by January 31, 2027, to keep earning. For Shorts specifically, creators will now need to maintain a recurring 10 million views over any 90-day window to keep earning from the Shorts Creator Pool, though falling short of that mark will not get a channel removed from the programme outright.<ad-spot></ad-spot>YouTube is pairing the higher entry requirements with an expansion of its cheaper Premium Lite subscription tier to every market where standard Premium is already offered. According to the company, creators earn a 30 percent share of net Premium Lite revenue and 60 percent from standard Premium, split 55 percent to long-form video and 45 percent to Shorts. YouTube's VP of Creator Product, Amjad Hanif, framed the higher benchmarks as a reflection of the platform's scale, citing more than 200 billion daily Shorts views and over a billion hours of daily TV watch time through YouTube.The reaction from the creator community was immediate and largely negative. Educational channel vidIQ described the move as "raising the bar for new creators," while other creators called it a serious setback for anyone trying to break into monetisation from scratch. Rival platform Kick used the moment to pitch its own partner programme to displaced creators.<h2>Why This Matters Beyond the Platforms Themselves</h2>Neither change is happening in isolation. X closed applications to its old programme with essentially no warning period. YouTube gave more notice, roughly six months, but the direction is the same: platforms are free to reset the terms creators and publishers have built businesses around, at a pace and on conditions the platforms alone decide.This is the same dynamic TechInKenya has previously reported on with Google Search. AI Overviews and AI Mode have cut referral clicks to publisher websites significantly, with research cited in that earlier reporting showing click-through rates falling by roughly 47 percent when an AI summary appears above search results. Small and medium publishers, the kind most common in Kenya's digital media landscape, have absorbed the sharpest declines in that shift. Algorithm and indexing changes on search platforms have periodically deindexed or reindexed large swaths of publisher content with little explanation, a risk that has nothing to do with the quality of the reporting itself.<ad-spot></ad-spot>The common thread across Google Search, X, and YouTube is straightforward: publishers and creators do not control the terms of the platforms they depend on for distribution and revenue. A publication can build years of audience trust and traffic on a given platform, and still find its earnings, reach, or both reshaped overnight by a policy update it had no part in writing.For Kenyan and East African publishers specifically, this reinforces an argument that has been building for some time. Diversifying distribution away from any single platform, whether that is Google Search, X, or YouTube, is no longer a defensive afterthought. It is becoming a basic requirement for staying in business. Direct channels that a platform cannot switch off with a blog post, such as email newsletters, WhatsApp broadcast lists, and owned websites, remain the only distribution a publisher genuinely controls. Everything built on top of someone else's platform, no matter how large the audience, is ultimately rented, not owned.

X and YouTube Just Rewrote How Creators Get Paid, and Publishers Are Reminded Who Really Owns the Platform

For most of the last decade, moving to a satellite town was the default answer for Nairobi buyers priced out of the city. That answer no longer holds up everywhere. In the first quarter of 2026, standalone house prices in most satellite towns fell, not because demand disappeared, but because the towns that absorbed it have quietly become almost as expensive to live in as the city they were meant to be an alternative to.<h2>The Reversal, In Numbers</h2>Property sale prices across satellite towns contracted by 0.9% in the first quarter of 2026, according to HassConsult's House Price Index, reversing the marginal 0.1% growth recorded just one quarter earlier. The decline was not evenly spread. Athi River fell 2.4% over the quarter, Ngong dropped 2.3%, and Juja slipped 1.8%. Kitengela was the only satellite town to post growth, a modest 1.0% quarterly gain driven by continued demand for gated family estates along Namanga Road.<ad-spot></ad-spot>That single exception matters. It shows the contraction is not a blanket rejection of commuter living, but a sorting process, where towns with the right mix of infrastructure and amenities keep growing while the rest stall.<h2>How the Towns Got This Expensive</h2>The root of the squeeze is land. Average satellite town land prices have doubled over the past decade, from KSh 16 million per acre in 2016 to KSh 33 million in 2026. That climb was originally justified by genuinely undervalued land near improving transport corridors. A decade later, most of that transport premium has already been priced in, leaving land costs in towns like Syokimau and Ruaka approaching levels that erode the affordability advantage buyers moved out there to capture in the first place.Rising living costs have compounded the problem. Higher fuel prices and general transport inflation have narrowed the financial gap between living in the city and commuting into it daily. A buyer who stretched their budget three or four years ago to secure a plot in an outlying town now faces a monthly commuting bill that, in many cases, offsets whatever they saved on the mortgage.<h2>The Buyers Caught in the Middle</h2>The squeeze falls hardest on middle-class households, the demographic that has always driven demand in these towns. Many bought based on a simple calculation: cheaper land plus a shorter commute once new roads opened equals a good deal. That calculation assumed household incomes would keep pace with land and living costs. They largely have not.<ad-spot></ad-spot>The result is a segment of buyers now sitting in properties that cost more to maintain than expected, in towns with limited local amenities, still facing long commutes despite the infrastructure upgrades that were supposed to shorten them. That is the underlying tension behind the price contraction in Ngong, Athi River, and Juja: it is less about the towns losing appeal and more about the math no longer working for the buyers who once found them attractive.<h2>Why Kitengela Is Different</h2>Kitengela's growth offers a useful contrast. Namanga Road has attracted developers building gated family estates rather than speculative subdivisions, giving the town a more defined identity as a family destination rather than a generic commuter suburb. That distinction appears to matter more to current buyers than raw affordability alone. Towns offering a clear reason to live there, beyond simply being cheaper than Nairobi, are proving more resistant to the broader satellite town slowdown.<h2>What This Means Going Forward</h2>The satellite town story is shifting from a single narrative of universal growth to one of selective winners. Buyers evaluating these towns now need to look past headline land price appreciation and ask a harder question: does this specific town offer something beyond distance from the city, whether that is a school catchment, a defined estate community, or genuine transport reliability. Towns that can answer yes are likely to keep attracting buyers even as the broader satellite market cools. Towns that cannot are the ones most exposed to further price corrections as household budgets stay tight and the novelty of the commuter dream wears off.This article is based on Kenyan Housing Market Analysis Report below<file-download href="https://cdn.calebms.com/research/c6d0dc98-c644-40d1-805f-7dc429c1e182.pdf" filename="Kenya Housing Market Analysis.pdf" filesize="0.24 MB"></file-download>

Why Satellite Towns Stopped Being Nairobi's Affordable Escape

Nairobi's property market is no longer one market. In the same quarter, standalone houses in suburbs like Lavington and Karen posted some of their strongest gains in years, while apartments in Westlands and Upper Hill kept sliding. For anyone buying, selling, or renting in the city, which side of that divide a property sits on now matters more than the address itself.<h2>What the Numbers Actually Show</h2>According to HassConsult's House Price Index for the first quarter of 2026, suburban standalone house prices rose 1.1% over the quarter, up from 0.8% in the previous quarter. Lavington led all suburbs with a 4.2% quarterly gain and a 12.7% rise over the past year. Spring Valley followed at 4.0% quarterly, and Karen posted 3.8% quarterly growth, translating to a 13.2% annual increase.Apartments told the opposite story. Westlands apartment prices fell 11.5% over 2025 before slipping a further 2.8% in the first quarter of 2026. Upper Hill dropped 7.5% over the year and another 2.5% in the same quarter. Kileleshwa, Langata, and Parklands all recorded similar annual declines in the 7% to 10% range.<ad-spot></ad-spot>Rents moved in a different direction entirely. Average monthly rent across Nairobi's suburbs crossed KSh 200,000 for the first time in the index's history, settling at KSh 201,832 in the first quarter of 2026. That combination of falling apartment prices and climbing rents pushed suburban rental yields to 7.4%, the highest level recorded since HassConsult began tracking the market in 2007.<h2>Why Houses Keep Climbing</h2>The house market's strength comes down to a shrinking pool of supply. Detached houses now make up just 8.5% of Nairobi's residential stock, down sharply from 32.7% a decade ago, as developers have systematically replaced low-density bungalows with apartment blocks and commercial space.Land itself has become the binding constraint. Suburban land now averages KSh 228.8 million per acre, a price point that makes new standalone housing developments financially unworkable near the city center. Developers who do build houses are targeting a narrow band of buyers: high-net-worth Kenyans, returning diaspora families, and multinational executives, all of whom compete for the same shrinking pool of listings.That scarcity explains why house price growth has been so concentrated. Lavington, Spring Valley, and Karen are not simply popular; they are among the last suburbs with meaningful stock of standalone properties left to sell.<h2>Why Apartments Are Correcting</h2>The apartment story is the mirror image: too much supply built for a boom that already happened. Westlands' current oversupply traces back to 2013, when average rents in the area jumped from KSh 91,000 to over KSh 115,000 in a single year. That spike triggered a decade of aggressive high-rise construction as developers raced to capture what looked like unlimited rental demand.<ad-spot></ad-spot>The market has now absorbed more of that demand than it can support at previous price points, particularly in Westlands, Upper Hill, and Kilimani. The correction is a supply story, not a demand collapse. Corporate and expatriate rental demand has stayed firm, which is precisely why rents are climbing even as sale prices fall.<h2>The Buying Opportunity Hiding Inside the Correction</h2>For buyers with cash on hand, the apartment correction has created a genuine entry point. Falling purchase prices combined with rising rents have pushed gross rental yields in corrected suburbs to between 7% and 9%, well above what the same units offered two years ago. Someone who buys a Westlands apartment today captures a discounted purchase price and Nairobi's highest rents in the same transaction.Standalone houses in Karen and Runda offer a different trade-off. Gross rental yields there run lower, typically 3% to 5%, but the properties come with structural scarcity value and stronger insulation against inflation over the long term. An investor choosing between the two segments is really choosing between cash flow now and capital preservation later.<h2>What to Watch Next</h2>Nairobi County's building approvals dropped 24.5% in 2025, with residential approvals down 27%. Less new apartment supply entering the pipeline should eventually ease the correction in Westlands and Upper Hill, and HassConsult's data already shows the pace of decline slowing in both areas by the fourth quarter of 2025.<ad-spot></ad-spot>The house segment faces the opposite pressure. With detached housing stock this constrained and no meaningful new supply likely given land costs and zoning fights in Kilimani and Lavington, prices in the remaining premium suburbs are likely to keep climbing regardless of what happens to the broader economy. The two markets that used to move together are now on separate tracks, and there is little in the current data to suggest they reconverge soon.This is article is based on our Kenya Housing Market Analysis Report below.<file-download href="https://cdn.calebms.com/research/ffdfd37b-1f9d-4b91-a2ba-32b91e8f716a.pdf" filename="Kenya Housing Market Analysis.pdf" filesize="0.24 MB"></file-download>

The Great Nairobi Divide: Why Houses Are Booming While Apartments Correct

On June 18, 2026, Molo MP and National Assembly Finance Committee Chairperson Kuria Kimani stood before Parliament and declared that Kenya produces more than one million smartphones per year. He said local firms are creating jobs for youth, positioning Kenya as an emerging technology production hub, and that the country has progressed from being a pure technology consumer to a participant in production and export of digital devices.It sounded like a proud moment. And in some ways, it genuinely is.But there is a word that keeps getting quietly glossed over in these announcements: assembling. Kenya is not manufacturing smartphones. It is assembling them. And while that distinction is not a reason to dismiss the progress, it matters enormously when you start asking the harder questions, like whether these phones are actually built for Kenyan needs, whether they can compete with what is already on the market, and whether the entire initiative can survive as smartphone users grow more demanding.<h2>The Real Story Behind "Made in Kenya"</h2>To understand what is actually happening, you need to look at the two main operations driving these numbers.The first is East Africa Device Assembly Kenya (EADAK), a joint venture between Safaricom, Jamii Telecom, and Chinese firm Shenzhen TeleOne Technology. The plant is located in Athi River, Machakos County, and was officially launched by President William Ruto in October 2023. At launch, the facility was targeting a production capacity of up to 3 million smartphones annually and was already producing the Neon Smarta and Neon Ultra brands. In its first year of operation, EADAK announced it had produced 360,000 phones.<ad-spot></ad-spot>The second is M-KOPA's assembly facility, operated through a partnership with HMD (the Finnish company behind Nokia phones), also known as the East Africa Device Assembly Kenya plant in Nairobi's Industrial Area. This facility opened in January 2023, and by November 2024, M-KOPA reported it had assembled over 1.5 million smartphones, making it sub-Saharan Africa's largest smartphone assembly plant. The facility was producing roughly 100,000 phones per month, and M-KOPA has set a target of 10 million locally assembled smartphones by 2027.Together, these two operations are the backbone of Kenya's "smartphone production" story. And the jobs being created are real. M-KOPA has created 325 new jobs since 2023 in its factory, primarily for young Kenyans and first-time job seekers. These are meaningful contributions.But here is the part the press releases tend to skip: every single component in those phones is imported, primarily from China. The EADAK plant assembles up to 1.4 million smartphones annually from parts imported from China. M-KOPA's X20, their flagship locally assembled device, was developed in partnership with HMD, a Finnish company, using components largely sourced from abroad. The "assembly" process in Kenya involves putting together parts that were designed and manufactured elsewhere, typically in China, and packaging them for the Kenyan market.To understand just how deep this dependency runs globally, consider that even India, which has aggressively built its own domestic manufacturing industry, still has roughly 90 percent of components feeding its assembly plants coming from China. Vietnam, the world's second-largest smartphone export hub, also sources over 90 percent of its component value from China. So Kenya is not alone in this challenge. But it does mean that the "we are exporting smartphones" narrative needs to be held alongside the reality that Kenya is importing all the ingredients that make a smartphone a smartphone: chipsets, screens, batteries, camera sensors, and circuit boards.The government has also not made this any easier. While finished locally assembled devices are zero-rated for tax purposes, imported components attract 16 percent VAT, which manufacturers must then reclaim through a refund process that can tie up working capital for months. It is the kind of structural friction that quietly erodes the competitiveness of these assembly lines even when the political will is there.Kenya imported over 2.3 million smartphones directly from China in 2024 alone, a 71.5 percent increase from 1.3 million units in 2023. The country's total imports from China for electrical and electronic equipment reached over $685 million in 2024. These numbers tell you that regardless of what is being assembled locally, Kenyans are still overwhelmingly choosing to buy phones that arrive as finished products.<h2>So What Do These Locally Assembled Phones Actually Offer?</h2><img src="https://cdn.calebms.com/articles/0e440558-168e-4332-a45d-34aa786ac160.jpg" alt="Safaricom_Neon_Ultra_PR_photo.jpg" data-caption="Neon Ultra">This is where the conversation gets more specific and, frankly, more revealing.When EADAK launched, the two phones unveiled were the Neon Smarta, retailing at KES 7,499, and the Neon Ultra at KES 8,999. The government had originally promised phones at around KES 5,484 (US$40), so the final retail price was already higher than what was advertised. The Neon Smarta, which is the model most people interact with given its lower price point, comes with a 5-inch display, 2GB of RAM, 32GB of internal storage, a 5MP rear camera, a 2MP selfie camera, and a 3,000mAh battery. It runs Android 10 Go Edition, which is a stripped-down version of Android designed specifically for low-memory, entry-level devices.The Neon Smarta 2, an updated version, brought minor improvements, notably bumping the rear camera to 8MP and updating the software to Android 13 Go Edition. The price dropped to around KES 2,999, and the processor was upgraded to a Unisoc SC9863A octa-core chip. Still 2GB of RAM. Still 32GB of storage.<ad-spot></ad-spot>M-KOPA's X20, the company's flagship locally assembled device, is a notable step up from the Neon lineup. It features 6GB of RAM, 256GB of internal storage, a 50MP dual rear camera, a 50MP front camera, a 6.56-inch HD+ display, a 5,000mAh battery with 20W fast charging, and runs Android 14. On paper, those are respectable specifications even by 2026 standards. But the M-KOPA model is also tied to the company's "Lipa Mdogo Mdogo" financing structure, meaning the phone is accessed through daily or weekly payments rather than an outright purchase. The branding itself is a barrier for some users. One reviewer on a local phone listing site put it plainly: "But the name M-KOPA, it's like kila mtu anajua nimekopa!"<h2>The Smartphone Has Evolved. Have These Phones Kept Up?</h2>There is a bigger issue sitting underneath the specs debate, and it is one that most discussions about Kenya's assembled phones conveniently avoid.We are in 2026. The smartphone is no longer just a device you use to make calls, send WhatsApp messages, and occasionally scroll Facebook. For most Kenyans, the smartphone is the primary computer, the content creation studio, the business tool, the entertainment system, and the financial services terminal, all in one pocket-sized device.Consider what a typical Kenyan smartphone user actually does in a day. A boda boda rider uses their phone to navigate Google Maps and accept orders on apps like Bolt or Uber. A small business owner photographs products, manages inventory via M-Pesa business accounts, runs WhatsApp catalogs, and posts Reels to Instagram for marketing. A student attends virtual classes, downloads lecture materials, and collaborates on shared documents. A content creator edits short-form videos directly on their phone, uploads to TikTok or YouTube, and monitors analytics. A gamer plays titles like PUBG Mobile or Free Fire for recreation. None of these use cases are unusual. They are everyday life for millions of Kenyans.And here is the challenge: these use cases demand a specific caliber of hardware. Consistent video recording requires optical image stabilization and a capable ISP (Image Signal Processor) in the chipset. Heavy app multitasking requires at least 4GB of RAM, ideally 6GB or more, paired with LPDDR4X memory (not older, slower standards). Social media apps, especially those running short video feeds like TikTok and Instagram Reels, demand faster storage speeds, specifically UFS 2.1 or higher, rather than the slower eMMC 5.1 standard used in most entry-level phones. Mobile gaming requires a capable GPU and enough thermal management to sustain performance. Running multiple financial apps, business tools, and communication platforms simultaneously requires processing headroom that entry-level chips simply do not have.The Neon Smarta, with 2GB of RAM and a Unisoc chipset running Android Go, is a phone that can handle calls, basic messaging, and light internet browsing. It is a "first smartphone" device. But in 2026, it struggles to meaningfully run TikTok, handle Instagram Stories, or stay stable with more than three or four apps open. Android Go was designed with exactly these constraints in mind, which is why apps like Google Maps and YouTube have "Go" versions optimized to run on limited hardware. These are not the full-featured apps. They are the stripped-down versions.A phone retailing at KES 6,000 to 8,000 is not automatically bad. But when you consider what that same money buys in the broader market, the gap becomes very clear.<h2>The Redmi Question: What Are You Actually Competing Against?</h2><img src="https://cdn.calebms.com/articles/80e95559-652d-4070-ae23-c02d6c08a4f5.webp" alt="Redmi-A5-1.webp" data-caption="Xiaomi Redmi A5. Image Credit: Xiaomi">The Xiaomi Redmi A5 launched in Kenya in early 2025. Starting at KES 9,499 for the 3GB/64GB variant, it sits just slightly above the KES 6,000 to 8,000 range of the locally assembled phones. But what it offers is in a different conversation entirely.The Redmi A5 comes with a 6.88-inch IPS display with a 120Hz adaptive refresh rate, a 32MP rear camera with HDR support, an 8MP selfie camera capable of 1080p video recording, a Unisoc T7250 octa-core processor, up to 6GB of RAM with memory extension, up to 128GB of storage expandable to 1TB via microSD, a 5,200mAh battery with 15W fast charging, a side-mounted fingerprint sensor, USB-C connectivity, and Android 15 with Xiaomi's HyperOS software. It also carries TUV Rheinland certifications for low blue light and flicker-free display, which matters for people who spend hours looking at their screens.For less than KES 10,000, you are getting a 120Hz screen, which makes scrolling feel noticeably smoother than the standard 60Hz displays on locally assembled devices. You are getting a 32MP camera capable of decent photography in multiple lighting conditions. You are getting a battery that realistically lasts more than a day. You are getting a brand with global service infrastructure, an established software update track record, and the kind of marketing that has made Xiaomi one of the top-selling smartphone brands in Africa.Now compare that to the Neon Smarta at KES 7,499. A 5-inch display. 2GB of RAM. 32GB of storage. A 5MP camera. A 3,000mAh battery. Android 10 Go. The specifications are not just weaker. They belong to a completely different category of device.The honest reality is that a Kenyan consumer with KES 7,500 to spend on a phone has better options from imported brands than from the locally assembled lineup. And consumers know it. A GSMA report, titled "<a target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer nofollow" href="https://www.gsmaintelligence.com/research/accelerating-smartphone-adoption-in-africa">Accelerating Smartphone Adoption in Africa</a>," found that Kenyan consumers perceive locally assembled phones to be of lower quality. Brand familiarity, performance expectations, and the aggressive marketing of imported brands all contribute to a continued preference for imported devices, even when locally assembled options are available at lower prices.<h2>The Bigger Question: Who Is Buying These Phones?</h2>It is important to be fair here. The locally assembled phones are not targeting the same consumer who walks into a shop looking for a Redmi or a Tecno Camon. They are primarily targeting first-time smartphone users, people transitioning from feature phones, and low-income Kenyans who need connectivity and are not necessarily evaluating camera megapixels or display refresh rates.M-KOPA's business model is specifically built around this. Their financing structure, which allows customers to pay a small deposit and then daily installments of around KES 60 to KES 120, opens smartphone ownership to people who could not afford to pay KES 7,000 or KES 10,000 upfront. The Ministry of Health purchasing 100,000 EADAK devices for Community Health Workers is another example of an institutional use case where affordability and local production incentives matter more than raw performance.These are legitimate markets. And meeting them is a worthwhile goal. Kenya's smartphone adoption stands at 62 percent, which means there are millions of Kenyans who still do not own a smartphone. Getting those people connected, even on entry-level devices, is a meaningful step forward.But the danger of framing this entire initiative as "Kenya is manufacturing smartphones" is that it conflates two very different goals. Broadening first-time access is one goal. Building a sustainable, competitive technology manufacturing industry is another. The assembly lines can serve the first goal quite adequately. The second goal, however, requires something fundamentally different: local chipset design capability, local screen manufacturing, local battery production, investment in semiconductor research, and the kind of supply chain depth that takes decades and billions of dollars to develop. Kenya is nowhere near that point, and the current assembly operations do not move the country meaningfully closer to it.<h2>Will These Assembly Lines Survive the Shift?</h2>This is the question that matters most for the long-term health of the initiative.As Kenyans become more connected, their expectations from a smartphone will inevitably rise. A first-time smartphone user who buys a Neon Smarta today will, in two or three years, want something with a better camera, faster performance, and more storage. When that upgrade moment comes, the competition is not just within the locally assembled lineup. It is against Tecno, Infinix, Itel, Xiaomi, Realme, and Samsung, all of which are aggressively pricing competitive devices in the KES 8,000 to 20,000 range with significantly better hardware and established brand trust.M-KOPA's X20 is a step in the right direction. At 6GB RAM, 256GB storage, and a 50MP camera, it can hold its own against mid-range competition on paper. But to remain relevant beyond the financing-dependent customer base, locally assembled phones need to consistently match or exceed what is available from imported brands at the same price point. That requires continuous investment in better components, closer relationships with chipset suppliers, and genuine technical innovation rather than just label assembly.<ad-spot></ad-spot>The government can help by addressing the VAT friction on imported components, investing in technical education pipelines that feed skilled labor into these facilities, and being honest about the distinction between assembly and manufacturing so that policy goals are accurately calibrated. Calling assembly manufacturing is not just semantically wrong. It sets the wrong targets, creates misplaced pride, and can delay the harder work of building real industrial capacity.Kenya's assembly story is a beginning, not a destination. And beginnings are good. M-KOPA creating 325 jobs primarily for young people, targeting 500 by end of 2025, and aiming for 10 million assembled phones by 2027 is a trajectory worth watching. EADAK's capacity to produce up to 3 million units annually, if fully utilized and supported by policy, could meaningfully serve the lower end of the market.But it would be a mistake to confuse a milestone for a finish line. The smartphone market waits for no one, and Kenyan consumers, increasingly connected and informed, will vote with their wallets. The assembly lines that survive will be the ones that evolve to give people phones that actually respect what they need from their devices: powerful enough to run the apps that run their lives, cameras good enough to capture moments worth sharing, storage fast enough to keep up with modern software, and a price point that does not ask them to compromise on all of the above.The real test of Kenya's smartphone ambition is not how many units come out of the factory. It is whether the people those phones are meant to serve actually choose them.

Kenya Says It Makes 1 Million Smartphones a Year. But Are They Actually Made for Kenyans?

The next time you take a hot shower, there's a small but growing chance the water was heated not by your gas boiler, but by a cluster of servers crunching AI inference tasks in a box attached to your wall. That is not a thought experiment. That is 2026.The artificial intelligence industry is in the middle of what can only be described as a full-blown energy emergency. The demand for compute has grown so aggressively that the traditional playbook of "find land, build a data center, plug into the grid" is no longer working fast enough. Grids can't keep up. Planning approvals take years. Transformers are on backorder. Power utilities are overwhelmed. And so the tech industry, with all its characteristic boldness (and occasional absurdity), has started looking at the rest of the physical world and asking: can we put a GPU in that?The answers it is coming up with are genuinely fascinating.<h2>The Scale of the Problem</h2>Before we get to hot water and backyard server boxes, it helps to understand just how hungry AI has become.According to the International Energy Agency (IEA), electricity demand from data centres soared by 17% in 2025, well outpacing growth in global electricity demand of just 3%. Electricity consumption from AI-focused data centres grew even faster, surging 50% in that same year. And this is not expected to slow down. The IEA's updated projections see electricity consumption from data centres roughly doubling from 485 TWh in 2025 to 950 TWh in 2030, accounting for around 3% of global electricity demand by that date.<ad-spot></ad-spot>To put that in perspective, by one estimate, the energy consumption of data centers could approach 1,050 TWh by 2026, which, if data centers were a country, would make them the fifth largest energy consumer in the world, between Japan and Russia.At the company level, the investment numbers are staggering. The capital expenditure of just five large technology companies surged to more than $400 billion in 2025 and is set to increase by a further 75% in 2026. That level of spending is now larger than global investment in oil and natural gas production.The hardware inside data centers is also becoming exponentially more power-hungry. An individual server rack within an advanced data centre is only the size of a large refrigerator, but by 2027 it could have peak power demand equivalent to that of 65 households. Between 2020 and 2025, the power density of AI servers increased by 11 times, and by 2027 it is set to see a further fourfold increase.This is the context in which companies are now showing up at people's front doors with unusual propositions.<h2>The Hot Water Play: Heata and British Gas</h2>Let us start in the United Kingdom, where a startup called Heata has come up with an idea so elegantly clever it almost sounds like a joke until you realize it actually works.Heata has created a "virtual data centre," a network of servers distributed in people's homes. Each server is attached to the home's hot water cylinder, and as they process data, the heat they generate is transferred into the water. This reduces the energy needed to heat water in the home, cutting household bills and reducing carbon emissions in the process.The concept flips the traditional data center problem on its head. In a normal data center, heat is the enemy. Enormous energy is spent on cooling systems just to keep the servers from melting. Heata essentially relocates that waste heat into a place where heat is actually valuable: your hot water tank.Each Heata unit can provide up to 4kWh of hot water per day, and Heata pays for the electricity the unit uses, meaning the household pays less to heat their water. According to the company, this technology is expected to save households up to £340 per year when offsetting electrically heated hot water, and up to £120 per year when offsetting gas heating.British Gas came on board for a trial in early 2025. As part of a three-month trial, 10 Heata units were installed in the homes of British Gas employees, with the energy provider's computing workloads processed on those units. British Gas provided free hot water for its own employees as a byproduct of its own cloud compute.Heata claims its approach reduces energy use by 80% compared to traditional data centers, and can simultaneously help people in fuel poverty. That is a remarkable dual benefit: cheaper AI compute and cheaper home energy, both from the same device sitting next to your boiler.Heata co-founder Chris Jordan described the logic plainly: "Waste heat is a big problem for data centers, leading to significant energy costs for cooling. Yet heat is valuable. On the other side of the coin, you have an energy crisis and people struggling to heat their homes. Our unique technology brings those two things together."<ad-spot></ad-spot>It is worth noting that the system does have one practical constraint. It requires a hot water cylinder, so it cannot be used in homes with combi boilers. That rules out a significant portion of UK homes. But for those with the right setup, it is a genuine win-win.<h2>The GPU Box on Your Wall: Span's XFRA</h2>If Heata is clever and subtle, what California-based Span is proposing is considerably more dramatic.Span, a startup that originally launched with smart electrical panels designed to help homeowners save money on their electricity bills, has partnered with Nvidia to develop small, fractional data centers called XFRA nodes that can be installed on the exterior walls of residential homes and small businesses.These are not small gadgets. Each XFRA node contains Dell PowerEdge servers with 16 Nvidia RTX Pro 6000 Blackwell GPUs, 4 AMD EPYC CPUs, and 3 TB of RAM, connected to a 24-port gigabit switch. This is serious professional hardware, the kind you would normally find in a hyperscale cloud facility, being mounted on the side of a house in a suburban neighborhood.Span collaborated with Nvidia to use liquid-cooled Nvidia RTX PRO 6000 Blackwell Server Edition GPUs. These require no fans, so there is no noise. That is a critical detail. One of the biggest community complaints about data centers is the constant industrial humming. The fanless, liquid-cooled design means a neighbor would likely have no idea the unit was there.The financial deal being offered to homeowners is genuinely attractive. The company charges a flat monthly fee of about $150. In return, it essentially pays the host's electricity and internet bills. The computing power generated from the nodes is distributed to customers like hyperscalers and AI companies. Span's Chief Revenue Officer went further, suggesting that homeowners in places where XFRA nodes provide the most value could receive discounted electricity up to and including free electricity and free internet access.The reason Span can offer this deal comes down to a simple observation about how homes use electricity. Residential homes operate at an average of just 40% of their peak power capacity, leaving significant untapped headroom that can be utilized for compute. The XFRA node taps that headroom without disrupting normal household activity.Span plans a 100-home pilot in 2026 and aims to scale to 80,000 nodes nationwide starting in 2027, delivering more than 1 gigawatt of distributed compute capacity. For context, that is equivalent to a large traditional data center, but distributed across tens of thousands of homes in ordinary neighborhoods.Span says it can install 8,000 units six times faster and for roughly a fifth of the cost of building a large, centralized 100-megawatt data center. That speed-to-power advantage is the whole point. The bottleneck for AI expansion is not money or hardware; it is grid access and permitting timelines. As of early 2025, the Center for Strategic and International Studies noted delays of up to 7 years in the nation's largest data center markets. Span's approach sidesteps all of that.Major homebuilder PulteGroup is already testing the concept. "There is certainly opportunity, as SPAN can provide homeowners with access to innovative technology and potential income generation that can help offset monthly energy costs," the company said. "On a larger scale, if the technology proves out, it might also keep local infrastructure from being overburdened, which could keep land open for other uses, such as building homes."<ad-spot></ad-spot><h2>The Experts Are Not Entirely Sold</h2>Not everyone is enthusiastic about the idea of suburban compute nodes.Ari Peskoe, director of the Electricity Law Initiative at Harvard Law School, called the homeowner subsidy "fascinating," but raised a practical concern about clustering. "If there's a block that has several homes with these devices, maxing out compute and energy would force a lot of power to that local area," he said. Local distribution networks were not designed for sustained heavy industrial loads dropped into residential streets.There are also broader systemic concerns. A Utah State University physics professor warned that efforts to modestly reduce the ecological harms of data center power usage could actually exacerbate the overall problem. In a preliminary analysis, he calculated that only 30 to 40 percent of homes may be suitable for mini data centers due to integration constraints, the need for stable internet, and participants being willing to have the technology installed.Security researchers have flagged physical theft and side-channel attacks as potential risks when high-value GPU hardware sits in unguarded residential locations. These are real concerns that Span will need to address before scaling to tens of thousands of homes.<h2>The Bigger Picture: Compute by Any Means Necessary</h2>Heata and Span are not isolated experiments. They are part of a broader, industry-wide scramble for power that is pushing the AI sector into increasingly unconventional territory.The most dramatic example involves a nuclear plant that is synonymous with disaster. The owner of the shuttered Three Mile Island nuclear power plant announced plans to restart the reactor under a 20-year agreement that calls for Microsoft to purchase the plant's power to supply its data centers with carbon-free energy. Constellation Energy described the agreement with Microsoft as the largest power purchase agreement the nuclear plant operator has ever signed, with the plant expected to come back online in 2028. Constellation will invest $1.6 billion to restart the plant, covering nuclear fuel, the turbine, the generator, the main power transformer, and cooling and control systems.Let that sink in. A reactor that shut down because it was economically unviable is being brought back to life, at a cost of over a billion dollars, because AI companies need more electricity.Beyond nuclear, tech companies are hunting for power wherever they can find it: buying up decommissioned factories and old cryptocurrency mining facilities because they already have high-voltage grid connections, mapping deep geothermal zones near volcanic activity, and building solar arrays in the middle of deserts. The through-line is desperation for reliable, large-scale power, accessed faster than the normal permitting process allows.The grid itself is beginning to feel the strain everywhere, not just near the data centers. In the PJM electricity market stretching from Illinois to North Carolina, data centers accounted for an estimated $9.3 billion price increase in the 2025-26 capacity market. As a result, the average residential bill is expected to rise by $18 a month in western Maryland and $16 a month in Ohio. Ordinary people who have never used an AI tool in their lives are already subsidizing the compute boom through their electricity bills.This is precisely why the distributed, residential-compute model is so conceptually interesting. If AI companies are going to consume neighborhood electricity regardless, at least Span's approach gives the homeowner a direct financial benefit from hosting the load, rather than simply absorbing a higher bill.<h2>What This Means Going Forward</h2>We are watching the physical infrastructure of AI expand beyond the boundaries of the traditional data center in real time. The home, historically a private space insulated from industrial activity, is being quietly recruited into the global compute grid.For homeowners, the deals on offer right now look generous. Free hot water, paid electricity bills, free internet. The question is what the long-term implications look like as the technology scales. Who is liable if a node malfunctions and causes a problem? How does resale value of a home change when there is a GPU cluster mounted to its exterior? What happens to the agreement if the AI company encounters financial difficulty?<ad-spot></ad-spot>These questions are not reasons to dismiss the technology. They are the normal growing pains of any infrastructure shift. The residential electricity grid, the mobile phone tower, the rooftop solar panel: all of these faced similar skepticism before becoming normalized features of everyday life.The interesting thing about this particular moment is that the financial pressure to make distributed compute work is enormous and growing. The IEA projects that electricity consumption from AI-focused data centres will triple by 2030. That trajectory guarantees more innovation, more unusual partnerships, and more proposals that will sound absurd until they are suddenly everywhere.Kenya and the broader African continent are not yet at the center of this story, but the dynamics playing out in the UK and the US are instructive. As local AI infrastructure grows and electricity reliability remains a challenge in many regions, the principle of distributing compute closer to where power exists, and compensating hosts for that privilege, could prove even more relevant here than in the markets where it is currently being tested.The era of "compute by any means necessary" is producing some genuinely creative engineering. Some of it will fail. Some of it will reshape how we think about homes, energy, and infrastructure. Either way, it is worth paying close attention.

Your Home Is Now a Data Center: How the AI Energy Crisis Is Turning Living Rooms Into Server Farms

For nearly two decades, the Kenyan telecommunications landscape has been defined by a single entity: Safaricom. Since its early dominance, the Green Giant has not just led the market, it has defined it. From the pioneering days of M-Pesa to the 5G rollout, Safaricom has been the benchmark against which all others were measured.But the Communications Authority of Kenya's Q2 2025/26 Sector Statistics Report, covering October to December 2025 and released earlier this month, tells a story that Safaricom's shareholders should be reading carefully. Not because Airtel is winning on subscriber numbers, it is not, at least not dramatically. But because Airtel is winning in the one place that actually funds Safaricom's entire operation.<h2>The Number That Actually Matters</h2>Mobile money contributes 41% of Safaricom's total revenue, Ksh 161 billion out of Ksh 388 billion in the last full financial year. M-Pesa is not just a product. It is the engine.Two years ago, Airtel Money held 5.5% of Kenya's mobile money market. By Q1 2025/26 that had risen to 10.3%. The latest Q2 report confirms it has now crossed 11%. M-Pesa's share, which once sat at 98%, now stands at 89%.<ad-spot></ad-spot>That is a 9 percentage point erosion in two years in the segment that funds almost half of Safaricom's revenue. The pace is not explosive, but it is consistent, and consistency in market share erosion is more dangerous to a dominant player than a single dramatic shock.<h2>The Subscription Picture Is More Complicated</h2>Your WhatsApp groups have probably been circulating claims about Airtel's dramatic subscriber growth. The actual CA data is more nuanced.As of December 2025, total mobile subscriptions across all operators stood at 78.4 million, growing by just 0.1% in the quarter, a sign of a maturing market that is approaching saturation at 149.5% penetration. Safaricom holds 52.4 million of those subscriptions, roughly 66.8% of the market. Airtel holds 22.9 million, or approximately 29.2%.Airtel's subscription share is not surging, it actually edged slightly lower between Q1 and Q2 as the overall market growth slowed. The subscriber story is not where the competition is being decided. The mobile money story is.What the subscription data does reveal, however, is something more behavioural and arguably more interesting than raw market share.<h2>The Active SIM Insight: Airtel Users Actually Use Their Phones</h2>Buried in the CA report is a data point that deserves more attention than it has received. Airtel users average 2.7 minutes per call. Safaricom users average 1.6 minutes.Think about what that means. Most Kenyans carry two SIMs, a Safaricom SIM for M-Pesa access and network coverage, and an Airtel SIM for cheaper calls and data. The Safaricom SIM is the wallet. The Airtel SIM is the phone.When someone calls from Airtel, they stay on the line longer because the call is affordable enough to have a full conversation. Safaricom calls are shorter because users are watching the bill tick. This call duration gap is one of the clearest signals of where pricing pressure actually lands on ordinary Kenyans.<ad-spot></ad-spot>Airtel Kenya also recorded 11.83 billion minutes of voice traffic in Q2, up 2.4% from Q1. More tellingly, off-net traffic( calls crossing from Airtel to Safaricom and other networks) grew 8.4% in the same period. People are calling across networks more than before, which means interoperability is working, and Airtel's affordability advantage is compelling users to use it as their primary communication tool even when calling someone on a different network.<h2>The Pricing War: Where Two Shillings Becomes Ksh 3,000</h2>At TechInKenya we often focus on technical specifications, but for the average Kenyan consumer the most important feature of any network is the cost of a minute or a megabyte. Airtel has played the long game on affordability and the mobile money data confirms it is paying off.Sending Ksh 1,000 to another network on Airtel Money costs Ksh 11. On M-Pesa the same transaction costs Ksh 13. A two-shilling difference sounds negligible. For a micro-entrepreneur in Kajiado making 50 transactions a day, that is Ksh 100 daily, Ksh 3,000 every month in savings, or Ksh 36,000 per year. At that scale, the "cheaper" network stops being a secondary SIM and starts becoming a business decision.This aggregation of marginal gains is precisely how Airtel is converting M-Pesa's casual users into Airtel Money's committed ones.<h2>The Interoperability Trojan Horse</h2>For years M-Pesa's dominance rested on a network effect that felt unbreakable. Everyone had M-Pesa, so you needed M-Pesa to send money to anyone. Switching to Airtel Money meant your recipients might not be able to receive it. The ecosystem locked you in more effectively than any contract.The CA's push for full interoperability dismantled that lock-in quietly but completely. Now a user can keep their balance in an Airtel Money wallet, pay lower transaction fees, and still pay at a Safaricom Buy Goods till or any Paybill number. The friction of being on a different network has effectively been removed.<ad-spot></ad-spot>This is why Airtel Money's growth from 5.5% to 11% in two years tracks almost perfectly with the interoperability timeline. The regulatory change was the door. Lower fees were the reason to walk through it.<h2>What Safaricom Is Doing About It</h2>Safaricom is not standing still. The launch of My OneApp this month ( merging the M-Pesa and MySafaricom apps into a single AI-powered platform ) is partly a response to the UX pressure from competitors. The new app's infrastructure reportedly handles up to 6,000 transactions per second, up from roughly 100 previously. The AI personalisation layer, which learns user behaviour and surfaces relevant services proactively, is a genuine attempt to deepen the ecosystem moat rather than just defend the pricing one.But My OneApp has generated its own friction. Users abroad have reported significant issues with the app's device-binding and OTP requirements that do not work well with international SIM swaps or roaming. For diaspora Kenyans ( a segment that sends significant remittance volumes through M-Pesa )being locked out of your account when you need it most is not a loyalty-building experience. Airtel's lighter, more utility-focused app has quietly absorbed some of that frustration.Safaricom also holds structural advantages that Airtel cannot easily replicate. Its IoT segment leads the market with 1.8 million active connected devices ( smart meters, fleet management, industrial monitoring ) a B2B revenue stream Airtel has not meaningfully entered. Safaricom Home Fibre remains dominant in suburban fixed broadband, where the physical fibre infrastructure provides stability that 5G routers cannot yet match for high-bandwidth households.The Ethiopia expansion is the strategic wildcard. The Safaricom Ethiopia rollout has consumed billions of shillings in capital expenditure over the past three years, which some analysts argue has constrained Safaricom Kenya's ability to respond more aggressively to domestic pricing pressure. If Ethiopia reaches profitability on its current trajectory, that capital will have been well spent and Safaricom will have built a second large market. If it does not, the domestic opportunity cost becomes harder to justify.<h2>The Broadband Front: A Third Competitor</h2>One finding in the CA data that neither Safaricom nor Airtel should ignore: Starlink has reached 0.9% of Kenya's fixed broadband market. That sounds small, but Ahadi Wireless is at 9% and Vilcom Network at 5.4% and both grew this quarter. Safaricom's fixed broadband share declined to 34.9% from 35.6%.<ad-spot></ad-spot>The fixed internet market is fragmenting. For the urban professional household that uses Home Fibre primarily for streaming, gaming, and working from home, the question of whether Safaricom's fibre or a Starlink dish is the better option is a real one in 2026. This is a slow-moving threat but it is worth watching.<h2>What Happens Next</h2>Airtel's path to further mobile money growth runs through the same mechanism that got it to 11% that is pricing, interoperability, and consistent execution. Hitting 15% mobile money share within two years is plausible if the current trajectory holds. Whether it can get to 20% or beyond depends on whether Safaricom makes a structural pricing response rather than an ecosystem one.Safaricom's most likely responses:Loyalty depth over loyalty breadth. Bonga Points have always been a thin loyalty mechanism. Deeper integrations (cashback within M-Pesa transactions, bundled data with financial products, preferential rates for high-volume users ) would raise the switching cost without requiring across-the-board fee cuts.Enterprise and IoT as the moat. The B2B segment ( IoT connections, enterprise data, government contracts, API access through Daraja) is where Safaricom's margins are most defensible and where Airtel has the least competitive presence. Expect continued investment here.Ethiopia as the long-term bet. If the Ethiopia venture starts generating positive returns in the next 18 to 24 months, Safaricom's growth story changes significantly. It stops being a single-market company competing on price and becomes a regional technology platform with a very different investment case.<h2>The TechInKenya Take</h2>The current competitive dynamics are healthy for Kenyan consumers. Safaricom at 98% mobile money market share two years ago was not a situation that produced competitive pricing or incentivised product innovation. Airtel at 11% and rising is not yet a genuine threat to Safaricom's position, but it is enough of a threat to change behaviour.The two-shilling fee difference is already saving the micro-entrepreneur in Kajiado Ksh 36,000 a year. That is real money doing real work. That is what competition is supposed to deliver.The Green Giant is not going anywhere. But for the first time in the history of Kenya's mobile money market, M-Pesa's dominance is something that is being competed away — slowly, consistently, and in the one segment that matters most to Safaricom's bottom line.All figures sourced from the Communications Authority of Kenya Q2 FY2025/26 Sector Statistics Report covering October to December 2025. Full report available at ca.go.ke/statistics.

The Airtel Rebellion: How Kenya's Underdog Is Attacking Safaricom Where It Hurts Most

Local Assembly or Global Surplus Offloading? The Uncomfortable Truth Behind Kenya's KSh 320M EV Plant

<h3>The "Involution" Crisis: Why China is Overflowing</h3>The term "Involution" (neijuan) has emerged as the defining economic struggle of 2025. It describes a state of "meaningless competition"—a cycle where an oversupply of goods meets stagnant domestic demand, forcing Chinese companies into brutal price wars that slash profit margins to the bone.<ul><li>The Surplus Problem: China’s massive manufacturing engine continues to accelerate, yet domestic consumer confidence remains at historic lows.</li><li>The Price War: In sectors ranging from heavy industry to consumer electronics, companies are selling products at or even below cost simply to defend their market share.</li><li>The Export Pressure: Facing a record $1 trillion-plus trade surplus, China is desperate to offload this inventory into global markets to prevent a total domestic industrial collapse.</li></ul><ad-spot></ad-spot><h2>The Global Shield vs. The Kenyan Open Door</h2>As China attempts to export its way out of the Involution trap, the world’s major economies are raising their shields. The US and EU have implemented aggressive "de-risking" strategies and punitive tariffs to prevent their own industries from being crushed by subsidized, ultra-cheap imports.Kenya, however, tells a different story. While the West builds barriers, our "open-door" policies have made us a primary destination for this surplus.<ul><li>The Trade Gap: The numbers are staggering. In October 2025 alone, Kenya imported $622 million worth of goods from China while exporting a mere $13.2 million in return. This creates a monthly trade deficit of $609 million, a gap that drains Kenya's foreign exchange reserves.</li><li>Automotive Dumping: As China pivots rapidly toward Electric Vehicles (EVs), it is offloading massive quantities of gasoline-powered vehicles and spare parts into African markets. In 2025, automotive spare parts dominated the illicit trade sector in Kenya, with the Anti-Counterfeit Authority reporting that four-wheeler accessories account for 81.8% of seized counterfeit goods.</li></ul><h2>The Long-Term Cost: "Premature De-industrialization"</h2>The danger isn't just the influx of cheap goods; it’s the systemic erosion of the Kenyan manufacturing dream.<ul><li>Job Losses: The Kenya Association of Manufacturers (KAM) has warned that the flood of cheap imports, combined with rising operational costs, has placed over 60,000 direct manufacturing jobs at risk as of late 2025.</li><li>Unfair Competition: Local firms are being forced to shutter or relocate because they cannot compete with "dumped" goods that are subsidized by the Chinese government.</li><li>The Stifled Dream: Kenya’s aspiration to be a regional tech hub is in a stranglehold. Local assembly for smartphones and PCs is caught between high taxes on imported components and an overwhelming surge of finished Chinese imports.</li></ul>The Shipment Surge: In 2024, Kenya imported over 2.3 million smartphones from China—a 71.5% increase from the previous year. While this benefits consumer connectivity, it prevents local assembly plants from reaching the scale they need to survive.<ad-spot></ad-spot><h2>Trade Policy: Kenya’s "Open Door" vs. The EU’s "Shield"</h2>The divergence in trade strategy between Kenya and the EU highlights a fundamental choice between immediate consumer convenience and long-term economic survival.<table style="min-width: 75px;"><colgroup><col style="min-width: 25px;"><col style="min-width: 25px;"><col style="min-width: 25px;"></colgroup><tbody><tr><th colspan="1" rowspan="1">Features</th><th colspan="1" rowspan="1">Kenya's Approach (2025)</th><th colspan="1" rowspan="1">EU "Special Safeguards" (2025)</th></tr><tr><td colspan="1" rowspan="1">Primary Goal</td><td colspan="1" rowspan="1">Maintaining "Free Trade" and safeguarding bilateral ties.</td><td colspan="1" rowspan="1">Protecting domestic industry and reducing "strategic dependence."</td></tr><tr><td colspan="1" rowspan="1">Mechanisms </td><td colspan="1" rowspan="1">WTO valuation and cargo verification to catch tax evasion. </td><td colspan="1" rowspan="1">"Import Surveillance Task Force" to trigger punitive duties on surges.</td></tr><tr><td colspan="1" rowspan="1">Action Taken</td><td colspan="1" rowspan="1">Zero-tariff treatment for 100% of certain tariff lines from China.</td><td colspan="1" rowspan="1">Implementing "contingency plans" including steel safeguards and EV tariffs.</td></tr><tr><td colspan="1" rowspan="1">Local Impact</td><td colspan="1" rowspan="1">Record trade deficits; Chinese exports outpace Kenyan exports by ~40:1.</td><td colspan="1" rowspan="1">Active "ReSourceEU" program to diversify supply chains.</td></tr></tbody></table>While the EU uses Article 5 of the WTO Agreement to reintroduce duties the moment an import surge threatens their local market, Kenya has leaned into a "Comprehensive Strategic Partnership." Critics argue this leaves the country without the necessary protectionist shields to nurture its own industry.<h2>Deep Dive: "Blurred Corruption" in Infrastructure</h2>"Blurred corruption" is not always about direct bribes; it is about opaque contractual structures that create a closed economic loop designed to benefit the lending country over the host nation.<h3>1. The Standard Gauge Railway (SGR)</h3>The SGR is a textbook example of an "imagined future" that has led to debt distress.<ul><li>The Loop: With 90% of the project funded by China's Export-Import Bank, contracts stipulated that the China Road and Bridges Corporation (CRBC) would handle construction and maintenance. This ensured the loan money essentially flowed from one Chinese entity to another, bypassing the Kenyan economy.</li><li>Labor Disparity: Despite the massive scale, the project primarily utilized Chinese materials and reserved high-skill engineering roles for Chinese nationals, leaving only low-paid manual labor for the local workforce.</li></ul><ad-spot></ad-spot><h3>2. The Nairobi Expressway</h3>Though framed as a Public-Private Partnership (PPP), the Expressway follows a similar logic of "access for infrastructure."<ul><li>Exchange Risk Protection: Toll fees were significantly increased in 2025 to "cushion" the Chinese investors against the depreciation of the Shilling. This shifts the entire economic burden of currency fluctuation onto the Kenyan motorist.</li><li>Financial Control: Operated by Moja Expressway (a Chinese contractor), the revenue stream from this critical Kenyan infrastructure stays within a Chinese-managed ecosystem for decades to come.</li></ul><h2>Conclusion: The Path Forward</h2>If Kenya is to avoid becoming a permanent safety valve for China’s economic "involution," it must move beyond being a passive consumer. Strengthening local manufacturing, enforcing stricter anti-dumping laws, and demanding more transparent infrastructure contracts are not just policy options—they are requirements for national economic sovereignty.

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