Beyond Checklists: What New AML/CFT Regulations Mean for Banks, Fintechs and SACCOs
In September 2025, Kenya’s financial regulator issued compliance notices to 35 savings and credit cooperatives (SACCOs), warning of sanctions for failures in anti-money laundering controls. The message was clear across East Africa’s financial sector: the era of light-touch supervision had come to an end. From amendments to Kenya’s Proceeds of Crime and Anti-Money Laundering Act to...
East Africa’s Export Surge: Momentum or Transformation
While global trade struggles through headwinds of protectionism and geopolitical tensions, East Africa is chartering a different course. In Q2 of 2025, exports from the East African Community (EAC) rose by 40.5% year-on-year to $18.6 billion.
Seizing the Fiscal Window: How a Weakening US Dollar is Reshaping East Africa’s Economic Horizon
For the better part of the last decade, the global economic narrative has been dominated by a singular, suffocating protagonist: the 'King Dollar'. Its reign has been absolute, exporting inflation to the Global South with ruthless efficiency and crushing emerging market currencies under its boot.
The Dream Deferred: Why East Africa’s Monetary Union Remains Out of Reach
On November 30th, 2013, when the East African Community(EAC) unveiled the Monetary Union Protocol, the mood across the region was almost celebratory. A single currency by 2024 felt like the next chapter of an integration story that had already delivered a customs union, a common market, and unprecedented cross-border movement.
Fintech Independence: MTN Uganda’s Structural Shift
Following board approval in March 2025, MTN Uganda shareholders consented to the unbundling of MTN Mobile Money (MoMo) at an extraordinary general meeting on 22nd July 2025. This follows a broader pattern. In neighbouring Kenya, persistent pressure continues to build for the separation of the country’s largest mobile money platform, M-Pesa, from its telecom parent, Safaricom.
Yuan Express: What Kenya’s Ditching of the Dollar on its Chinese-Built Railway Means
Kenya has made a bold and unprecedented financial move by converting its multi-billion-dollar Standard Gauge Railway (SGR) loan from the Export–Import Bank of China from US dollars to Chinese Yuan. What might appear to be a mere accounting adjustment is, in fact, a decision that might save Kenya hundreds of millions of dollars annually while drawing Kenya closer into China’s financial orbit.
Turning Minerals into Fiscal Muscle: The Role of Sovereign Wealth Funds in Debt Financing
Across the world, countries have turned their natural resources into financial strength through Sovereign Wealth Funds (SWFs). Built from oil, gas, or mineral revenues, these funds provide stability during commodity price swings, safeguard savings for future generations, and create cushions that help governments manage debt more sustainably.
Demystifying Central Bank Digital Currencies: The East African Opportunity
Money is more than coins and paper; it is the language of trade and a reflection of sovereignty. And, as we enter an increasingly digital era, the very nature of money is changing. At the heart of this transformation lies the idea of the Central Bank Digital Currency (CBDC).
From Savings to Securities: A Case For Tax-Free Investment Accounts
In 2024, MTN Uganda’s mobile money platform recorded a daily transaction volume of UGX 435 billion – approximately $123.1 million. On the other hand, in August 2025, the Uganda Stock Exchange recorded a daily trading volume of just UGX 17.63 million – approximately $5,000. The gaps highlight a disconnect in East Africa at large.
Artificial Intelligence (AI) is redefining East Africa’s technological and educational landscapes, reshaping how young professionals prepare for and enter the workforce. This report explores AI’s transformative influence on the region’s tech sector, education systems, and career pathways showing how AI continues to impact and reshape the education sector and early job seekers across East Africa.
Eastern Africa is a region with vast untapped energy resources, including hydro geothermal, wind, and solar power, which could be harnessed to support economic growth and development. However, the region faces significant challenges in attracting investment, including political instability, weak governance frameworks, inadequate regulatory frameworks, and insufficient domestic financing.
East Africa’s DFS landscape is transitioning from a narrative of inclusion to one of complex integration. Once the global pioneer of mobile money, the region’s platforms have scaled massively; one major provider alone now processes an annualised transaction value approaching $200 billion.
East Africa stands at a critical linguistic crossroads, where the legacies of colonialism continue to shape communication, education, and identity. With over a hundred languages spoken across the region, the linguistic landscape reflects both immense diversity and enduring inequalities.
This report examines the evolution and current state of the consumer goods market in East Africa, focusing on how the structure, sourcing, and consumption of essential goods such as food, beverages, and clothing have transformed the region’s landscape. It aims to assess the factors and dynamics that have shaped the current consumer goods market in East Africa.
East Africa’s extensive aquatic capital, from its Indian Ocean coastline to its Great Lakes, represents a monumental opportunity to drive climate-resilient growth and socioeconomic transformation. However, this potential is constrained by a significant financing gap.
East Africa stands at a pivotal moment in its development trajectory, with its youthful population presenting both a challenge and an unprecedented opportunity to unlock a demographic dividend.
East Africa is experiencing a major wave of digital transformation. This shift is driven by the need for stronger infrastructure, better public service delivery, and deeper cross-border integration. At the heart of this progress is Digital Public Infrastructure (DPI).
Telehealth has the potential to revolutionise East Africa’s healthcare landscape, with critical gaps in access being bridged and quality of care improved. With the rising cost of illness, rapid population growth, and stark rural-urban healthcare disparities, digital health solutions offer scalable and cost-effective means to improve patient outcomes.
Private capital funds, or investment vehicles (IVs) – spanning private equity, venture capital, and private debt – play a pivotal role in the region’s economic growth and job creation, especially for micro, small and medium-sized enterprises (MSMEs). Yet, fund managers and investors often face questions about where best to domicile their vehicles for optimal regulatory compliance, tax efficiency, and investor confidence.
COVID-19, caused by the SARS-Cov-2 virus, emerged as a global pandemic, disrupting societies and economies worldwide. Five years later, East Africa continues to navigate the lasting effects of the crisis, particularly within its healthcare systems. This report evaluates the region’s response, assessing both immediate interventions and long-term transformations.
The Oxford English Dictionary defines ‘enjoyment’ as ‘the action or state of deriving gratification from an object.’ However, in East Africa, the term ‘enjoyment’ has been defined in popular discourse as more than just a state of being – it is a lifestyle, a philosophy, and, as this report explores, a serious economic force.
Nuclear fission, a process that was accidentally discovered to release energy in 1938, now drives nuclear power plants that account for 11% of the world’s electricity generation. Nuclear energy is recognised as a key towards carbon neutrality, endorsed by more than 20 countries and the agreed upon declaration to triple nuclear energy by 2050.
The middle class. Heralded as the engine of economic renewal and societal transformation, broadly defined, consists of individuals and households that fall between the lower and upper-income brackets, typically distinguished and delineated by their purchasing power, level of education and aspirational lifestyles. Whoever can uncover the hidden identity and patterns of the often overlooked middle class wields great power, as this segment is integral in generating profit and driving regional transformation.
With increasing global tension, the concept of supply chain sovereignty comes into question. It represents the aspiration of nations to have greater control over key components within their supply chains to mitigate risks associated with foreign dependence.
This report examines the current state and prospects of public and private capital markets in East Africa. It highlights the historical development of the markets in Kenya, Uganda, Rwanda and Tanzania, analyses their performance and identifies key trends hampering their continued growth.
This report is about the energy poverty hampering Uganda’s socioeconomic development. It explores the potential of mini-grids in Uganda, examining various aspects of mini-grids including the challenges and economic implications surrounding their development and contribution to rural electrification.
Over 90% of artificial intelligence (AI) research is from North America, Europe, and China, with less than 5% coming from Africa. As the world rapidly enters an era defined by an AI revolution, East Africa finds itself lagging significantly.
As startups grow in the region, their increasing prevalence suggests an upward trend for the foreseeable future. Therefore, their financing is increasingly becoming an important point of interest for both investors and entrepreneurs.
The increasing frequency of extreme weather events, unpredictable rainfall patterns, and rising temperatures are challenges that pose risks to food security and economic stability in the region. The region's vulnerability is best exemplified by Tanzania, where 80% of food production comes from small-scale farmers cultivating non-irrigated land.
Africa as a continent requires substantial investment in infrastructure projects to create real and sustained value as these ensure essential processes like industrialisation and urbanisation can be leveraged. However, one of the key questions underpinning this infrastructure challenge is how to finance these projects.
