Shekey retweeted
Does Hardship Make Better Founders? The Inverted U
In May a builder in Nigeria posted a short list on X: bad internet, power problems, low trust, limited capital. People still build anyway, they wrote, and that mindset produces dangerous founders. I hear a version of this in Kampala most weeks, often as a reply to this series. Hard places make hard founders. Take the hardship away and you take away the edge.
The question deserves a proper answer, because if it were true, every article in this series would be arguing against the thing that makes African founders good. So I went through the research on hardship, constraint and enterprise. The answer is partly, and only up to a point. The research also says roughly where the point is.
The shape of the curve
In 2019, Acar, Tarakci and van Knippenberg published a cross-disciplinary review in the Journal of Management on creativity and innovation under constraints. Their model "suggests an inverted U-shaped effect of constraints on creativity and innovation following motivational, cognitive, and social mechanisms." With no constraint at all, people drift. With some, they focus and invent. With too much, the work starves.
A meta-analysis of 76 lab studies by Byron, Khazanchi and Nazarian, in the Journal of Applied Psychology in 2010, adds a second axis. Mild evaluative pressure, the kind a deadline or a demanding reviewer creates, helped creative performance. Heavy pressure hurt it. And one kind of pressure only ever hurt: "We found a linearly negative relationship between uncontrollability and creativity such that more uncontrollability decreased creative performance."
That sentence matters for this series. A founder who chooses a tight budget to force focus is somewhere on the rising side of the curve. A founder whose grid fails without notice is dealing with uncontrollable pressure, and the studies find no rising side for that at all. In the World Bank Enterprise Surveys, 79.9% of firms in Uganda experienced electrical outages, against 5.8% in Germany. Nobody in Kampala chose those outages to sharpen their thinking.
What a disaster does to a CEO
The strongest support for the pushback comes from American boardrooms. Bernile, Bhagwat and Rau, in the Journal of Finance in 2017, looked at the CEOs of US public firms and what each had lived through early in life. CEOs who had experienced a fatal disaster without its most extreme consequences went on to run firms that behaved more aggressively. CEOs who had witnessed the extreme downside ran their firms more conservatively.
So moderate early hardship does seem to raise appetite for risk, and the worst hardship lowers it. Same inverted U, measured somewhere else. The study is about risk-taking, which is one ingredient of building a company among many, and it says nothing about whether those CEOs built better firms.
Psychology adds a careful version of the same idea. Tedeschi and Calhoun's work on post-traumatic growth, in Psychological Inquiry in 2004, describes positive change that comes out of the struggle with a severe life crisis. Their account is specific: the growth comes from the struggle together with support and the slow work of making sense of it. It does not arrive on its own, and it is no argument that the crisis was good.
I accept this much of the pushback. Some founders who come through hard years come out with a tolerance for risk and ambiguity that founders from easier places lack. A Nigerian founder posted in August that the best engineers they had worked with were African, because those engineers had spent their lives solving impossible problems with limited resources. The same post finished the thought: give them the resources everyone else takes for granted, and watch what they build.
Born, or exposed
Some of the drive is inherited. Nicolaou and colleagues, in Management Science in 2008, studied 870 identical and 857 same-sex fraternal twin pairs in the UK and found that 48% of the variance in becoming self-employed was genetic, with little effect from family environment and upbringing. That cuts against both sides of this argument. Hardship did not plant the drive, and the drive turns up in every population.
Whether that talent becomes invention depends heavily on exposure and money. Bell, Chetty and colleagues linked 1.2 million US inventors to tax records and published the results in the Quarterly Journal of Economics in 2019. Children born to parents in the top 1% of the income distribution were ten times as likely to become inventors as children from below the median, and the gap held among children with the same math scores early in school. Moving from an area at the 25th percentile for innovation exposure to one at the 75th raised the odds of inventing by 37%. If invention rates were equalized, the authors estimate, the United States would have four times as many inventors. They call the missing ones lost Einsteins.
Finland shows the same pattern in a rich welfare state. Aghion and colleagues, in a 2017 working paper, found that parental income still predicts who becomes an inventor after controlling for IQ, which they read as talent being misallocated. In two of the most developed economies in the world, growing up poor does not produce more inventors. It produces fewer, and the loss can be counted.
Carry that to Kampala and the arithmetic gets uncomfortable. If exposure and family money decide this much in the United States and Finland, where schools, power and internet mostly work, I would expect them to decide more where those are missing. The talent is here in the same proportion as anywhere else. What is scarce is the number of rooms where a teenager meets someone who has built something, and the margin a family needs before it can let her try.
Heat, smoke and scarcity
The physical environment pushes the same way. Park and colleagues, in AEJ: Economic Policy in 2020, found that in US schools without air conditioning, a school year 1°F hotter reduced that year's learning by 1%. Somanathan and colleagues, in the Journal of Political Economy in 2021, found that annual output in Indian factories falls by about 2% for every degree Celsius. Zhang, Chen and Zhang, in PNAS in 2018, found that long-term exposure to air pollution in China lowered scores on verbal and math tests. And as I wrote in the last article, money worry itself takes a measurable bite out of thinking.
None of these constraints sharpens anyone. In the heat studies the fix was mundane: air conditioning in the classroom, climate control on the factory floor. Take the constraint away and people get their capacity back.
When the constraint went away
If hardship were the source of African enterprise, the clearest test would be to remove a hardship and watch enterprise shrink. Economists have run versions of that test in Africa, and in each study enterprise grew.
M-Pesa launched commercially in Kenya in March 2007. Suri and Jack, in Science in 2016, found that mobile money lifted 194,000 Kenyan households, 2% of the country's households, out of poverty, and moved women from farming into business. A payment rail removed a constraint, and women started businesses.
Dinkelman, in the American Economic Review in 2011, studied a mass rollout of rural electricity in South Africa and found that household electrification raised women's employment within five years, by releasing them from home production and enabling microenterprises. Hjort and Poulsen, in the same journal in 2019, followed the arrival of fast internet in 12 African countries and found higher employment, with firm-level data showing more firm entry, productivity and exporting. I have read only the abstracts of these two papers, so I can give you the direction of each effect and not its size.
Cole, Elliott, Occhiali and Strobl, in the Journal of Development Economics in 2018, put a size on power. Across 14 Sub-Saharan African countries, they estimate that cutting outages to South Africa's level would raise firm sales by 85.1%, and by 117.4% for firms without a generator.
Akintola Steve (@Akintola_steve), a Lagos backend engineer and founder of AuditGate, wrote in May that building fintech in Nigeria is technically harder than building it in Silicon Valley, because "our infrastructure punishes every shortcut in ways Stripe's sandbox never will." The studies above take his point one step further. Punishment teaches caution, and founders who learn it become careful builders. Enterprise grows when the punishment stops.
The founders we never meet
There is one more reason the pushback feels true. We only meet the founders who survived.
In the Global Entrepreneurship Monitor's 2012 survey, 26% of Ugandan adults had discontinued a business in the previous year, against 4% in the United States. Uganda's Ministry of Trade, Industry and Cooperatives reported in 2024 that for every new business established, another closes within a year, and that only about 8% of small enterprises have been around for 15 years or more. The founders who reach a panel or a podcast come from that 8%. The others went back to a job, or to the farm, or to nothing, and nobody interviews them about resilience.
Erik Hersman (@whiteafrican), the Nairobi co-founder of Gridless and founder of iHub and Ushahidi, put it in a post in May: "Small business in Kenya is playing on hard mode." The people who win on hard mode are very good. Hard mode also ends far more games.
Another Nigerian founder wrote in July that for years they wore the struggle as a badge of honor, because that was the story the ecosystem celebrated, and that they now think differently because they have become more honest. Hardship selects more than it trains. It leaves a few tough survivors and a story about them that hides the cost.
So here is my answer to the pushback. Yes, hardship makes some founders tougher, in the way the inverted U predicts: a little pressure they can control, survived with support, builds something real. The constraints in this series sit far down the other side of the curve, and nobody gets to control them. African founders are tough. They would also be more productive, and far more numerous, with a grid that stays on.
I should be clear about the limits. None of these studies is about Uganda. The inverted U comes mostly from lab experiments and a review. The CEO study measures risk appetite and stops there. I have not found a meta-analysis on childhood adversity and adult entrepreneurship, and it is possible one would complicate this picture. If it did, I would change my view. I also cannot say how many of the Ugandans who closed a business closed it because of power, data or rules, since GEM's top recorded reason in 2012 was simply that the business was not profitable.
If you are building through constraints you did not choose and want to work out which ones are sharpening you and which are only costing you, book a strategy call: cal.com/pirwot/strategy-call
Which constraint in your business has made you better, and which one has only ever cost you?
Sources
Acar, Tarakci, van Knippenberg, "Creativity and Innovation Under Constraints: A Cross-Disciplinary Integrative Review", Journal of Management 45(1), 2019, pure.eur.nl/files/47955710/A…
Byron, Khazanchi, Nazarian, "The relationship between stressors and creativity: A meta-analysis examining competing theoretical models", Journal of Applied Psychology 95(1), 2010, pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/2008…
World Bank WDI / Enterprise Surveys, "Firms experiencing electrical outages (% of firms)", latest values (updated 2026), api.worldbank.org/v2/country…
Bernile, Bhagwat, Rau, "What Doesn't Kill You Will Only Make You More Risk-Loving: Early-Life Disasters and CEO Behavior", Journal of Finance 72(1), 2017, doi.org/10.1111/jofi.12432
Tedeschi and Calhoun, "Posttraumatic Growth: Conceptual Foundations and Empirical Evidence", Psychological Inquiry 15(1), 2004, doi.org/10.1207/s15327965pli…
Nicolaou, Shane, Cherkas, Hunkin, Spector, "Is the Tendency to Engage in Entrepreneurship Genetic?", Management Science 54(1), 2008, researchgate.net/publication…
Bell, Chetty, Jaravel, Petkova, Van Reenen, "Who Becomes an Inventor in America? The Importance of Exposure to Innovation", QJE 134(2) (NBER WP 24062), 2019, nber.org/system/files/workin…
Aghion, Akcigit, Hyytinen, Toivanen, "The Social Origins of Inventors", NBER WP 24110, 2017, nber.org/papers/w24110
Park, Goodman, Hurwitz, Smith, "Heat and Learning", AEJ: Economic Policy 12(2), 2020, doi.org/10.1257/pol.20180612
Somanathan, Somanathan, Sudarshan, Tewari, "The Impact of Temperature on Productivity and Labor Supply: Evidence from Indian Manufacturing", JPE 129(6), 2021, doi.org/10.1086/713733
Zhang, Chen, Zhang, "The impact of exposure to air pollution on cognitive performance", PNAS 115(37), 2018, doi.org/10.1073/pnas.1809474…
Suri and Jack, "The long-run poverty and gender impacts of mobile money", Science 354, 2016, doi.org/10.1126/science.aah5…
Dinkelman, "The Effects of Rural Electrification on Employment: New Evidence from South Africa", AER 101(7), 2011, aeaweb.org/articles?id=10.12…
Hjort and Poulsen, "The Arrival of Fast Internet and Employment in Africa", AER 109(3), 2019, doi.org/10.1257/aer.20161385
Cole, Elliott, Occhiali, Strobl, "Power outages and firm performance in Sub-Saharan Africa", Journal of Development Economics 134, 2018, ideas.repec.org/a/eee/deveco…
Herrington and Kelley, "African Entrepreneurship: Sub-Saharan African Regional Report 2012", Global Entrepreneurship Monitor, 2013, babson.edu/media/babson/asse…
Ministry of Trade, Industry and Cooperatives (Uganda), "State of Entrepreneurship in Uganda 2024", 2024, mtic.go.ug/wp-content/upload…
X posts: Akintola Steve, 2026, nitter.cf/Akintola_steve/status/… ; Erik Hersman, 2026, nitter.cf/whiteafrican/status/20… ; anonymized and paraphrased: nitter.cf/iamnelsonebuka/status/… , nitter.cf/hsprafrique/status/208… , nitter.cf/ChimezieChuta/status/2…
For years, I believed that if you truly believed in your startup, you had to go all in. Quit the job. Burn the boats. Live on hope. Bootstrap forever. Sleep less. Sacrifice more.
Like many African founders, I wore that struggle as a badge of honour. The harder the grind, the purer the commitment. That was the story we told ourselves, and that was the story the ecosystem celebrated.
Today, I think differently. Not because I’ve become less ambitious. No.
I’ve become more honest.
Shekey retweeted
In Jensen Huang's picture of AI as a five-layer cake - energy at the bottom, then chips, then infrastructure, then models, and applications at the top - much of Africa can credibly compete in four of those five layers.
digitaleconomy.ke/post/the-f…
Shekey retweeted
.@AAGMcDonald gives an update on Operation Ghostbusters, a nationwide investigation into federal student loan fraud:
"Today, we are announcing charges against five defendants and the seizure of more than $750,000 in cryptocurrency tied to this scheme, and laundered through a network associated with Kenyan nationals... Whether you’re in Nebraska, New Jersey, Virginia, or Nairobi, we will pursue you and bring you to justice. The American people deserve better than ghost students, fake applications, and stolen aid."
Shekey retweeted
Your vehicle can travel by rail too. Whether it's one vehicle or a fleet our service is ideal for your need.
Kenya Railways Freight Service offers a fast, safe and reliable vehicle haulage services.
Shekey retweeted
The Government has reaffirmed its commitment to strengthening rail freight transport following the launch of a dedicated CMA CGM block train service linking the Port of Mombasa to the Inland Container Depot (ICD) Nairobi.
The new move is expected to enhance cargo efficiency, lower logistics costs and bolster Kenya's position as East Africa's leading trade gateway.
The inaugural train departed the Port of Mombasa carrying more than 100 Twenty-Foot Equivalent Units (TEUs), bringing together the Kenya Ports Authority PLC, Kenya Railways and global shipping giant CMA CGM in a tripartite strategic partnership aimed at streamlining supply chains.
Speaking during the event the Principal Secretary State Department for Transport Mr Mohamed Daghar described the initiative as a milestone in Kenya's efforts to modernise freight movement and improve the competitiveness of the Northern Corridor.
"A dedicated block train enables partners to plan cargo, wagons and terminal equipment around one dispatch, reducing avoidable delays and improving productivity. This will eventually lower the cost of moving each container while making deliveries more predictable for customers," he said.
The Principal Secretary said the service demonstrates the growing capacity of the SGR to handle large cargo volumes efficiently, while providing greater reliability for importers, exporters and logistics operators.
Daghar encouraged the partners to maintain high service standards, noting that the long-term success of the venture would depend on consistency, reliability and timely delivery.
"Customers will judge this service by its performance. Reliability, careful cargo handling and predictable transit times will be the true measure of success," the PS added.
The launch ceremony also attracted international attention, with French Ambassador to Kenya H.E Wadidi Benaabou hailing the Port of Mombasa as a critical driver of economic cooperation between Kenya and France.
"The Port of Mombasa remains central to regional commerce and serves as a vital gateway for trade, investment and economic growth across East Africa," said the Ambassador.
The envoy the continued development of the Port strengthens business partnerships and creates new opportunities for collaboration between the two countries.
The ambassador witnessed the departure of the inaugural train, terming the event a reflection of Kenya's growing importance as a regional logistics and trade hub.
Kenya Ports Authority Chief Executive Officer Capt. William K. Ruto welcomed the service noting that the dedicated service would accelerate cargo evacuation from the Port while strengthening the efficiency of the entire logistics chain.
"This service represents more than a train movement. It is a coordinated logistics solution that integrates vessel discharge, rail transfer, train dispatch and cargo collection at ICD Nairobi ," said Capt. Ruto.
He noted, “By moving cargo faster and more predictably, we are creating value for our customers while reinforcing the Port of Mombasa's competitiveness."
He noted that faster cargo evacuation would free up valuable yard space within the port, ease pressure on road transport corridors and improve truck turnaround times.
"Efficient cargo movement is critical to supporting the region's growing trade volumes. Every container evacuated quickly creates room for more business and better service delivery," he added.
The initiative is also expected to maximise utilisation of the SGR network, which extends to Naivasha and connects seamlessly with the metre-gauge railway, providing access to western Kenya and regional markets across the Northern Corridor.
The partners are targeting two round trips per week for both imports and exports, with ongoing operational trials expected to determine the optimal cargo volumes, equipment requirements and service standards needed to sustain the operation.
The launch brought together key leaders from the maritime and logistics sectors, including KPA GM Corporate Services Mr. Edward Kamau, Harbour Master and GM Marine Operations Capt. Patrick Ondenyi, GM Cargo Operations Dr. Sudi Mwasinago, CMA CGM Africa Regional Office Deputy Regional Director Naveen Prabhu, CMA- CGM Kenya Managing Director Benjamin Coston ,Branch Manager Yuri De Sousa and the Operations Manager, Evans Owuoche among other industry players.
Shekey retweeted
Kenya appoints Salience Consulting, SpaceDreamS and Gauff Consultants Africa to provide transaction advisory services for its proposed commercial spaceport in Kipini, along the coast.
The consortium will assess the project’s technical feasibility, financial viability, environmental and social impacts, and infrastructure requirements.
The appointment follows an October 1 funding agreement between the Kenya Space Agency and the National Treasury’s PPP Directorate to undertake a feasibility study, whose findings will guide the decision on whether and how to proceed.
Shekey retweeted
PCBs made in America. Twice as fast as Shenzhen.
Today @CircuitHub is unveiling The Grid, our factory-scale robot in Massachusetts that builds circuit boards on demand.
No changeovers, no per-design setup. Prototypes and production batches, fully automated.
Vasco da Gama's first voyage.
It is in this voyage that a padrão (Vasco da Gama pillar in Malindi, Kilifi county) was erected on the East African coast
[🎥 Cunning Conquests/ fb]
Shekey retweeted
Isuzu East Africa is targeting to grow its annual sales to 9,000 units in the next four years as part of its 2026-2030 strategy to maintain its market dominance, a position it has occupied for 14 consecutive years.
The company reported sales of 6,882 units for the year ended March 31, 2026.
Isuzu East Africa leads the new vehicles market in Kenya with 52% market share, with CFAO (30.5%) and Simba Corporation (7.9%) closing the top 3 according to latest data from Kenya Motor Industry Association.
The company accounts for 90.4% of Kenya's motor vehicle exports.
1/2
Shekey retweeted
I have come across a National Treasury approval letter showing that, in February 2025, the government approved a $550 million electricity and fertilizer plant in Olkaria through "specially permitted procurement."
The decision is significant. It allowed a Chinese investor to enter a strategic public-resource value chain—geothermal steam, power generation, green ammonia, and fertilizer—without the competitive process ordinarily used to test price, technical capacity, and value for money.
The letter does not prove corruption; it proves discretion.
It shows that Kenya’s Treasury used an exceptional procurement route to admit Kaishan into a value chain built on publicly owned steam and prospective public purchases. The question for Parliament, the Auditor-General is simple: if this project was so exceptional that competition was unnecessary, why was that conclusion not tested openly before the state committed its steam, its purchasing power, and its fiscal credibility?
Kaishan’s journey in Kenya is notable:
Initial Foothold: Entered as the EPC contractor to Gideon Moi-owned Sosian Energy for its 35 MW Menengai plant ($65M EPC + $18.05M O&M contract). Sosian was one of three IPPs competitively selected by GDC in 2013, with the plant synchronized to the grid in 2023. (Control of Sosian briefly shifted to Devki Raval before reverting to the Moi family).
Direct Ownership: Kaishan then acquired OrPower22—the American-linked IPP that was developing Menengai III. This transformed Kaishan from a equipment vendor into an asset owner with long-term interests in Kenyan geothermal generation.
Downstream Integration: Through its subsidiary, Kaishan Terra Green Ammonia Ltd, the firm signed a 30-year steam-supply agreement with KenGen for a planned 165.4 MW plant using steam from 18 existing wells.
According to disclosures, the plant will produce green ammonia for fertilizer, with Kenya’s Ministry of Agriculture expected to buy the output under Treasury payment support.
This represents a major political-economy shift: a private Chinese investor gaining direct access to a public natural resource while securing a long-term public purchasing commitment and fiscal backing.
Specially permitted procurement is legally reserved for truly exceptional cases where competition is infeasible. Using it here makes governance the central issue: was competition genuinely impossible, or was an exceptional route used to bypass public scrutiny?
Shekey retweeted
THE ENGINEER: Education, Training, Professional growth, Membership and Professional Registration by @EngineersBoard , @TheIEK and @ACEK1968
1. One is required to complete a 5 yr accredited engineering degree from a university.
2. While at the university you may apply for membership as a student Engineer
3. On successful completion of the university (5yrs) you MUST apply for registration as a graduate engineer (GE). You will need a Proposer and a Seconder (Must be Professional Engineer in relevant field).
This is normally the first stage of loosing it! Most guys after university will be employed or start businesses with huge profits and forget about professional development!
4. On the 6th year- As a GE you start a new journey of “Training and Experience” for another 3 years, under mentorship of a Professional Engineer.
5. At end of 8 yr (5 class + 3 field) your are required to write 2 reports (training and experience, normally called Part 1 & 2) to aid your transition from Graduate Engineer (GE) to Professional Engineer (PE)
You SHALL submit these reports to the Board @EngineersBoard of Kenya or @TheIEK forwarded under “Application for Interview for Professional Engineer” cover.
The Board will review your submission and decide whether umeiva ama hujaiva. You will likely be called for the interview if you have met the requirements (5 yr degree, 3 yr experience, adequate training)
6. Earliest, in the 9th year you will appear for an ORAL interview before a panel of not less than 3 engineers (PEs or CEs). These will interrogate your education, training, experience and if they see umeiva (you are okey), you’ll be scheduled for a closed book written exam on the same day. Should they feel you are not ready, you may not be invited for the written examination
7. Hopefully in the 9th year the results will be out and you will be confirmed A PROFESSIONAL ENGINEER (PE).
This is the time a person is “Engineer”.
When you (developer) or Public is looking for an “Engineer”, you are looking for a Person at 9th year minimum.
There are not as many Kenyans in this stage, about 4,000 only in all engineering disciplines.
Engineers who are Experts at Building Construction (Structural Engineers) are barely 800 in the entire Country. These are CIVIL ENGINEERS with bias in structural engineering. Other Civil Engineers are in roads, water, sanitation, bridges, foundations, railway etc).
Understand: out of the 4000 Professional Engineers, nearly 2000 are Civil Engineers. From the 2000 Civil Engineers about 800 are experts at buildings (structural engineers).
8. After 16 years, On completion of active practice for 7 years as a Professional Engineer (PE), in the 8th year one may apply for upgrading to become a Consulting Engineer. This entails submission of a report and invitation for an interview by @EngineersBoard . The applicant requires a proposer and a seconder both consulting engineers.
You will sit an oral interview before a panel of not less than 3 consulting engineers
9. You may pass of fail, but that we leave to God. When you PASS you become a Professional Consulting Engineer, You effectively upgrade from PE to CE (5 +3+ 7=15) min if you are a cool kid (never the case). Must prove you have assured society. Kenya has about 500 consulting engineers (CEs) in all engineering disciplines!
10. At this time (after 7 yrs as PE) you may apply to @TheIEK Institution of Engineers of to upgrade from a CORPORATE MEMBER to a FELLOW MEMBER. Must prove you have assisted society. Need 2 proposers and 2 Seconders, all Fellows. Not as many though, about 250 in Kenya.
11. After this progression (Fellow Membership not a requirement), you may register an engineering Consulting Firm and APPLY for Membership to the ASSOCIATION OF CONSULTING ENGINEERS OF KENYA @ACEK1968
There are about 165 Engineering consulting firms in Kenya.
12. Yours truly has covered the entire Journey.
~have a Progressive day.
Shekey retweeted
So on top of the pension funds engaging in a buy-and-hold of the KPC shares for Dangote, he was also the one dictating the price at which to buy the shares. Are we actually serious? What in the neglect of fiduciary duty is this?
Shekey retweeted
FMs wanted KES 9.50 Dangote offered KES 9.02, the deal was sealed at KES 9.04.
TA for the IPO says the KES 0.04 an annualised return of 8% matching tbill( according to him).
State, Dangote haggled over Sh0.46 in KPC deal - Business Daily share.google/YmHIau1qTIMZYhC…
Shekey retweeted
The School Principal's house at North Highridge School that was demolished by the Mandera Governor in early 2025 to pave way for the ongoing illegal construction of 30-level apartment building. Construction has blocked access to the septic tank that is now overflowing, with toilet effluents finding their way to the neighbouring Mathare River. BOM is proposing that the school should not re-open in 2027 due to adverse health and environmental reasons.
Construction ongoing at full speed despite court orders. @Kenyajudiciary what is going on?
@StandardKenya
@TheStarKenya
@NPSOfficial_KE
@EACCKenya how far is your case with this thug? Is he getting away with it?
@Tribe44citizen
@GulagstormRider
@teddyobiero
@NelsonHavi
@lsk_nbi
@ntvkenya
@KenyaGovernors tame your member.
@SakajaJohnson intervene
@WilliamsRuto
@HusseinMohamedg
@HonOscarSudi
@JalangoMwenyewe
@edwinsifuna when will you look into this case. Linda Hawa watoto
@HEBabuOwino the case file is at ELC dig it out.
@NationFmKE
@amerix
@EricLatiff
@TheAsianWeekly
@EastFMKenya
@tv47digital
@MpashoNews
@radiomaisha
@Osama_otero
@InteriorKE
@badqas3 now you will claim that your pple are being targeted x follow the facts.
@ManderaBlogger he is chewing your money here in Parklands by developing a grabbed school land
@abduhar @Mandera_cgvt
@Dukeofmandera
@Asmali77 @WehliyeMohamed @ahmednasirlaw @JunetMohamed @JunetMohamed @MohamedAKhalif
Shekey retweeted
Nairobi Railway City contractor selection process complete. Will they upgrade the current Easy Coach terminal to a modern multi modal long distance hub? My worry is the BRTs @NeeravKapila, cc @angaliahuyu @mucheke @AnganaKeith @kinjeketile @xysist @Jasiri_WVR @EricKigada
Shekey retweeted
The sequence deserves scrutiny. In February, the state leaned on its pension schemes and agencies to support an IPO struggling to attract sufficient subscriptions at KES 9.00. Roughly eight months later, part of those holdings was sold to Dangote at KES 9.02–9.36: a gross return of just 0.2–4.0% before costs, with the bulk reported at the low end. One-year government paper at the February auctions, yielding about 9.1% annually, offered an eight-month accrual benchmark of roughly 6%. Across the sale-price range, the sellers fell short by roughly 2 to 6 percentage points.
The dividend makes the terms more striking. On 14 October, the board proposed KES 0.32 per share, equivalent to 3.6% of the IPO entry price. Five days later, the institutions sold ahead of the 30 November register closure, leaving the qualifying buyer entitled to that dividend if approved. At KES 9.02, the sellers realised just two cents per share while passing on entitlement to a proposed 32-cent dividend. Even at KES 9.36, their entire capital gain was only four cents larger than that dividend.
Whatever the strategic merits of the Dangote partnership, these institutions supplied capital, carried equity risk and sold with the dividend entitlement attached, yet still earned less than the government-paper benchmark. The pension trustees owe members an explanation of how those terms served their retirement interests.
The sellers of the ~25% stake in Kenya Pipeline Company (KPC) reportedly include state-backed pension funds and agencies such as NSSF, the Public Servants Pension Scheme, County Workers Pension Fund and UFAA, alongside pension schemes of Kenya Power, KPC and KPA.
Their combined shareholding has reportedly fallen from 38.35% to below 15%, with Dangote emerging as KPC’s second-largest shareholder after the government.
businessdailyafrica.com/bd/c…
