African markets & business credit
Following African Capital into Kenya
Follow the money from regional infrastructure to the business next door.
Read the article →THE RESEARCH LIBRARY
Start with a question.
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41 articles
African markets & business credit
Making Business Credit Work in Kenya
Follow the money from regional infrastructure to the business next door.
Read the article →International investing & diaspora finance
Investing Across Borders: What Are You Actually Buying?
Connect global investments with the places you live, earn, and send money.
Read the article →International investing & diaspora finance
When the Investor Moves, the Tax Story Changes
Connect global investments with the places you live, earn, and send money.
Read the article →International investing & diaspora finance
Moving Money with Purpose: Investing and Supporting Family Across Borders
Connect global investments with the places you live, earn, and send money.
Read the article →Kenyan tax & household finance
What your payslip can actually fund
Build a working plan for your payslip, pension, healthcare, and home.
Read the article →Kenyan tax & household finance
Building a pension that can pay for life
Build a working plan for your payslip, pension, healthcare, and home.
Read the article →Kenyan tax & household finance
Paying for healthcare without unravelling the household
Build a working plan for your payslip, pension, healthcare, and home.
Read the article →Kenyan tax & household finance
A home the household can keep
Build a working plan for your payslip, pension, healthcare, and home.
Read the article →Kenyan equities & company analysis
What a Kenyan Share Can Pay You—and What It Costs to Own
Read the business, test its value, and build a portfolio with a purpose.
Read the article →Kenyan equities & company analysis
Reading the Business Behind a Kenyan Share Price
Read the business, test its value, and build a portfolio with a purpose.
Read the article →Kenyan equities & company analysis
Building a Kenyan Portfolio You Can Explain and Maintain
Read the business, test its value, and build a portfolio with a purpose.
Read the article →Kenyan equities & company analysis
Keeping a Kenyan Portfolio Useful as Life and Markets Change
Read the business, test its value, and build a portfolio with a purpose.
Read the article →NSE dividend growth and watchlist
Building a dividend-growth core with three-month DCA
A practical NSE dividend-growth core, transaction-cost reserve, whole-share DCA schedule, dividend-income estimate, and stress test.
Read the article →NSE dividend growth and watchlist
Using a watchlist to broaden a Kenyan equity portfolio
A portfolio-function watchlist for diversifiers, bank alternatives, monitoring rules, and future capital deployment.
Read the article →US markets and portfolio construction
Understanding the Market Before Choosing a Fund
Define the economic exposure, benchmark, return and household risk question before choosing an investment vehicle.
Read the article →US markets and portfolio construction
Choosing the Wrapper and Understanding the Full Cost
Compare direct holdings, funds and ETFs through legal structure, creation mechanics, fees, execution and compounding.
Read the article →US markets and portfolio construction
Ownership, Tax and Cross-Border Implementation
Map fund domicile, withholding, estate exposure, currency, records and cross-border implementation before funding an account.
Read the article →US markets and portfolio construction
Portfolio Architecture Before Fund Selection
Choose a portfolio architecture that assigns a clear job, loss budget, decision right and review rule to every sleeve.
Read the article →US markets and portfolio construction
Building a Broad Core and Measuring Overlap
Evaluate broad US equity exposure, deliberate growth tilts, fund overlap, concentration and contribution-first rebalancing.
Read the article →US markets and portfolio construction
Satellites, Thematic Exposure and Concentration
Use semiconductor ETFs to test benchmark design, sector concentration, liquidity, valuation, stress testing and position limits.
Read the article →US markets and portfolio construction
Options Income as a Tactical Sleeve
Model the options wheel as a payoff-changing tactical sleeve with collateral, assignment, tax, operating and portfolio risks.
Read the article →US markets and portfolio construction
Integration, Rebalancing and Portfolio Governance
Connect overlap, covariance, collateral, stress tests, contributions and review rules into an auditable portfolio policy.
Read the article →US markets and portfolio construction
Long-Term Maintenance, Withdrawals and Review
Bring lump sums, ongoing contributions, reserves, withdrawals, tax and behaviour into the long-term operation of a portfolio.
Read the article →Leadership and governance
Key-Person Risk in Sole Proprietorships and Founder-Led Businesses
A practical guide to finding critical dependencies, building operational continuity and governing a founder's absence or transition.
Read the article →Owner earnings for MSMEs and small businesses
The cash an owner can actually claim
An owner opens the mobile banking app and sees KSh 1.2 million. How much of it can they take home?
Read the article →Owner earnings for MSMEs and small businesses
Maintenance capital and working capital
A business can look cash-rich because it has stopped replacing equipment. It can also look cash-poor because it is building the next stage of capacity. If we call all capital spending “maintenance,” we can understate what a growing business might earn. If we call all spending “growth,” we can…
Read the article →Owner earnings for MSMEs and small businesses
The daily MSME operating toolkit
A cash forecast is most useful before there is a crisis. For a small business, the working version does not need to predict the whole year with false confidence. It needs to answer a simpler question: if the expected customers pay when promised, and the bills on the calendar are paid when due,…
Read the article →Owner earnings for MSMEs and small businesses
Owner pay, reserves, growth and debt
Owners often fund two very different things from one bank account: the work they do and the capital they put at risk. If the owner manages staff every day, their pay for that job is an operating cost. A dividend or draw is a return on ownership. Mixing the two can make a business appear more…
Read the article →Owner earnings for MSMEs and small businesses
Buying, selling and succession
A buyer asks, “What does the business earn?” The seller replies with what is left in the bank at the end of a good month. Both sides are asking the wrong version of the question.
Read the article →Owner earnings and listed-company valuation
Reconstructing owner earnings from public filings
A public company gives us more information than most private businesses, but it does not give us a line called “owner earnings.” We have to build one from the report and keep every analyst judgment visible.
Read the article →Owner earnings and listed-company valuation
US technology and asset-light economics: NVIDIA
A company can outsource factories and still require enormous amounts of capital. NVIDIA is a useful case because its business is often described as “fabless” or asset-light, yet its filings show material investment in research and development, working capital, supplier commitments, and…
Read the article →Owner earnings and listed-company valuation
Asset-heavy issuers and data-centre infrastructure
A data centre building is not one asset with one replacement date. It combines land, buildings, power systems, cooling, core systems, servers, networking, leasehold improvements, software, and contractual access to electricity and fibre. Some equipment may be refreshed every few years. A…
Read the article →Owner earnings and listed-company valuation
Banks and insurers: distributable capital
A bank’s debt is not like a manufacturer’s debt. Customer deposits are part of the product that lets the bank lend and earn a spread. An insurer’s premium is not an immediate profit cheque: the insurer has agreed to cover future claims. That is why an industrial-company owner-earnings formula…
Read the article →Owner earnings and listed-company valuation
NSE cross-sector casebook: seven businesses, seven cash questions
An industrial-company formula can be useful for a Kenyan listed business, but only after we know what its assets and liabilities do. A bank’s customer deposits fund lending. An insurer’s premiums come with future claims. A farm may harvest seasonally and carry biological assets. A utility spends…
Read the article →Failure Retrospectives and Warning Systems
The retrospective method
After a company fails, its final crisis can make the ending seem obvious. That feeling is dangerous. The reader now knows which supplier went unpaid, which loan fell due, and which rescue did not arrive. A lender or owner three years earlier did not know those outcomes with certainty.
Read the article →Failure Retrospectives and Warning Systems
Nakumatt and Tuskys: two retail distress records
Nakumatt and Tuskys are often discussed together as Kenyan supermarket failures. They are useful cases for asking what went wrong in a cash-intensive retail model, but their court records do not tell one interchangeable story. Each had its own legal company, creditor list, financing, operating…
Read the article →Failure Retrospectives and Warning Systems
Twiga and Copia: funding, legal entities and what the record can show
A start-up can raise a large sum and still run short of cash. The fundraising figure is not the company’s revenue, bank balance, gross margin, operating cash flow, cash runway, or the amount its owners could withdraw. It describes financing raised across particular entities, investors,…
Read the article →What startup funding figures actually measure
Kenya’s startup funding headline needs three denominators
A founder sees the headline: Kenya led African startup funding in 2025, then reported funding fell sharply in the first half of 2026. An investor asks whether that means capital has disappeared, shifted into debt, or become more selective. Those are different questions. Before deciding which…
Read the article →What startup funding figures actually measure
What kind of money was raised?
Suppose two Kenyan companies each announce that they raised KSh 500 million. The headline makes them look comparable. One may have sold new shares to fund product experiments with no fixed repayment date. The other may have taken a secured, dollar-linked facility to finance equipment that pays…
Read the article →What startup funding figures actually measure
What happened after the raise?
A social post says 13 Kenyan startups “collapsed after raising” a combined Sh93 billion. The sentence feels conclusive: large funding, failed companies, money gone. But it puts three questions into one label. Which legal entity received the financing? What happened to each business and its…
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