Impact@Africa Portal Development

Kenya: Fast Facts

Kenya is the center of impact investing in Africa, with more deals commenced and executed there than in any other African country. It is also one of the centers of finance in Africa, and the Kenyan Capital Markets Authority has ambitious plans to make Kenya an international financial center. With such ambitions come greater stability, better and more facilitative and pragmatic regulation, and greater investor confidence, across asset classes.

Kenya has a developed legal system and considerable capital markets sophistication. The Nairobi Stock Exchange is one of the leading exchanges in Africa.

One of the more significant impediments to impact investing in Kenya is the security situation, although Kenya shares those impediments with other African countries. These include a limited number of deal exits, insufficient investment-ready opportunities, the inflation of valuations due to competing investment capital (both a plus and a minus to be sure) and the relatively long due diligence process. But those challenges are also opportunities, as they give advantage to a disciplined and robust impact investing approach which will help to attack impediments to growth and, over time, improve standards of living.

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