Nairobi’s market has grown up, it’s time every Kenyan owned a piece of it

The second is one—the number of shares you need today to become a shareholder in any listed company on this exchange.

The third is 27.8 percent—the return delivered by NSE equities in the first half of 2026, outperforming Treasury bonds, Treasury bills, fixed deposits, money market funds, property and land.

A market that can carry a Sh204.3 billion strategic transaction, welcome an investor with a single share, and deliver the strongest half-year return across major asset classes has truly grown up.

The Safaricom transaction is worth dwelling on because it tested every part of our system. It needed sign-off from the public through its representatives in Parliament, from the Capital Markets Authority, the Communications Authority of Kenya, the Central Bank, and competition regulators across the Common Market for East and Southern Africa (Comesa) and the East African Community.

After the debate in Parliament, petitioners took their concerns to court, and it took the Court of Appeal to lift the orders allowing the transaction to proceed while the constitutional questions continue to be argued.

Still, the block trade at the NSE on June 30 was a seismic moment. It showed that Nairobi can host transactions of regional and global significance, not as a spectator market but as the arena where serious capital takes its seat.

We saw the same discipline, albeit at a different scale, in March. The Kenya Pipeline Company IPO was Kenya's first in 17 years, and it succeeded through our own institutions, not through foreign rescue.

The National Social Security Fund became KPC's largest shareholder. Uganda's state oil company backed the offer as a regional partner. More than 70,000 ordinary Kenyans applied for shares, many for the first time. That is a distinctly East African success story, and we should say so plainly and proudly.

The performance record now tells the same story. According to MSCI data, the Nairobi Securities Exchange was Africa's best-performing stock market in 2024 in US-dollar terms, with a 65.3 percent gain.

In 2025, the NSE followed that with another exceptional year, ranking second on the continent behind only Egypt, with a 52.2 percent US-dollar return. These rankings matter because global capital measures performance in dollars. They show that Kenya is no longer merely a frontier market with promise. It is a market delivering globally competitive returns.

That momentum has carried into 2026. In the first half of this year, NSE equities delivered a remarkable 27.8 percent return, outperforming every major traditional investment category by a wide margin. Special funds returned up to 10.69 percent, Treasury bonds returned 12 percent to 14.18 percent, Treasury bills returned 7.4 percent to 9.2 percent, fixed deposits returned 6.8 percent, money market funds returned 7.03 percent, property returned 5.2 percent to 14 percent, and land returned 1.1 percent to 1.3 percent.

The scoreboard is not whispering. It is ringing the bell.

Not every deal on our boards, however, is finished business. Asahi's agreement to acquire Diageo's stake in East African Breweries is still working through regulatory approval amid a series of challenges in court. South Africa's Nedbank's proposed acquisition of part of the NCBA Group is also in progress.

Here is the truth worth sitting with. Vodacom committed Sh204.3 billion to take its seat at Safaricom's table. Asahi is committing $2.3 billion to take its seat at EABL's.

A matatu sacco depositing its Friday collections, a teachers' sacco topping up monthly savings, or a chama built around three siblings and their parents—none of them needs billions to sit at that same table. With a mobile phone and a registered SIM card, anybody can start small, own a piece of Kenya's best companies, and participate in the same market that multinationals are spending a fortune to enter.

To our regulators and courts: the rigour you bring is why this table is trusted at all. But thorough and slow are not the same thing.

A transaction that has met every disclosure requirement and sits before a regulator for months, hearing nothing back, is not being handled with diligence. It is drifting, and drift is a risk markets price just as readily as bad news.

Four institutions reviewing a deal one after another does not multiply the rigour. It multiplies the wait. If Kenya wants to be trusted with the next transaction of this size—and there will be a next one—the standard must be higher: a published timeline and institutions willing to be held to it.

As Kenya and East Africa attract the attention of companies from across the world, including Europe and the Far East, it does no good to our competitiveness if transactions are held up by parochial interests. Capital is patient when rules are clear. It is far less forgiving when the process becomes fog.

Nairobi is the third-oldest continuously operating stock exchange in sub-Saharan Africa, after Johannesburg and Zimbabwe, and Kenyans have owned a stake in it since 1963. Sixty years on, that market is attracting global strategic investors, delivering some of the strongest investment returns on the continent, and opening its doors wider than ever before through technology that allows anyone to start with a single share. The invitation has never been wider or more compelling.

This is your table. Come and take your place.

The writer is the Chief Executive Officer, Nairobi Securities Exchange PLC. 
Note: Market performance figures reflect MSCI data for 2024 and 2025 and NSE/CBK/CMA/HassConsult return profile for January-June 2026.