22/05/2026
SAD TRUTH .
Kenya’s banks are posting record profits as businesses suffocate, startups collapse, and entrepreneurs abandon dreams at the doors of expensive loans, and now lawyers Ahmednassir Abdullahi and Willis Evans Otieno are sounding the alarm.
Ahmednassir did not mince his words.
“Why aren’t we having windfall taxes on these crazy super profits banks in Kenya are making by lazily lending depositors’ money to government?” he asked.
According to him, banks have discovered the perfect money machine: collect wananchi deposits, dump the cash into Treasury bills and bonds, enjoy near risk-free billions backed by taxpayers, and then avoid the harder work of financing the real economy.
Willis Otieno says the damage is already visible across the country.
“Many Kenyans have viable business ideas that remain unimplemented not because of lack of innovation but because of constrained access to affordable credit,” he warned.
The numbers are brutal.
By early 2025, banks reportedly held nearly 45% of Kenya’s domestic debt stock even as private sector lending collapsed from nearly 14% growth into negative territory.
Translation?
Banks are increasingly making more money lending to government than lending to businesses that create jobs.
So as banks celebrate bumper profits, SMEs are wheezing, creatives are stranded, and young entrepreneurs are being slapped with interest rates that feel designed to kill ambition.
Now, an uncomfortable national question is exploding online:
Have Kenyan banks stopped building the economy and started feeding off the state?.
With all these happening, how do you move on in such an economy?
Talk to us today for investment partner and wealth management. You need expert advice to help you maneuver in tough seasons like these.
SHEFA WEALTH GROUP- Vision. Partnership. Focus
Visit: www.shefawealthgroup.com
