Thematic areas

Annual lectures
Thematic areas

The 8th FSD Kenya annual lecture

Every year since 2015, FSD Kenya has held a public annual lecture focusing on current and emerging financial sector issues.

Ms. Sanda Ojiambo, who serves as the Assistant Secretary-General and CEO of the United Nations Global Compact, will deliver the 8th FSD Kenya annual lecture on Thursday the 27th of October 2022 from 4:00 – 7:00pm East Africa Time. 

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Blogs and publications
Thematic areas

Transforming the informal economy: Social protection and inclusive growth

This presentation explores the link between social security and inclusive growth in the context of Kenya’s informal sector.

The expansion of Kenya’s informal economy since the 1990s presents growing challenges for policy makers concerned to ensure that Kenya’s growth is both robust and inclusive.

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Blog
Thematic areas

Sustainable finance disclosures for financial sector authorities

Sustainable finance is becoming an increasingly important form of finance for Africa. Key to anchoring sustainable finance effectively is understanding related disclosures and standards.

This presentation unpacks how the intersection of innovation, fintech and sustainable finance reporting and disclosure standards are creating an interesting future of supervision and regulation for financial sector.

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Blogs and publications
Thematic areas

Environmental risk exposure in the Kenyan banking sector

he Kenya Bankers Association (KBA) partnered with FSD Kenya and the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) to undertake a study on the environmental risk exposure in the Kenyan banking sector.

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Blog
Thematic areas

Climate action in Africa: Pathways towards resilient sustainable cities

Africa’s urbanization is increasing and remains largely informal, uncontrolled, and unsupported by the continent’s infrastructure. More people are moving to towns and cities, rapidly creating ‘informal’ settlements with limited access to urban services that people need.

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Blogs and publications
Thematic areas

Green Finance in Kenya

Kenya’s commitment to addressing climate change through green finance has progressively emerged as a key topic underpinning policy development in promoting sustainable development and financial market development.

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Agriculture
Thematic areas

Using Blended Finance to Navigate the Pandemic: How an Innovative Funding Vehicle is Helping SMEs Survive COVID-19 and Advance the SDGs

To reach the United Nations’ 17 Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) by 2030, emerging economies require US $3.3 to $4.5 trillion per year in funding, but they face an estimated annual shortfall of US $2.5 trillion.

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Blogs and publications
Thematic areas

Inclusive Finance for Sustainable Economic Development in Kenya

Kenya’s progress on inclusive financial sector development over the past five years places Kenya at the front of the curve relative to its peers. But beneath its headline success story, falling financial health and growing disparities in financial usage point to underlying challenges that compromise the ability of financial inclusion to deliver on its promise for inclusive and sustainable growth.

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Events
Thematic areas

Webinar: Gendered Assessment of Kenya’s Financial Laws

Join us in our webinar on 25th March 11:00 AM -1:00 PM, when we will share findings of an in-depth study that reviewed the extent to which gender is mainstreamed in Kenya’s finance-related laws and policies.

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Blog
Thematic areas

How can Africa benefit from the private sector’s growing interest in climate finance?

While the private sector across the world is on a journey towards greening their activities, COP26 marked a milestone so significant that it was termed the Business and Finance COP. In other words, COP26 made ‘climate action mainstream business’. But what challenges and opportunities does this newfound interest present for Africa?

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Blog
Thematic areas

Putting women at the centre of inclusive finance

People’s ability to participate within the more formalised markets which characterise the modern sector of an economy is often conditioned by the degree of access to the financial system. Exclusion from finance can result in exclusion from opportunities to participate productively in value chains.

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Blog
Thematic areas

A new approach to women’s economic empowerment: FSD Kenya’s Marsabit Pilot

In 2016 FSD Kenya branched outside our core financial inclusion remit to embark on a new pilot in Marsabit county where we sought to develop a more holistic approach to economic inclusion. The ambition was to deepen the value of finance in people’s lives, moving beyond financial access and use and investing in building capabilities and market linkages to enable finance to yield stronger impacts on livelihood resilience and growth. Our aim was to reach the extreme poor and especially women, who are not well served by the financial sector.

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Blogs and publications
Thematic areas

Promoting Kenya’s exports: a country- and product-specific analysis

FSD Kenya partnered with the Overseas Development Institute’s program on Supporting Economic Transformation (SET) to research and better understand Kenya’s trade relationship with a focus on exports.

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Article
Thematic areas

Data Privacy and Protection in Kenya: A Regulatory Review

This document has been developed to provide a review of the regulatory framework for data protection in Kenya. The report takes a broad view of what constitutes the regulatory framework, going beyond the Data Protection Act, 2019 (DAPA) to include the European General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) and the California Consumer Protection Act (CCPA).

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Blog
Thematic areas

How 2,000 Shillings is Changing the Narrative for Fisherfolk in Busia County

I knew this Focus Group Discussion would be an interesting one, but nothing
prepared me for what was about to go down in the next two and half hours.

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Blog
Thematic areas

Reflecting on the 2021 FinAccess numbers

I love numbers, charts, infographics and digging into insights, especially from the robust FinAccess survey that FSD Kenya has co-led with the Central Bank of Kenya (CBK) and the Kenya National Bureau of Statistics (KNBS) since 2005. Not just because I find it interesting, but because FinAccess is a temperature check for Kenya’s financial inclusion and financial health. FinAccess points us to the questions which remain open about how Kenya’s financial system can deliver on its promise  in meeting the needs of the real economy. As we closed 2021 with the FinAccess launch on the 15th of December, I had the honour of sharing some of these initial questions as I reflected on the numbers in my remarks. I look forward to exploring the answers with many across the sector as well as surfacing more questions that can lead us further down the path of a truly inclusive financial system for Kenya.

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Blogs and publications
Thematic areas

Gendered review of Financial Sector Laws in Kenya

Globally, fifty-six percent of the unbanked adults are women. In Kenya, the situation is similar. More women are unbanked, in comparison to men. Various steps have been undertaken to address the financial exclusion of women, and though the gender gap has been narrowing over time, it persists.

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Blogs and publications
Thematic areas

FinAccess MSE Covid-19 Tracker survey

FSD Kenya in partnership with the Kenya National Bureau of Statistics and the Central Bank of Kenya and FSD Kenya ran a survey of micro businesses (MSEs) to track the impacts of COVID-19 on this population. Based on a sample of microbusinesses drawn from the FinAccess 2019 household survey, the survey tracked key metrics such as business revenue, customer flow, employment, use of finance and challenges faced by MSEs between February 2020 (before the pandemic) and July 2021.

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