Vodacom Tanzania rolled out M-Pesa Global Payments through partnerships with VISA, Alipay, Network International, Magnati, and MTN Uganda, and customers can tap their phones loaded with M-Pesa Visa cards on terminals worldwide or send money to merchants in China, Dubai, and Uganda. The Tap & Pay feature is the first mobile-money system in Africa that lets people make transactions by holding their device near VISA-enabled readers without entering card numbers or PINs.
Director Epimack Mbeteni said the service cuts costs for travelers across East Africa, the Middle East, and Asia who usually deal with expensive payment systems. The platform links Tanzanian businesses to Chinese sellers through Alipay, connects traders to Dubai merchants...
Ruto kicked off work on the Rironi to Mau Summit highway expansion, and he promised the Kamandura to Gilgil section would be done within half a year while the whole 233-kilometer project wraps up by mid-2027. The road gets built through a public-private partnership with Chinese firms and NSSF money, then contractors will run it as a toll road for 28 years to get their investment back.
The upgraded highway goes four lanes from Rironi to Naivasha, then bumps up to six lanes heading into Nakuru to handle the heavy traffic. Construction is supposed to create 15,000 jobs, and the government ditched an earlier French-led deal that went nowhere before landing on this Chinese-backed setup that keeps direct public borrowing lower.
Trump dropped a bombshell on Truth Social about hitting pause on migration from what he calls Third World Countries after a National Guard member got killed near the White House by an Afghan guy who came over during the 2021 pullout. The president is calling it a terrorist attack, and he basically wants to lock the door on anyone from developing nations while the system gets fixed.
Kenya dodged the immediate bullet since it's not on the 19-country red list that has Somalia and other East African spots, but the whole Third World label gives the administration mad flexibility to expand the ban whenever they feel like it. The Diversity Visa Lottery that tons of Kenyans use to get to America is getting strangled through delays, and people...
Police in Homa Bay County got back a gun that went missing when some guys jumped MP Peter Kaluma at a polling station in Agoro Sare. County Police Commander Lawrence Koilim said the weapon belonged to Kaluma's bodyguard, and officers tracked it down after chasing the attackers who ditched it while running away. The firearm came back intact with all its ammo still there, and cops also grabbed a bunch of machetes and other sketchy weapons during the whole thing.
Authorities grabbed 23 people who got bussed into Kasipul Kabondo to mess with the by-election, and they were carrying pangas and metal rods. Kaluma got roughed up pretty bad at the polling station while working as an agent for the ODM candidate, and he said the attackers were...
A judge just nuked the government's attempt to slap a 10-percent tax on palm oil imports after officials skipped the whole parliamentary approval thing and locked ordinary people out of the conversation. Justice Bahati Mwamuye said bureaucrats broke constitutional rules by ditching the zero-rate duty without letting anyone weigh in first, and cooking oil prices immediately spiked because manufacturers pass costs straight to shoppers. The Consumer Federation of Kenya dragged the state to court over the mess.
The ruling blocks enforcement of the tariff and forces authorities to run future tax changes through proper public input plus legislative review, even when regional trade agreements are involved. Mwamuye pointed out that procedural...
The guy who used to run the National Assembly got caught on camera brawling with some kid at a polling station, and the current majority leader is absolutely dragging him for it. Kimani Ichung'wah went off about how Justin Muturi basically trashed his entire reputation by getting into a scuffle with locals young enough to be his grandkids. The Kikuyu representative said watching a former speaker and attorney general throw hands at a voting center was embarrassing for everyone connected to parliament.
Ichung'wah thinks Muturi snapped because his candidate was getting wrecked in the election results, but the majority leader pointed out that losing races happens to everybody and you still need to carry yourself with some dignity when you...
A Kenyan judge just torched the legal foundation holding up the country's excise tax tracking system, and the ruling calls out procurement failures that basically broke every rule in the book. Justice Bahati Mwamuye said the whole process for setting up the stamps-and-scanners program was unconstitutional because officials ignored transparency requirements and ditched legal safeguards when they awarded the contract. The system has been pulling in serious cash for the government since it launched years back by monitoring booze, smokes, and bottled water with tamper-proof labels.
KRA gets a month-long grace period before the decision kicks in, which gives bureaucrats time to figure out their next move while the tracking apparatus keeps...
The dad of a guy who died in police custody wants a high-ranking cop dragged into court over his son's death. Meshack Ojwang filed papers claiming Deputy Inspector General Eliud Lagat ordered officers to grab Albert Omondi Ojwang from their home after the son supposedly shared corruption allegations about the senior official. The petition says detectives beat Albert at Central Police Station in Nairobi until he died from head trauma and strangulation, but authorities blamed it on suicide.
A postmortem apparently confirmed torture instead of self-harm, yet prosecutors only charged lower-level officers while letting the deputy chief slide. The father thinks the whole trial is a setup to protect Lagat by pinning everything on subordinates...
Bulldozers finished tearing down the old Makongeni Estate buildings, even though a court said to pump the brakes on the whole thing. Workers cleared out every single-room unit and started ripping apart what was left of the apartment blocks after most people had already bounced with their compensation checks. The government handed out 150,000 shillings per household and gave cards promising spots in the replacement complex that should be done within a year or two.
Some former tenants are saying the payout process was sketchy and rushed, and they claim not everyone got their money before crews rolled in with heavy equipment. A judge had ordered a pause because residents filed complaints about unlawful evictions and a lack of proper...
