beyond imagination

Kenya’s KCB not scared of Big Tech, partners with Huawei

By Nicholas Norbrook

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Posted on March 10, 2021 16:16

Joshua Oigara, the Group Chief Executive Officer of the Kenya Commercial Bank Group speaks during a Reuters interview in Nairobi © Joshua Oigara, the Group Chief Executive Officer of the Kenya Commercial Bank Group speaks during a Reuters interview in Nairobi, Kenya July 11, 2018. REUTERS/Jackson Njehia
Joshua Oigara, the Group Chief Executive Officer of the Kenya Commercial Bank Group speaks during a Reuters interview in Nairobi, Kenya July 11, 2018. REUTERS/Jackson Njehia

Covid-19 has hit African economies hard, and Kenya is no exception. Longstanding businesses in tourism, agriculture, logistics… everything came shuddering to a halt. “We prepare, as a bank, for many difficult situations”, says Joshua Oigara, the CEO of Kenya Commercial Bank (KCB), a leading bank in East Africa. “But we never imagined a pandemic!”

Coronavirus clearly accelerates the trend to digitalisation, worldwide.

How then did it affect a country ahead of the digital pack, such as Kenya, which since 2007 has been zapping cash around the country with phone-to-phone money transfer, M-Pesa? “I think we survived because if migrating our transactions to the digital channels where we already had success”, says Oigara. “More than 98% of our transactions are already out of our premises, and we saw a fourfold increase in digital transactions since last March”.

It has allowed the bank to execute debt relief remotely. “Nearly 35% of our loans have been rescheduled, on average for 6 months, and that is in addition to the almost $1bn in the last 11 months to cushion customers through the impact of the pandemic”, says Oigara. He is pessimistic about the survival of some businesses in the tourism and aviation sector, but Covid relief is no

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