Why Kenya is Africa's Premier Investment Hub: Insights from Ambassador Thomas Kwaka Omolo
Sicuro Conversations - Episode 2
Key Topics Covered:
- Kenya’s strategic position as Africa’s investment hub
- Why major financial institutions are moving headquarters to Nairobi
- The trust deficit challenge and the Global Trust Summit 2026
- AI’s transformative role in African governance and accountability
- Agriculture, climate solutions, and Africa’s demographic advantage
- Cultural awareness and overcoming investment biases
- Technology leaps: Kenya’s mobile money leadership and screen time statistics
Full Transcript:
John: Welcome to Sicuro Group Africa. My name is John Andrew Musundi and I’m the Managing Director of Sicuro Group Africa. In today’s episode, we’re going to talk about Africa and investments in Africa, looking at perceptions and realities on the ground. We’re privileged to have a diplomat with us, Ambassador Thomas Kwaka Omolo, HSC, who is a former Kenya Consular General to Los Angeles. Right now he’s working as a coordinator for the Global Trust Summit 2026 and he also works with the Office of the Permanent Secretary of Foreign Affairs.
Thank you for joining us.
Ambassador Omolo: I’m happy to be here and to engage because as we say, we are Africans and Africa is our business.
John: Indeed. I agree. I would like us to go right ahead and look at: is Africa worth investing in? What perception is out there, especially from an investor perspective about Africa, and what opportunities also lie here?
Ambassador Omolo: Well, wonderful. Thank you for having me and just to have a conversation about Africa and what Africa has to offer.
Number one, let’s begin by understanding that Africa is the cradle of humanity. If you look at what history tells us about Africa, it says that everything started from Africa. All the trade that we see—everybody left Africa and went outwards. Of course, the oldest human fossil is right here in Kenya, which definitely means that there was some sort of civilization which was happening around that time. Around civilization is trade, is culture, is art, is science, is inventions. So all that was happening here. It’s almost like the world has gone and developed in their own areas but found out that there are a lot of solutions which still lie here. I believe Africa has the solution to even things like global warming, which is big right now.
If you look at terms of trade, the median age of the African population is 19. The majority of people in Niger are 16 to 17 years old, which basically means in the next 10 years Africa shall have one of the largest possible human settlements that consume any product. If you look at fast-moving consumer goods, electronics, luxury products, culture, music, even agriculture—Africa is definitely in the right place right now. What we’re saying is that everybody keeps talking about a second scramble for Africa, where you have other countries coming in and saying “we also want a piece of this action.”
If you look at the China summit, same thing. If you look at—we’re going down to Dubai next month—same thing will be happening. Governments want to position themselves in Africa. Even better for us who are in Kenya is that Kenya is a pillar of anything which has happened in Africa. If you divide Africa into maybe four areas, you have one side, South Africa, and South Africa is taken as its own area—well-developed, the economic viability is very stable. Then you come up and you find Kenya.
Kenya holds pivot to any country in Eastern Central Africa. By the way, around that area, it’s estimated to have about 716 million people. As you come up, you’ll find the north part of Africa with Egypt sitting at the top handling that whole area. Then you go to West Africa with Nigeria and the other countries. The outlook is basically this: Kenya comes across as a very reliable investment destination. So I think we sit at a good place in history and a good time. What needs to happen is the different countries just need to position themselves to be able to receive.
Kenya might not be your typical agricultural producer country because we know very well our arable land vis-à-vis what we produce is pretty low compared to Uganda, Tanzania, and other countries. Tanzania has land mass. Uganda has 80% of its land is arable. Other countries have a lot that they can offer in different areas, but Kenya comes across offering stability—number one, economically.
We are seeing a lot of diaspora coming to Kenya to invest in real estate. The apartments you see everywhere, the housing, the roads, projects, infrastructure, and especially PPP projects—all those are being done in Kenya. Kenya also is—the UN is actually moving part of its operation to Kenya. Of course, it might be an economical decision to reduce costs, but what they’re saying is they would want their agencies to be as close as possible to where the people they’re serving are. Really, if they choose Kenya, it means Kenya has a stability that they’re looking for.
Number two is political. Despite and in spite of what people think, the Kenyan political system is very stable. It’s very predictable. Actually, that’s what they say: every five years they know very well there’ll be an election in Kenya, and in spite of all the noise, there’ll be a winner. The winner will be announced peacefully and the country moves on to the next level. That’s what every investor looks for—stability for their money.
Number three, of course, is the ability of Kenya to have—it’s a hub. It’s a very good transport hub. It’s also a very good logistics hub. To set up in Kenya means that you’re actually right in the middle of Africa and you can go anywhere to Africa. In fact, I’m told it’s about six to nine hours in every direction. You can go down to the south, you can go across and down and up. We sit right smack in the middle. In terms of logistics, in terms of refueling or refilling your supplies, Kenya is a very good place.
Also, the number of people who are well-educated and speak a common language, which is English, is very wide. You’re seeing that even in businesses like business process outsourcing. For example, we have the CCI Center in Kenya with over 12,000 workers serving diaspora markets. They say number one, the quality; number two, the ability of the people here to adapt to trends and to accents and to be able to serve customers; but also number three, they speak about the ability to be able to pick up a product and actually run with it. That’s for CCI Africa.
I’m well informed that there’s a very big logistics center being moved from one of the island countries to Kenya in the next few months. Our banking system is robust. We don’t have a shortage of forex like other countries actually. One of my clients is serving in one of the countries and the solution they actually want is a forex solution. The dollar has been pretty stable in Kenya for the last two years, despite and in spite of what people thought. We are holding on strong and we’ve been able also to pay our debts—the Eurobond one and two as it goes on. Kenya plays a very big role in terms of just stabilizing the whole continent.
John: Would you say that we have various financial institutions, especially from the United States, seeking to come to Kenya and setting up their Africa head office in Kenya? Is that outlook meant to assure the region that “we trust Kenya as a hub and we can use Kenya to essentially provide services across Africa,” and also invite other investors into the country—not only Kenya but also looking at Ethiopia, Tanzania? Is that also based on the human capital that we as Kenyans have?
Ambassador Omolo: I think one of the things that happens before any entity sets up in any country is that they look at different things. Number one, they look at the ability for them to be able to expand. For example, it would be pretty hard for them to set up a headquarters in a different country and then move it to another country. So they look at the stability long-term and say “come 10 years, are we still able to host this here?” because a lot comes with moving a whole headquarters to that place.
Number two also, they look at the viability of the country itself. We have, for example, right now JP Morgan who are coming in to set up a headquarters in Kenya, and it’s something that has been on the cards for a long time. I think they’ve looked and said “this is actually how we’d like to set up from Kenya.” I think it shows great confidence in the economy, the political system, and the potential for growth—and also to the people of Kenya.
John: Would this have a domino effect? Would this have a domino effect?
Ambassador Omolo: Oh, of course. Of course. You see, anytime you have any headquarters or company setting up there, the effect is that their own clients who are not in Kenya will now feel more comfortable to even come and set up here because you’re closer to your people. You’re able to be served from there. In the same way, we have Citibank who are here in Kenya, but they don’t do retail. They do international commercial. But with time they then say “okay, we’re thinking of actually just letting the retail go and then you can just have a bank, a closed bank network both in Kenya and in America.”
John: Okay. Looking at from a diplomatic standpoint when it comes to cultural awareness, do you think that there’s enough cultural awareness when investors are coming in, or there’s cultural bias sometimes?
Ambassador Omolo: Yes, definitely bias has to be there because—understand, this is something, this was my realization when I went to the States and this guy told me—he asked me how I was pitching coming to Kenya. He’s a rich guy, I mean he’s pretty wealthy. I pitched the whole idea of him coming to Kenya and he asked me how long is the flight. I told him and he told me “why should I take a flight to go see what I can see here?” He told me that within the borders of America, he can see the desert, can see snow, can see the beach, can see animals, can see everything. And it makes great sense.
Most of the people are—because they’re already inside an area which gives them what they would like—so they come to the table with that bias in mind. Many times when these people show up here, they always ask us “how come this was not told to us?” I think that’s the further conversation we have about AI and the role that AI needs to play or is going to play in the future in terms of taking away biases.
Remember, this is the first generation that is existing on 100% access to information. It simply means there’s no more room for you to be ignorant or biased about something. You can easily check it out, Google it, and find it and be able to know what exactly should we do. This is the first generation that exists with 100% access to information. It will be very hard in the future to be able to talk about access to information as the problem. You see, in the past we could always say “I didn’t know.” But right now we are living in an era whereby everything is available to you online.
How do we onboard the next generation? Number one, I think is by building trust. There definitely exists a trust deficit in the world. If you look at it, there’s a deficit between governments and its people. There’s a deficit even between you and your bank or you and your financial institutions, even in families. It’s trickling down to the lowest part that if you’re told something, do you really trust them? Kenya is doing really well in terms of the economy, but do we trust it?
You can look at Kenyans and take them as a definite example of a country where people have trust deficits. Someone tells you they’ll send you money, you’re like “are you sure you’ll send?” These days, even if you sign a contract, you’re not sure if it’s really valid. We want to have a conversation. The president mooted an idea called the Global Trust Summit, whereby we are asking: how do governments or people or corporates or corporations and even companies and MSMEs—how can we build trust? What does trust look like? Do we have a trust indicator where we’re able to say “this is how trust looks like?”
Someone gave an example and said in the olden days, people our age, if we saw a police Land Rover, would run away because we were afraid. But we saw in the recent Gen Z riots, these kids didn’t care because they don’t have an inkling of what the Land Rover stands for. We saw somebody taking a policeman’s cap and throwing it on the floor. Now for us, it’s “oh my god, you can’t do that” because it’s the symbolism that you look at.
I tell people every time that you can make fun of the president, the person, but you can’t make fun of the presidency, the seat, because it’s the seat which has the power, not the person. The person leaves, another one comes in. If you belittle a seat, then you can never have a place where people can actually respect or honor. But now that’s where the big question comes: is ours fear? Do we fear the Land Rover or do we honor it? We need to know how do we transfer this thing back from fear to honor, and then honor turns into respect.
So that a policeman cannot be attacked by anybody. A policeman can stop traffic and everybody stops because he is the policeman—not the person, it’s the office and the symbolism of who he stands for. A pastor or a religious leader can stand up and call out something and we respect the office, not the person. That’s what we need to look at because it’s trickling down even into families whereby kids don’t care what the parents are saying because there’s no authority or they cannot relate to honoring an authority. Your dad might be a bad person, he might be a drunkard, but he is your dad. So the office of the dad is what we’re trying to look at.
We must have a conversation not only in Kenya, in Africa, but also in the world in terms of how do we build trust? How do we regain back trust? How do we reverse time so that we have trust that if a government says “we shall do this,” the public will only measure them with this thing that the government said. How does the government become committed and show commitment to that particular thing?
The Global Trust Summit next year will be a great platform to have those conversations and it will be across the ages. It will be both young people, our age, and the older generation sitting down. The older generation saying “this is what we went through,” the young people saying “okay, we don’t know those ones, this is what we know.” When you hear them use terms as “tribeless,” “leaderless,” the fear is gone and everything—it points to an issue of trust. There’s a trust deficit. That’s one of the ways that we can also be able to bring them on board.
Number two, which is very important, is playing in their field, which is the AI field. Africa is being left behind in the race again towards AI. For us to build a robust system, an AI system that is able to speak to the future generation—because remember, AI is a store. It’s like a big storehouse for information which is used and influences people in the future.
For example, if you don’t know right now, very many young people are on something called Character GPT. Character GPT is an AI tool that acts as your boyfriend, your girlfriend, or your husband or your wife. When you feed in the attributes that you want about the person, it speaks back to you every day like your husband or like your wife or your girlfriend and everything. You see people are now dependent on technology.
I think as Kenyan government, African governments, and world governments, we need to go into technology and try and create all those different places. But for Africa, Chinua Achebe said that until the lion learns how to write, all the stories of the hunt would glorify the hunter. We must be on the forefront of writing our own story as Africa. We must be on the forefront as Kenya to write our story. I think it’s time that we become very intentional and focused towards speaking to technology for the future so that our children’s children don’t get stuck in a mindset which is led by biases of people who probably have never been to Africa or to Kenya.
By the way, Netflix worldwide has 233 million subscribers. In East and Central Africa, we have 716 million people. Then what we need is not Netflix. We need a platform which can target this generation, this population, make it affordable and accessible. We are leading with M-Pesa as a technology of a mobile wallet, and just make it accessible to all these people that when you get a phone you’re able to access something else.
Kenya has the leading screen time in the world at 4 hours 30 minutes per person per day—again, technology leaps that nobody’s talking about and Kenyans don’t even know and even corporates don’t know. Because if Kenyans are spending their time 4 hours 30 minutes, if we convert that into commerce, it’s a great wide ocean which can easily be made both for news, information, products, and consumption of anything.
John: Okay. Then looking at the young people, especially right now we have protests—you can hear protests in Cameroon, you can hear protests in Nigeria, just to name but a few—and you see the young people are calling out on good governance. Do you think AI is going to bring an attribute of good governance where governments are held accountable because everything will be on open source and accountability will be plain to see?
Ambassador Omolo: Yes. I think that’s one of the things that we shall take to the Global Trust Conference to speak to, because in the future it will be very hard for you to do corruption like it’s been done in the past. By the way, let me tell you something. Many people in the past got away with corruption because the information was not available. Those ones got away with it. But in the future it will be too hard for you to be able to do that.
Think about a blockchain system like what we’re trying to put together in Kenya for tendering system, where the tenders are being given to youth. You had the president pronounce that we’re going to set up a Kenyan Youth Bank which will be able to give money for youth given tenders to be able to service the tenders. There’s great opportunity there and I’m speaking to various people about it, but one of the easiest things is this: a blockchain technology and platform that the tenders are listed and then the companies apply and it’s on open source, as you say.
It means if the companies apply and it meets the criteria, then those should be the companies considered. Nobody’s able to load anything on that system. Then the payment—which means now the pressure will be on payment—that the entity must pay in 14 days. Once it’s paid, the payment comes out. You’re able to check who received the payments, who was not paid, what was not paid, the proofs of what they delivered, what they delivered, and you’re able to benchmark it against world best practice.
For example, if a kilometer of road is 1 million shillings, nobody will ever come and say it’s 4 million shillings because the system will flag it. In the future, the public or the system can actually lock it and say “we shall not pay.” I believe where we’re going to as technology—and of course human beings always look at the best way to beat the system—but I believe technology is going to offer us some amazing situations.
Right now, all you need to do with an AI tool is point at a product and the AI tool can tell you “this product is this, it has this amount of calories, this amount of proteins and iron and everything.” Again, we’ll be able to know about the food that we’re taking if the food is not fit for human consumption. People like you who work out—but the Bible says that the wicked run and nobody’s chasing them. If you have this whole aspect, you’re able to check your pulses, how much are you losing, how much are you gaining, you’re able to check the amount of sugar. Technology is actually going to take over. But as Africa, we have to be smack in the middle of this conversation and the action.
I like what President Ruto said four, three years ago at a World Bank meeting. He said that it cannot be that Africa is the problem and every time they want to create a solution, Africa is not on the table. He said if you’re talking about Africa, then Africa must be on the table and Africa must be part of the solution.
I think progressive thinking will put us in places that we say if corruption is an issue—and let me tell you something about leadership, I’ve been privileged to serve the two presidents of the Republic of Kenya—leadership is not what people think. It is not just a straight jacket. There are too many things and parameters which happen, especially for a country like Kenya. And irregardless of what we think, Kenya’s judiciary system is actually one of the most progressive in the world.
The Kenyan constitution—I personally think that the Kenyan constitution is too progressive for Kenya. I believe it’s almost like a child who was bought a Ferrari when he was in primary school. Yes, the child will grow, but America is 200-plus years old and they still have issues in their constitution. So our constitution is too free. Some things I believe in the governance structure should be left to the offices and left there.
The perception right now that you can run to court for anything, even a good thing—you want to build a road, somebody will go and say “oh the road cannot be built.” You want to build a building, you can’t do that. You want to redevelop the town, you can’t do this. I think at some point we as the citizens of this country or even in African countries must say: what do we need as a country, and what is the process to get there? So what shall we do? What should we do now to make sure that all these things happen, because that’s where we want to go to?
We have a problem right now in the city about the slumification of the city and of the country. Of course, it’s being done by politicians and people interested in politics and positions. But one of the things that needs to happen is we cannot allow slumification in areas where people have actually gone and set it aside as a particular rate and rank. Because you can’t have a house—you’ve just bought the house for 24 million shillings in Kilimani—and then somebody comes next door and builds an informal settlement or puts up a 50-story flat.
What we should have is high-density areas. If in these areas it’s high density, this is how the house should be built and there’s a standard and a code about that.
John: Yeah. Okay. Then final remarks on—let’s say an investor is thinking about investing in Africa, Kenya, Ethiopia. What would you advise them to look out for and what should they bear in mind when they’re coming to Africa to invest?
Ambassador Omolo: One of the things I’d like to say is I’ve seen in what I do—I consult a lot with companies that want to come and set up in Kenya and in the region—and they’re looking at different things. Agriculture is one of the biggest conversations which is going on right now, where the world will need a breadbasket and Africa has the potential to actually be that.
Climate action is also very important. But Africa, I believe, holds the solution for global action on climate. Africa holds a solution for agriculture. It holds a solution even for the future in terms of production. We’ve had people looking to China, but I think Africa has a greater potential at a better rate that even China themselves can think “let’s invest in Africa to build for the world.”
I think it’s heavily doable. Looking at our population, definitely we’ll be a ready market for all these products that are coming out.
John: Okay. Thank you, Ambassador, for sharing your thoughts with us. We truly appreciate it.
Ambassador Omolo: Thank you.
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