Kenya Shilling

It has been a tumultuous rise of the Kenya Shilling (Also by the name of Kes.

This comes on the back of higher interest rates rising globally, and the shilling faced a lot of headwinds. The higher interest rates caused a lot of anxiety as to whether Kenya will be in position to pay meet its $ 2bn Dollar bullet debt that is to be repaid in June 2024, as there aforementioned would not have made Kenya refinance the debt.

Another curve ball came up when Ethiopia and Zambia defaulted on their debts.

Ethiopia has been and still continue to be plagued by a war which has prolonged for a very long time and other internal issues that made it worse for them.

Since the debts are based on the dollar, it meant that whatever policies the USA undertook, was bound to affect countries that had dollar debt. In this case the Fed Funds rate was high at 5.5% and also the fed was shrinking its balance sheet.

At this juncture Kenya was mulling a buy back and the headlines were getting grim

The Nairobi Securities Exchange slumped to its lowest level.

The wars going in different parts of the world elevated the geopolitical risks.

And then the price of oil continue to go higher and higher. Kenya is a net imported of oil. So any change is Price of oil affects the Kes.

All the above issues affected various African countries currencies.

Large depreciation of currencies happened.

In Kenya there was alot of noise about why the Kes was depreciating.

There was hope as Benin and Ivory coast had Eurobond which really revealed that there was still demand for African Eurobond. Risk was on. This was also due to the fact that risk premia was compressing.

Then Kenya listed its $1.5bn Dollar bond which is to be used to partially redeem the maturing bond. This has led to the shilling being the world best performer

On technical level it went to over bough level.

With this stellar performance NSE has also attracted global Asset Manager Black rock which has lifted the NSE.

The volume of trading has increased significantly.

Safcom doing wonders.

It is hoped that the bull market gets it legs solidly and we shall be off .

There still remains significant risks ahead.