For years, people have called Kenya a land of opportunity. Words like “emerging market” and “Silicon Savannah” have painted a bright picture. But behind the fancy speeches and big promises, many Kenyan business people are quietly suffering. Their dreams are dying, not because they failed, but because the system is working against them.
Steve Biko Wafula, in his powerful article “Kenya In Ruin: The Death Of The Honest Entrepreneur And The Rise Of A Greedy Political Class,” describes the real pain that many business owners face today. His words are raw, honest, and painfully true.
Here is his full article,
*Kenya In Ruin*
“The Death of The Honest Entrepreneur And The Rise Of A Greedy Political Class: By Steve Biko Wafula.”
In the glittering conferences and smug policy statements, Kenya is called a “frontier of opportunity.” But behind the hashtags and hired PR firms, the truth rots quietly in unpaid offices, auctioned homes, and the hollow eyes of once-bold entrepreneurs who dared to believe they could build something in this country.
You sit in your office — if you can still call it that — surrounded by peeling walls and silence, three months deep in rent arrears. The only visitors you get now are the flies and the auctioneers plotting which of your broken dreams to sell first.
At home, or what used to be home, six months of unpaid rent hang over your head like a guillotine. The landlord’s patience expired long ago; now he sends threatening messages sprinkled with legal jargon. Sleep left you months ago, but the nightmares stayed.
In two weeks, your office will be stripped bare by men whose specialty is profiting from your despair. Everything you toiled to build — the furniture, the equipment, the hopes — will be paraded in the sun like a public execution.
You once believed in service delivery in building Kenya. That faith cost you 45 million shillings, trapped in a county government ledger gathering dust and broken promises. Three years and counting. Every polite follow-up is met with ghosted calls or the classic “tafadhali rudi baada ya mwezi.”
The bank that smiled as they handed you the loan now smiles even wider as they auction your father-in-law’s house. Yes, that same father-in-law who welcomed you into his family with pride is now watching his lifetime of work vanish under a bank’s hammer because you believed in hustling.
Meanwhile, the Kenya Revenue Authority — champions of collecting from the dead — froze your accounts. “Compliance,” they call it, as if wringing blood from a stone was an Olympic sport. They demand taxes from money you were never paid, taxes on invoices that remain unpaid because their beloved government partners are now professional thieves in suits.
Your phone used to vibrate with opportunities and “bro, we need to link up” messages. Now it vibrates with threats, auction notices, and the dead silence of friends you once lent to, who now view you as a cursed man they must avoid at all costs.
Your wife? Gone. Took the kids. Left a note about needing “stability” — a stability you spent years trying to build on a foundation of quicksand and government tenders. You haven’t heard a word from them since. Only their laughter echoes in your dreams, mocking you.
Your siblings, those who celebrated your first cheque with drunken toasts, now dismiss you as a disgrace. Family, it turns out, loves you most when you’re a walking ATM. Cut the cash flow, cut the relationship.
Your mother, once your biggest cheerleader, now lies sick in a county hospital, receiving the sort of treatment that should qualify as a human rights violation. Three months of watching her deteriorate because you can’t afford private care, and because in Kenya, public healthcare is where dreams and lives go to die.
Depression is no longer a visitor; it moved in, rearranged the furniture, and took permanent residence in your mind. You have stared down the abyss so many times that it now feels like an old friend whispering the “easy way out.”
This — this slow, methodical destruction-is — is the lived reality of thousands of Kenyan entrepreneurs. People who dared to dream. People who once believed that effort, talent, and patriotism were enough.
Kenya is not just in a recession; Kenya is a full-blown economic crime scene. The perpetrators sit in air-conditioned offices, holding press briefings, announcing taxes on bread and secondhand underwear, while wearing imported Italian suits.
The political class has graduated from stealing public funds to stealing entire futures. They no longer loot just money; they loot hope, ambition, and dignity. Their greed is not a bug; it is a design feature of this system.
Entrepreneurship was once called the engine of Kenya’s economy. Now it’s a graveyard, filled with the skeletons of SMEs and start-ups that were murdered by delayed payments, over taxation, corruption, and betrayal.
Banks were supposed to be partners in growth. Instead, they became high-end auctioneers, sitting comfortably between your shattered dreams and your grieving in-laws.
The government demanded taxes from businesses even before paying them for work done. They taxed invoices, taxed losses, taxed death itself and when you protested, they called you unpatriotic.
The idea that “hustling” would save Kenya is perhaps the biggest fraud ever sold to a population. You can’t hustle your way out of an economy that is bleeding to death from the neck while your leaders sharpen their knives for dessert.
Meanwhile, governors and ministers build billion-shilling mansions, fly private jets to Dubai to buy watches, and lecture the public on “living within their means.” It’s like being insulted by your kidnapper while he eats your lunch.
Policies are now written not to grow the economy, but to feed the political elite’s appetite for wealth and extravagance. They don’t just kill industries they massacre them in broad daylight and then hold press conferences blaming external factors.
The honest Kenyan business owner is now an endangered species, spotted only occasionally at auction yards and mental health wards. Those left standing are either magicians, liars, or future statistics.
The joke, of course, is that those who still chant “we are resilient people” don’t realize that resilience is only romantic until it becomes sanctioned abuse. Kenya doesn’t need resilient entrepreneurs; it needs a functioning, honest government.
This is not just an economic downturn. This is institutionalized cannibalism where the State feasts on its citizens while blaming them for being too skinny.
How can a country prosper when its builders are criminalized, its dreamers are bankrupted, and its taxpayers are treated like ATMs for politicians’ weekend drinking sprees?
It is now safer to gamble in a casino than to do business in Kenya. At least in a casino, the house admits it is out to rob you. Here, they rob you and then accuse you of being lazy.
If you’re an entrepreneur in Kenya today, the real question is not “how’s business?” It’s “how close are you to the edge?” because the system is designed to push you there.
The tragedy is that the ones killing the economy will not suffer its death. When the collapse is complete, they will escape to their villas in Dubai, while you, the dreamer, the builder, will be left behind to bury the corpse.
So next time you meet an entrepreneur, a business owner, a small shopkeeper, don’t ask why they look tired, broken, or angry. Understand that in Kenya today, surviving one more day as an honest businessperson is nothing short of a miracle.
And remember: when the history of Kenya’s economic collapse is written, it won’t be titled Global Factors.
Wafula’s words speak for many. His story is not just about one person. It reflects the daily struggles of thousands of Kenyans who once believed in hard work and honesty, only to be crushed by corruption, heavy taxes, and broken promises. His message is clear: doing business in Kenya today is like fighting against a system that is designed to make you fail. While ordinary people lose everything, leaders build big houses, fly in private jets, and make new taxes to squeeze even more from those already suffering.
This is not just an economic problem. It is a deep wound in the nation a sign that the very people who are supposed to build Kenya are being destroyed by the same government they trusted. As more Kenyans read Wafula’s piece, it becomes not just a cry of pain, but a call for change. Will the leaders listen? That is the big question. But one thing is certain Kenya’s future depends on saving its honest businesspeople before it’s too late.
