The Political Economist

M rima Hill in Kwale County has quietly sat for centuries as a sacred and culturally significant site for the surrounding Digo community. But beneath this spiritual landscape lies one of the most valuable mineral deposits in modern times: rare earth minerals. Rare earths are a group of 17 elements essential to the technologies that drive the global economy today—electric vehicle motors, wind turbines, smartphones, advanced military equipment, and nearly every green-energy innovation on the planet. The world cannot transition to clean energy or maintain high-tech manufacturing without them. And Kenya is sitting on a hill packed with them. Recent geological studies e stimate that Mrima Hill holds rare earth minerals valued at nearly USD 60 billion. That figure is close to half the size of Kenya’s entire GDP. In Kenyan shillings, that is roughly KSh 9.3 trillion—money that could transform not just the coast, but the country at large. Currently, an Australian consortium has been granted ...

  Is your bank still charging you the same interest rate on your loan ? Did you know that your loan repayments could be lower now? The credit pricing model used to calculate your interest rate is no longer the same following CBK’s changes.   On 1 st September 2025, the Central Bank of Kenya introduced a new credit pricing model known as the Risk-Based Credit Pricing Model. This change marks one of the biggest reforms in Kenya’s lending space in Kenya’s financial history.   It is designed to make loan pricing more transparent, predictable, and fair for ordinary Kenyans who have long complained about unpredictable interest rates and hidden charges. Under this new model, every commercial bank must now calculate loan interest beginning from a single common benchmark known as the Kenya Shilling Overnight Interbank Average Rate (KESONIA) . This is the rate at which banks lend money to each other overnight. The CBK chose this benchmark because it reflects real market conditi...