Setting the record straight

The units exist and can be visited. 112,405 units are complete or under construction, with more than 260,000 in the national pipeline — against 8,872 units in the entire country in 2022.

The programme has generated an estimated 160,000 direct and indirect jobs and ring-fenced Sh4.4 billion for MSMEs in its supply chain. Contributions are refundable with interest if a contributor does not take up a house.

The projects are public, publicly listed and physically inspectable in Nairobi, Mombasa, Nakuru, Eldoret, Kisumu and dozens of other towns. "Nothing has been built" is a claim that any citizen can disprove by walking to a site.

Farm-gate income is the test, and it moved across every major value chain:

• Fertiliser: Sh6,000 → Sh2,500 per bag, with distribution up from 1.4M to 8.6M bags.
• Coffee: Sh60 → Sh110–160 per kilo of cherry.
• Milk: farm-gate price up 35%, production up 13%.
• Tea: smallholder earnings up 15.8%.
• Sugar: national production 485,000t → 845,000t, with Sh117B in farmer and miller debt written off.
• Maize: 61.74M → 85.7M bags.

Counting only the programmes with published figures:

• 76,000 teachers employed by the TSC.
• 107,000 Community Health Promoters recruited and stipended.
• 122,711 young people placed in digital jobs through Ajira and Jitume, with 516,505 trained.
• 540,000 placed in jobs abroad through bilateral labour agreements.
• An estimated 160,000 direct and indirect jobs from affordable housing construction.

The government's overall figure across all programmes is more than 1.6 million jobs. Youth unemployment remains a serious national challenge — but "no jobs have been created" is not a defensible statement.

The fund has disbursed more than Sh82 billion to over 26 million Kenyans and continues to lend daily. Borrowers have accumulated billions in savings through the automatic 5% deduction on every loan.

Default rates on unsecured, no-collateral micro-credit are always significant — that is true of every product of this type anywhere in the world, and it was priced in from the start. The fund's purpose was to build a credit history for Kenyans the formal system had never scored, and millions now have one.

Kenya has not defaulted on any obligation. In early 2024 international markets were pricing a default on the $2 billion Eurobond maturing that June. The government executed a buyback and refinancing ahead of maturity, retiring the bulk of the note early.

Default speculation ended, the credit outlook was revised upward, and the shilling recovered from about Sh162 to roughly Sh129 to the dollar — making it one of the best-performing currencies in the world that year.