Bank of Kenya Diaspora Bonds

As of 2013 Kenya has been successfully issuing local infrastructure bonds, with at least six such between 2009 and 2011. These bonds were open to all investors, including foreign individuals. After the successful uptake of these bonds, Kenya continued with the first Eurobond issuance (in two tranches of five and 10 years) for USD 2.6bn in 2014, and a 2018 issuance of USD 2bn, in two tranches of 10 and 30 years. In 2017, Kenya took another pioneering step by launching M-Akiba as the world’s first ever mobile phonebased bond. Over 300,000 people registered on the platform, but only about 6,000 people (2%) subscribed to the bond, raising USD2.4m (24%) of the USD10m target. Despite the low take up, indicators were positive enough for the Kenyan government to re-launch M-Akiba in February 2019. This re-launch increased the Bond subscription to 79% and the number of people registered on the platform rose to 450,000.