Financially Incorrect

Serah Katusya's first salary was higher than what her parents earned, and she thought it was small. Only later did she understand how two teachers had built a household through farming, a shop, a hotel and a clothing business. Money, she realised, was never coming from one place.That understanding would shape her own relationship with money. From investing KES 7,500 on a KES 35,000 salary to building a career across East Africa, Serah learnt to create options long before she needed them. After 16 years at WPP, she took a voluntary exit package and walked away from a career in which...

Christopher Khaemba’s journey is shaped by decisions that tested his ambition, integrity and approach to money.He once hoped to attend Alliance High School but was rejected. Years later, he returned as its principal, leading the school for 10 years. Before that, he had taken charge of Friends School Kamusinga, where teachers had gone six months without pay and parents were struggling with school fees. He had to make difficult decisions about keeping students in school while navigating the institution’s financial challenges.His relationship with money was equally unconventional. At 22, he returned six months of salary he had rece...

Before Tubayo had a working app, Brian Namanya was selling travel experiences through WhatsApp and DMs. He eventually built a travel and commerce business in Uganda, including a marketplace that generated up to $20,000 in monthly revenue at its peak. So why did he walk away? In this episode of Financially Incorrect Uganda Edition , Brian Namanya, founder and CEO of Tubayo, shares the realities of building a technology company in Uganda, from his early days onboarding riders for Taxify to creating a travel marketplace and growing Tubayo Market Days into a business serving hundreds of vendors.He explains how he...

In December 1982, Bharat Thakrar started Scanad with KES 11,000 after selling his Honda for KES 14,000. What began as a one man advertising agency grew into a listed Pan African business valued at KES 9 billion at its height. Along the way, he built multiple agencies to navigate client exclusivity, took over McCann's Kenyan business in 24 hours, secured an approximately US$18 million annual Airtel mandate across 18 countries and brought employees into the ownership of the business. This is the story of how Scanad was built, the commercial decisions behind its growth and the discipline required to scale a business across markets.

What does it take to rebuild financially, professionally and personally after a business you have invested everything in collapses?Kevin Mutiso's relationship with money and business started quite early. While still in Form Two, he was buying shares in Kenya Airways. By 19, he was managing investment portfolios for some of Kenya's top CEOs. He went on to build Alternative Circle, a fintech venture that secured US$1 million in investment, only to face technology challenges, fraud, mounting costs and the disruption of COVID-19.The consequences extended far beyond the business. Kevin had to sell his home, cars and personal belongings...

Jemima Kakizi was already earning from her art before she graduated from university. But when the momentum slowed after graduation, she had to rethink what building a career in the creative industry actually required. In 2017, she took an entry level internship despite feeling that she should have been further along. The experience exposed her to grant applications, open calls, partnerships and professional communication. Skills that extended beyond creating art would become relevant as she developed her work as an artist, curator and founder of Impundu Art Center, a creative space in Kigali that has required an estimated RWF 10 million...

A hit song can make you famous. But does it make you wealthy?For Kenyan music legend Nameless, the answer depends on what happens after the song takes off. A major hit can transform an artist’s earning power, open up new markets and bring opportunities that once seemed out of reach. But a good song does not guarantee commercial success, and even a successful career can leave an artist vulnerable when demand slows down.In this episode of Financially Incorrect, Nameless breaks down the economics behind a career in music. He explains the difference between a good song, a...

Doreen Natukunda Opio spent nearly eight years trying to rebuild her livelihood after losing her first business. From selling T-shirts and household items to experimenting with handcrafted art, she struggled to find her footing until COVID-19 opened an unexpected opportunity. Using leftover wood offcuts and the power of social media, Dorin built Art Kadowaz into a creative studio serving clients across East Africa. But growth came with expensive machinery, rising production costs and a major equipment failure that nearly brought the business to a standstill.In this Financially Incorrect Uganda Edition, Dorin shares the realities of turning creativity into...

How do you build an agribusiness managing nearly 5,000 acres across Africa without owning the land? When Kevin Kamau returned to Kenya in 2015 after a decade in the US, he struggled to find employment and turned to farming with no personal capital. What began with one acre of family land grew into Tukalime Ventures, an agribusiness operating across Kenya, Rwanda, Mozambique and Nigeria. But growth came with expensive lessons. Failed harvests, rising production costs and delayed payments from large buyers exposed the financial risks of commercial farming. At one point, Kevin turned down a senior role offering up to KSh 1...

Fakii Liwali spent decades helping shape Kenya's entertainment industry, working with some of the country's biggest artists and corporate brands. From Homeboyz and Capital FM to Coca-Cola and managing artists like Nyashinski, he built a successful career behind the scenes. But despite earning millions and building a reputation that opened doors, his journey with money was far from straightforward.Fakii reflects on dropping out of college, building a career without formal qualifications and rising from a KSh 5,000 salary to earning over KSh 450,000 a month. He shares how producing the Kenyan movie 40 Sticks for approximately KSh 8 million left him KSh 5...

What would make a senior banking executive walk away from career security to return to university while supporting a family? For Kevin Rudahinduka, the decision meant rethinking how he financed his future, adjusting his household expenses and finding alternative income, including renting out his car. In this Rwanda Edition of Financially Incorrect, Kevin reflects on the early experiences that shaped his relationship with money, from losing his mother at 14 to learning resourcefulness, pursuing education and building a career across financial services.As CEO of Eden Care Healthcare Rwanda Limited, Kevin also shares lessons from his work in microfinance, digital...

From playing keyboard at church for KES 5,000 a month to becoming Sauti Sol's musical director and building his own music ventures, Mutoriah's career has been shaped by a willingness to keep creating beyond the opportunities already available to him.In this episode of Financially Incorrect, the Kenyan musician and producer opens up about the decisions behind his journey, from working with one of the country's most recognised bands to developing music experiences of his own. He shares the lessons he learnt from early business ventures, how his hit song “Beta” changed his performance bookings, and why building a sustainable musi...

Manuela P Mulondo had the kind of public success most people would assume came with financial security. She was speaking at major events, meeting presidents and receiving international recognition, while her business was generating more than UGX 40 million a month. But behind the visibility, personal and business finances were intertwined, debt was mounting, and the business was funding a lifestyle it could not sustain.After stepping away from public speaking for nearly two years, Manuela rebuilt how she approached money, business and value creation. The systems she had developed for her own life became products, generating approximately KES 1.7 million...

In 2014, Brian Bogonko set out to solve a simple problem: how do you sell event tickets digitally, track who is buying and eliminate the fragmented cash and paper systems that defined Kenya’s events industry?M Tickets went on to process more than 1 million tickets across 1,000+ events. But the real business challenge came later. Commission rates that once reached 20% fell to 15%, then 12%, and eventually 3% to 5% as competition intensified. M Tickets had to automate operations, cut costs and rethink what it was actually selling.Brian breaks down the economics behind ticketing, from system crashes caused by last minute demand and ti...

From four stores to 72, Betty Wamaitha was part of the commercial journey that helped transform QuickMart into one of Kenya’s biggest supermarket businesses. In this conversation, she breaks down what actually drives retail economics: supplier negotiations, margins, shelf space, loss leaders, product movement, customer data and why availability can matter more than marketing.Betty’s own financial journey began with a different kind of commercial model. She was paid based on the additional value she created, making more than KSh 5 million in her first year. She went on to build wealth through property and other investments, while creating a fi...

A busy restaurant can still be a bad business. Sonia Iraguha, founder of Bicu Lounge, built the Kigali hospitality destination during COVID after investing roughly RWF 40 million, learning the economics of hospitality from the ground up. Five years later, cocktails contribute roughly 50–60% of revenue, but Sonia has had to learn the harder lessons around margins, pricing, table turnover, breakage and seasonality.In 2024, Bicu faced its biggest financial test when Sonia was forced to leave its original location, pay eight months’ rent upfront and rebuild in a new space. Friends helped bridge the immediate gap before she eventually explored formal fina...

Fred Waswa started working on KSh1,500 a month. After losing his father as a teenager, he became responsible for helping support his mother and siblings, learning early that making money was not enough; you had to know what to do with it. That mindset followed him from his early jobs at Pioneer Insurance and Minet to Standard Chartered, where his salary rose from KSh4,500 to KSh75,000.The money still never felt like enough. Fred ran side businesses, lost money in a failed hotel, accumulated KSh26,000 in debt and, despite being named Minet's Best Employee of the Year, considered leaving...

Richard Musinguzi once received UGX400 million from his animation business and realised that making serious money was easier than knowing what to do with it. The creator of Katoto Uganda had built a recognised creative property from a simple character sketch, eventually producing 500+ advertisements, growing to an 18-person team and generating an estimated UGX1.6 billion over four years.

But behind the revenue were weak systems. Invoices were created in Word, records were difficult to track and much of the production process lived inside Richard's head. He had to learn pricing, accounting, delegation and systems, while his time...

What if you could build a business from assets your customers never need to own?Patricia Mwalimu started Party Lounges with roughly KSh 85,000 worth of furniture. Today, furniture rental accounts for about 90% of the business, furnishing events for thousands of people.In this Business Edition, Patricia breaks down the economics behind the model: how they decide what to buy, how furniture recovers its cost, why some pieces only work as part of a package, and how long term rentals create predictable revenue.She also shares how Party Lounges scaled without bank loans, the KSh 2 million expansion that failed, the...

Lookie’s automotive journey did not begin with a luxury car, a large audience or a dealership.It began with approximately $1,000 from his father and a family connection in London that helped him import small automotive accessories into Kenya. The early margins were modest, but the business introduced him to sourcing, customer relationships and the mechanics of serving a specialised market.From there, Lookie moved into car parts, using car meets, WhatsApp groups, word of mouth and the automotive community to build repeat customers. His own cars later became content, but also something more useful: proof of knowledge, taste, ac...

Bashir Yannick Ntwari’s first gym attracted hundreds of members. The numbers still didn’t work. After returning to Rwanda in 2015, he invested in his first fitness business without fully understanding the market, pricing against what he knew from the UK, taking on too much space, spending heavily on equipment and underestimating the cost of delivering the service. Eighteen months later, the gym was gone. The failure forced him to rethink what a fitness business was supposed to look like.When Bashir rebuilt Soho, he invested less, took a smaller space and built the model around personal training, semi-private coac...

Bilha Ngaruiya has watched Kenyan music change from CDs and physical distribution to Spotify, Boomplay, YouTube and a global streaming economy. She has also seen the uncomfortable side of that transformation: artists can have the talent, the audience and even the numbers, yet still struggle to turn music into lasting money.In this Financially Incorrect Personal Story Edition, Bilha Ngaruiya Country Manager OneRPM takes us inside the business behind Kenyan/African music and the financial lessons that came with it. She talks about the early years of hustling, taking financial risks, experiencing bankruptcy and homelessness, and learning the hard...

Rachel Natukunda did not grow up with everything figured out. She grew up seeing what financial security looked like from a distance, worked for her own opportunities, earned a government scholarship, took on part time jobs and eventually saved enough to make one of her first major financial moves: buying a car.In this Financially Incorrect Uganda Edition, Rachel takes us through the money decisions that shaped her career, from learning to save intentionally and using credit to acquire an asset, to a sermon and books that completely changed how she thought about money. Then COVID hit, her transition...

What happens when you remove alcohol from the party business?Zanelle Wanja’s answer was Nani’s Cafe Party, a Nairobi social experience built around music, coffee, wellness and community.But before Nani’s, Zanelle built Azana Collective, a fashion business that generated strong sales but struggled with high production costs and weak financial controls. The experience taught her a crucial lesson: revenue means little if the economics don’t work.After a year in fintech, she returned to entrepreneurship and built Nani’s differently. What started as free events grew into 350+ person experiences, with paid tickets, major brand partnershi...

Wanini Wachira built a career out of understanding people, selling to them and growing businesses. As Head of Retail at Hotpoint, she has helped drive major growth, including more than doubling branch sales over a three-year period. But her own relationship with money was a very different story.Wanini grew up learning financial discipline from a single mother who knew how to stretch every shilling. Yet as her career progressed and her income increased, so did her spending. At one point, she owned as many as 250 pairs of shoes. Credit cards became part of the picture. A failed investment...

Paradis Nishimwe never set out to build a furniture company. It started with a crib for her baby and eventually became Wood Habitat, a Made-in-Rwanda furniture and interior design business serving high-end homes, hotels and corporate clients.But getting there was far from smooth. At one point, 8 out of 10 products were coming back because of quality problems. The business was under pressure, cash was tight and outsourcing was failing.Paradis responded by bringing production in-house, investing in machinery, fixing quality control and changing how the business managed money. She also took on roughly $30,000 in debt before securing capital that...

What does it take to turn around an institution that is already broken? Dr Julius Kipngetich has spent decades fixing organisations across Kenya, from KWS and Equity Bank to Uchumi and Jubilee Holdings. In this episode of **Financially Incorrect**, he shares what really drives a turnaround: fixing the system, sequencing change and knowing when money is not the solution.At KWS, his interventions helped drive a sevenfold increase in revenue. At Uchumi, he discovered that even aggressive cost-cutting could not overcome a KES 5 billion capital hole.He also shares how a KES 1 million Equity Bank investment made in 2006 grew...

Dr Ronnie Mich Egwang has built a career few résumés could contain: veterinary doctor, broadcaster, media personality, marketer, entrepreneur and business owner. From earning $5 a week as a child to landing a $90,000 continental TV deal, negotiating major media contracts and building a multimillion-dollar marketing business, Dr Mich’s career spans decades of opportunity, risk and reinvention.But the bigger story is what those years taught him about money.In this Uganda Edition of Financially Incorrect, Dr Ronnie Mich Egwang reflects on his media career, Deal or No Deal, Tusker Project Fame, agency life, the $380,000 debt that changed his...

What happens when KES 9 million in revenue leaves you with almost nothing? For Ashok Sunny, founder of Ashok Sunny Tailors Limited, that moment changed the way he understood business. Growing up in Kibera, Ashok learned early that money had to be managed carefully. His mother relied on discipline and chamas to prioritise education and basic needs, while Ashok found his own early route into entrepreneurship by altering and reselling thrifted clothes.What began with KES 5,000 suits eventually became a business serving CEOs, ambassadors, celebrities and high-net-worth clients through luxury bespoke tailoring. But the road from tailoring clothes to building...

From a KSh 30,000 banking salary to building a luxury executive travel and private jet business. Dan Njoroge’s story is not really about luxury. It is about learning what people will pay a premium for, surviving the periods when the money disappears, and discovering that revenue means very little without financial discipline. Dan started with very little. His first income was KSh 5,000 as an intern. After leaving banking, he struggled to pay rent, experimented with a stationery business that barely made margins, and eventually found an opportunity in luxury chauffeur services through a friend’s idle Range Rover.That smal...

Mike Kayihura’s music career has taken him from church choirs and a first Rwandan paycheck to regional recognition across Rwanda, Uganda and Kenya. But behind the songs is a financial story shaped by contracts, missed opportunities, poor money decisions, community support and the difficult business of building a sustainable career as an independent artist.On this Financially Incorrect Rwanda Edition, Mike opens up about what it really costs to build a music career in East Africa, including the contracts that kept him from releasing music for years, the money he made from early commercial work, the unexpected success of...

YT Description
Joram Mwinamo has spent more than two decades helping African businesses grow. But some of his most valuable lessons came from the periods when his own business was struggling. From small technology and event projects at university to working internationally and eventually returning to Kenya, Joram’s entrepreneurial journey has involved failed assumptions, difficult pivots, unstable revenue and decisions where the financially attractive option was not always the right one.
In this Financially Incorrect Personal Money Story, Joram shares how he moved from chasing corporate clients to building cohort based programmes for entrepreneurs, a shift th...

Money shaped Jackie Asiimwe long before she earned her first salary.Growing up in a pastor's household, she watched her mother stretch a modest income, support relatives and somehow keep the family afloat. Years later, after losing her savings in a bank collapse, resisting the idea of investing and spending decades in Uganda's nonprofit sector, Jackie began to rethink everything she believed about money.In this episode of Financially Incorrect Uganda, Jackie opens up about the financial realities of working in the social impact world: low salaries, unpredictable donor funding, the pressure to serve before earning and the mindset...

Every Kenyan has watched a TV show, movie or commercial. Very few people know what it actually costs to make one.Grace Kahaki built one of Kenya's leading production companies from the ground up. She started as an intern earning KES 7,000 a month after her parents cut off financial support because they believed filmmaking wasn't a real career. Today, she is an award winning producer, director and Co-owner of Insignia Productions whose work has appeared on KTN, NTV, Maisha Magic, Showmax and Netflix.This conversation goes beyond cameras and scripts. It unpacks the economics of Kenya's film industry, why...

Professional basketball looks glamorous from the outside. Packed arenas. Winning teams. Continental competitions. Brand partnerships. What rarely gets discussed is the business required to keep all of it alive.In this episode of Financially Incorrect Business Edition, Marcel Awori, Chief of Staff at Nairobi City Thunder, breaks down what it actually costs to build one of Africa's fastest growing basketball organisations. From operating without an office, raising sponsorship capital and signing the team's earliest commercial partners, to managing player contracts, nutrition, travel, branding and long term infrastructure, Marcel explains why building a professional sports organisation is far more complex...

Every quarter, Simon Maina's company manufactures nearly 300,000 obstetric drapes across Africa. The surprising part is not the scale. It's the economics.Njembuma operates on margins of roughly 3%, selling affordable medical products designed to detect postpartum hemorrhage, one of the leading causes of maternal deaths across the continent.Before healthcare manufacturing, Simon spent years in debt collection. Then COVID disrupted everything. What started as a temporary pivot into PPE imports eventually became a social enterprise serving hospitals in nine African countries and Yemen.In this episode Simon breaks down what it really takes to build a mission-driven company in Africa...

Everyone knows Kenya Originals (KO). Far fewer know the business that made it possible.Before KO became one of Kenya's most recognizable cider brands, it started with just $20,000, a few shipping containers, and a founder trying to build something the market didn't believe was possible.In this Business Edition of Financially Incorrect, Alex Chappatte unpacks what it actually takes to build an FMCG company in Africa.This isn't a conversation about beverages. It's a conversation about execution.Alex explains why manufacturing became a competitive advantage, how Africa Originals navigated one of Kenya's toughest regulatory environments, why distribution matters more...

House of Tayo is now one of Rwanda's most recognizable fashion brands.But its biggest breakthrough didn't come from celebrity endorsements, fashion weeks or dressing stars on the Black Panther premiere.It came from walking away from the product generating almost 40% of the company's revenue.In this inaugural Financially Incorrect Rwanda Edition, Matthew Taio Rugamba shares the business decisions that transformed House of Tao from a tailoring business into a scalable African brand.From building an audience while still in university, surviving Rwanda's small consumer market, selling over 5,000 basketball jerseys, navigating manufacturing challenges, leveraging Made in Rwanda, raising capital...

There are moments that completely redefine your relationship with money.For Ann Mubia Mirungi, one of those moments arrived with a single diagnosis.Despite a career advising businesses on complex transactions, years of financial discipline, and doing many of the "right" things, her family suddenly found themselves staring at nearly KSh12 million in ICU bills while fighting to save her mother's life.In this deeply personal episode of Financially Incorrect, Ann opens up about growing up between two very different money philosophies, learning financial discipline from an early age, buying her first car through a loan from her mother...

Some people inherit wealth. Humphrey Nabimanya inherited adversity.He lost his mother as an infant, grew up under the care of his sister living with HIV, battled stigma throughout childhood, and spent his early years hustling on the streets while trying to stay in school.Long before Reach A Hand Uganda became one of Africa's most influential youth organizations, Humphrey was saving small amounts of money every day because he believed every coin had a purpose. In this episode of Financially Incorrect, he shares how a $15 grant became the foundation of a $7 million organization, why he deliberately worked on...