Kenyans who took loans in the period starting October 2020 but failed to repay them on time, leading them to be listed in credit reference bureaus have received a reprieve from the president. Kenya’s president Uhuru Kenyatta gave the orders to suspend listing of defaulters for a period of one year during this year’s Mashujaa day celebrations. The move is meant to give more time to small business who are still healing from severe effects of covid-19.
The president announced that, CRB’s will drop defaulters listed during this period until September 2022, this is aimed at enabling them recover from effects of covid-19 without facing the effects associated with being listed in the bureaus. Suspending listing from CRB’s is part of a stimulus package announced by the president to give relief to affected businesses as well as families in the country. During the peak of Covid-19 in 2020, most companies were forced to lay-off staff to cut back on their operational costs while families sort for short term loans to meet their obligations.
And while Kenyans sort for these loans which saw mobile loan facilities increase in popularity, in most cases they were not able to repay them owing to the duration covid-19 has taken thus far. This in turn meant they’ll be listed in credit reference bureaus denying them opportunities to take future loans.
Financial institutions had been allowed to continue listing Kenyans, after the worst of Covid had passed, and the current orders will be the second that the President had enforced to cushion Kenyans from the effects of negative CRB listing.
Working Kenyans who had sort short term loans such as salary advances to purchase household items such as electronics and furniture, have since struggled to repay after most companies slashed their salaries. Accounts listed with CRB skyrocketed to 14 million in January this year, revealing the struggles Kenyans were having with repaying their loans.
The ratio of non-performing loans to total loans in the banking sector stood at 14 percent in June, down from 14.6 percent at the end of March, highlighting the economic recovery for households and businesses.
If you need some help with choosing the right gambling site, here are 5 important factors to consider when picking the best online casino in Kenya.
Online Casinos in Kenya – How to Pick the Best One
Do you want to play online casino games but don’t know how to select the best online casino site? It’s completely understandable if you find choosing the right gambling site challenging. After all, there are so many reputable online casinos available for Kenyan players, aren’t they?
Below we will give you a little help by reviewing the most important factors you should consider when picking the best online casino in Kenya. Thus, you can get the best gaming experience possible when playing online!
1. Game Selection
One of the first things that you should always check before registering at a site is the game selection. Why is it so important? Because each gambling site offers different games for its players. If you prefer to play table games, then the best is to look for an online casino that has a huge selection of table games (plus different variations of each game). But if you are rather into slot machines, then you might need to verify if the casino you want to select has a wide choice of online slots.
When it comes to the best online casinos in Kenya (see the top sites mentioned here), you don’t have to worry about the game selection. Most operators have an enormous game library that involves slots, blackjack, roulette, craps, baccarat, poker, bingo, and more.
2. Bonuses and Special Offers
Most gambling sites use various bonuses and special offers to get more people to sign up for their sites. Without a doubt, it’s worth taking advantage of these bonuses as they can help you increase your funds to a great extent. You can even double or triple the amount of your first deposit if you choose well!
The most common bonus you can find at the different online casinos is the so-called welcome bonus or first deposit bonus. Since the terms and conditions may be different at each site, don’t forget to read the rules related to the welcome bonus before signing up.
Additionally, many operators have special offers, such as free spins, no deposit bonuses, enhanced odds, reload bonuses, or free bets.
When you are looking for the best online casino in Kenya, another thing you might want to be aware of is the user reviews. Reading about other players’ experiences at a casino can help you a lot when making your final decision.
This is why it may be a good idea to spend some time on research and visit a few casino review sites. If you find out that many users have problems with cash-out times, the availability of customer support, or the usability of the site, then it’s better if you avoid that particular online casino.
However, if you see that most comments are positive and the players enjoy playing at a gambling site, you can feel free to register.
1. License
The security of a casino site is one of the most important factors that you should never ignore if you want to avoid becoming a victim of a fishy casino site.
Checking whether an operator holds a gaming license issued by a trusted authority can tell you a lot about how secure the site is. The best is if you can find an online casino that has a license from one of the leading gambling jurisdictions out there, for example, from the Gibraltar Gambling Commissioner, the United Kingdom Gambling Commission, the Malta Gaming Authority, or the Curaçao Gaming Control Board. Since each operator has to meet certain criteria concerning safety and security to obtain a gaming license from these regulatory bodies, you can trust these casinos.
2. Customer Service
The last factor we will talk about today is customer service. Although many players don’t care about the service that the casino’s customer support team provides (until they need it!), we recommend you take a look at how you can contact the customer service. Most trusted casino sites have at least two channels provided for their users. These might include email, live chat, or even phone.
Before making your registration at the chosen casino site, make sure to check if you can find the contact information to get in touch with the support team. Moreover, you can even contact them to see how quickly they answer and how helpful the team is. If you see that it takes for them too long to respond or they don’t even answer, just don’t waste your time registering at the casino site. If later you face some issues, chances are that the customer service would not help you resolve them.
The Bottom Line
Selecting the best online casino in Kenya is not so complicated if you know which factors to look out for. Just make sure to take a look at the casino’s game selection, various bonuses, gaming license, and customer service. Plus, don’t forget to make some research and read the reviews of other players. This way, you can be assured that the casino you choose is safe, trustworthy, and it will provide an amazing gaming experience for you!
VIVO has introduced one of its midrange smart phones in the country, the Y21 packs some interesting features that will appeal to most Kenyans such as a larger battery that’s expected to last an entire day. The midrange smartphone segment is very lucrative here in Kenya, and VIVO has definitely had a special eye on the segment given just the number of devices the manufacturer has so far introduced in the largest East African economy.
There’s nothing interesting when it comes to this model other than that it has what it takes to deliver smart features for the average user. Under the hood, we get midrange level specs, nothing out of the ordinary except for a better battery capacity. With a 5,000mAh battery that’s also capable of supporting 18W fast charging, power issues shouldn’t be a problem to many. According to VIVO, the Y21 should be able to reach 34 percent charge in just half an hour, which is impressive considering just how long normal charging takes to accomplish the same.
When it comes to the display, there’s nothing groundbreaking, in fact one would argue the display panel is far behind from what you’d expect from a device at this price point. While the overall real estate is great at 6.51inches, the panel resolution is way low at 1600×720 pixels. Therefore, don’t expect images and text to match high-res panels on other devices.
Under the hood is a MediaTek Helio P35 chipset that’s complemented with 4GB RAM. And while the 4GB RAM is within our barebones minimum, the manufacturer has introduced an additional functionality to further extend the total available physical memory by 1GB just in case it’s not enough.
VIVO Y21 will be shipped with android version 11, which is currently the latest official build, but we’d have loved to see android 12 that’s just around the corner installed. According to Kenya’s VIVO brand manager Mr. James Irungu, this mid-ranger is aimed at the youth who will like the enclosed 8MP selfie camera and dual 13MP+2MP secondary sensors.
Just a few months ago, it would have been unthinkable to imagine that Safaricom customers would be unwilling to redeem their Bonga points. The telco’s loyalty program came in handy to most Kenyans who were struggling to make ends meet. It brought a much-needed relief to a majority of them who were able to redeem their points with various items such as air tickets, shopping in supermarkets as well as paying for school fees. But as it stands, things are not the same as they were before.
When Safaricom partnered with the Nairobi Securities Exchange (NSE) to allow subscribers on its network redeem their loyalty points and purchase stocks, no one would have imagined that the program would face a slow uptake as it stands now. Apparently, rich Kenyans are neither willing to trade in their Bonga Points with various redeemable prizes.
Latest data that we have from Nairobi securities Exchange indicate that only a about Kenya Shillings 600,000 worth of stocks has so far been redeemed by Safaricom customers using their Bonga Points. So far, only around 3 million loyalty points have been traded in for stocks, which only accounts for a paltry 0.015 percent of an estimated Kenya Shillings 4 Billion currently held in Bonga Points by Kenyans.
Back in the day, Safaricom and Nairobi Securities Exchange announced their partnership which would have allowed Kenyans to access stock using loyalty points from the telco. Compared to similar arrangements that were born during the COVID-19 such as shopping for various items in the supermarkets, paying for air tickets, buying electricity tokens as well as paying for school fees, buying stock using loyalty points doesn’t seem to be attracting any hype at the moment.
Football is certainly the most popular sport all over the world. Estimates speak of it having a fan base of more than 3 billion, beating pretty much every other sport you can think of. This huge following means that football is also the sport with the biggest media coverage – there is no TV channel and newspaper, online or otherwise, that doesn’t cover it in one form or another.
This should mean that you stumble upon football coverage pretty much everywhere you go. Except in many cases, it’s one-sided and incomplete – perhaps without the results, you are interested in the most. But there are simple ways in which you can keep up with the latest results – and all you need for that is an internet connection.
Betting apps
Betway has perhaps the best online sports betting Tanzania has to offer – but it has way more than that. It also has all the most important football scores at hand. Downloading the Betway app and registering an account opens up your personal portal to more than just the best odds – it has a section where the odds of either team winning are analyzed in real-time, giving you not just the score but the potential end result as well.
In some cases, the matches are even streamed live through the betting app, so you can not only bet on them but follow them as they happen.
Club apps
Many football clubs love to keep in touch with their fans online by releasing their own native smartphone apps – and many of these include not just the latest scores and news but live streams of their matches and recordings of their past games as well. The selection is wide… but unfortunately not complete. But it represents a solution for keeping up with at least a few of the biggest matches of your favorite teams.
The Play Store has countless official apps released by football leagues and individual clubs. There is one released by the English Premier League, La Liga, and other major European leagues – but there is one for the Ligi Kuu Bara, too, with all the latest updates and news about the teams closest to your heart.
NewsNow
NewsNow is a service that’s one of a kind. It is basically a news aggregator that collects the headlines from other sites – except that it has the biggest collection of news feeds of any site of its kind. Plus, it has a smart algorithm that collects every piece of news related to a certain topic, no matter if it’s politics, entertainment or football.
NewsNow doesn’t have a smartphone app but it has a clever mobile website at newsnow.co.uk (and newsnow.com for the US version, and newsnow.it for the Italian one). Here, you can find all the latest news about football (and pretty much everything else).
Streaming giant Netflix has announced plans to introduce a free plan in Kenya, this will allow Kenyans who meet specific requirements to watch content from Netflix free of charge. The move Further intensifies streaming wars that Kenyans have witnessed in recent times especially after the COVID-19 pandemic, which forced most Kenyans to work from home and to look for more ways to access and entertainment while at home.
According to recent statistics, Kenya is home to more than 20 million Internet users which the streaming giant is looking to tap as it focusses on more ways to expand its reach in the East African Nation. From the information that we already have, Netflix free plan won’t exactly match the same experience as to paid plans. For instance, the plan is set to be only available on mobile devices offering a select number off video content available on its platform.
Netflix plans to roll out the free plan in Kenya within the coming weeks, where unlike the normal process where one is expected to provide payment details during signup, the free plan will be available to any qualifying user without necessarily providing payment details.
Restrictions on Netflix free plan in Kenya
As expected with any free service, there are several restrictions or limits that subscribers on this plan will not enjoy compared to those on paid plans. For a start, the service is only available on Android smartphones, this basically leaves out people on iOS devices such as iPhone and iPads. Secondly, Users will be limited to a certain number of content, meaning you’ll have to upgrade to a paid plan to unlock more content. And lastly but not least, users will have to confirm that they are over 18 years of age. And if it makes any difference to you, the free plan will be capped at only 5 profiles per account
How to legally watch Netflix for free in Kenya
Once the service is available within the coming weeks, all you have to do is sign-up by providing an email address and a password. You will then be asked to confirm that you are over 18 years of age, after which you can access a quarter of available content on your Android smartphone. Proceed to download Netflix app on your Android smartphone and enjoy.
With an increasing number of scammers using people’s national identification cards to register lines, it’s always a good practice to keep tabs on lines registered using your National ID on the Safaricom network. And in this case, Safaricom introduced an ample way that subscribers can use to confirm which lines are currently registered on its network using your ID. The move was praised by many Kenyans especially in the government efforts aimed at curbing illegal activities that are executed using fake mobile phone numbers.
Just the other day, the registrar of political parties in the country unveiled a system that would allow Kenyan’s check which political parties they’ve been registered. The move elicited many reactions especially after most Kenyans found themselves registered in political parties without their consent. Therefore, checking any services or organizations under which you’ve been enrolled will form a good part of controlling activities that might be done in disguise as you, more or less like controlling identity theft.
Take for example, you find yourself with a mobile loan linked to your ID number. This can easily happen if someone out there has your personal details such as ID number and successfully managed to register a line under it. All the person needs to acquire a mobile loan is a phone and your National ID details, then they can request for a loan from more than eighty percent of service providers. It’s therefore very important to keep tabs on Safaricom lines registered using your National ID number, as this can easily help you to avoid trouble with law enforcement.
Ways that someone can acquire your ID number details 1. From MPESA agents 2. If you lost your National ID 3. Through theft 4. Or even a close acquaintance
How to check Safaricom lines registered using your National ID number
1. On your phone, dial *106# 2. Then select my numbers 3. You’ll get a message with all numbers registered under your National ID 4. You can also check on reported numbers, cancel a reported number and report a number.
The same USSD code can be used to check lines registered with your ID on Artel network, but with a few minor differences.
As an entertainment option, smartphone gaming is right up there with some of the other modern-day choices people tend to make. Now Spotify has finally entered the Kenyan market. That too is another common choice, as well as streaming movies or watching soccer on television. Gaming on a mobile phone has certainly risen to prominence, though, especially when you factor in the improved games and the more powerful smartphone devices we have access to in the modern-day.
As a result of the seemingly never-ending innovation in the smartphone space overall, smartphone gaming’s offering has never been so attractive. As such, when you assess the sheer amount of games available in the Google Play store, it is quite remarkable. From MOBAs like Arena of Valor to trading card games such as Hearthstone, the options are comprehensive. This accompanies titles offering an augmented reality experience like Pokemon Go and and casino sites offering popular slot games like Bonanza Megaways, which offers up to 117,649 ways to win in every spin. We have barely touched the surface there, either. One search online and in the Google Play store will highlight that.
As a result of the extensive selection of smartphone games now available on Android devices, it can be hard to narrow it down to the very best. Ultimately, smartphone gaming options have become somewhat overloaded. In order to help you establish which games are worth your time, here is a look at some of the best titles for smartphone gamers in Kenya right now.
One of the biggest PC games ever is now on mobile
There has been a growing trend of console-quality titles making the jump over to smartphone devices. With the aforementioned innovation in our smartphone devices bringing more power and sophistication with it, games developers have been able to up the ante accordingly. A perfect example of this is Minecraft. A game that involves crafting millions of blocks as you explore infinite worlds and build whatever you want, it can be easy to find yourself being totally engrossed in this particular release. You can also craft weapons and find armour to protect yourself against any enemies, alongside a whole host of other things.
Anyone for a game of billiards?
One of the biggest games in the country at the moment is Shooting Ball. A simple but fun game, it is essentially vertical billiards in a single-player game mode. The graphics are decent, with a solid 3D effect, and there are more than 1000 levels to get through, which will most definitely keep you entertained for hours on end.
Racing car games have always been popular on mobile. Not only are they entertaining, but they’re generally compatible with mobile gameplay. A great example of this is with Mini Car Race Legends, an enjoyable title where players race with tiny cartoon style cars and turbo-boost their way to the very top of the pile.
The most popular puzzle game of the year so far
Candy Crush Saga is the latest instalment from one of the most iconic and loved puzzle games in the modern era. If you enjoy solving puzzles in a quick time and like the idea of being rewarded with rainbow-coloured cascades and tasty candy combos, then it’s a game for you. Players ultimately have to match three or more candies in a row. It sounds easy enough, but rest assured, you’ll be stuck on this one at certain points.
Other great options include PUBG Mobile, eFootball PES 2021, Bloons TD 6, Stardew Valley, Football Manager 2021 Mobile, Word Shatter, Temple Run, and Roblox.
