Embrace Financial Freedom Africa

How do you plan your spending?

Wishing you and your loved ones a joyous holiday season filled with love, laughter, and cherished moments.

As we wrap up 2024, we’re grateful for being part of your journey and look forward to supporting every life and every future throughout 2025 and beyond. ❤️

Here’s to a Merry Christmas and a New Year full of hope, health, and happiness! 🎁🎉

The future of East Africa's economic growth lies in its ability to leverage innovative financial instruments like Real Estate Investment Trusts (REITs). As Mncedesi Dumse, our Head of East Africa Real Estate Finance, shared at the recent RAK Conference 2024, REITs offer a powerful mechanism to unlock capital, boost infrastructure, and address the region's growing demand for quality real estate.

More than just a financial product, REITs serve as a bridge between investors and sustainable development, positioning East Africa for long-term growth and prosperity.

With the right structures in place, REITs are poised to become one of the most effective tools in shaping the future of East African economies.

Read more: https://bit.ly/3O1m9fQ

KEY FINANCIAL MANAGEMENT AND FINANCIAL LITERACY STRATEGIES: A PRESENTATION BY CHRISTOPHER ALVIN MOKAYA AT THE DIGITAL ENTREPRENEURSHIP SUMMIT -NAIROBI

How to make a financial breakthrough in 9 steps

1. Set financial goals:
"If you fail to plan, you plan to fail. What is your financial plan?"

A good financial plan is guided by your financial goals. If you approach your financial planning from the standpoint of what your money can do for you — whether that's buying a house or helping you retire early — you'll make saving feel more intentional.

2. Track your money:
Get a sense of your monthly cash flow — what’s coming in and what’s going out. An accurate picture is key to creating a financial plan and can reveal ways to direct more to savings or debt pay-down. Seeing where your money goes can help you develop immediate, medium-term and long-term plans.

Digital apps such as expensify, mint or quicken can help you track, analyse and meaningfully plan for your finances.

3. Budget for emergencies:
The bedrock of any financial plan is putting cash away for emergency expenses. You can start small — 500 dollars is enough to cover small emergencies and repairs so that an unexpected bill doesn’t run up credit card debt or force you to take mobile loans. Your next goal could be 1000 dollars, then one month’s basic living expenses, and so on.

4. Tackle high-interest debt:
In Kiswahili we say, "Ogopa Deni!" Meaning: Fear debt like you fear death. If you must borrow, do it to invest and not to consume.

A crucial step in any financial plan: Pay down high-interest debt, such as credit card balances, payday loans, title loans and rent-to-own payments. Interest rates on some of these may be so high that you end up repaying two or three times what you borrowed.

5. Plan for retirement:

If you visit a financial advisor, they will be sure to ask: Do you have an employer-sponsored retirement plan such as NSSF in Kenya or any other relevant to your country. How about planning to retire by age 35 or 40 and let the wealth you have built work for you?

6. Optimize your tax planning:

For many of us, taxes take center stage during filing season, but careful tax planning means looking beyond the filing of KRA Returns, IRS or fulfilling the tax requirements relevant to your country. Honouring your tax obligations will grant you peace of mind.

7. Invest to build your future goals:

How did great business people like Elon Musk get rich? Elon Musk cofounded seven companies, including electric car maker Tesla, rocket producer SpaceX and artificial intelligence startup xAI.

Investing might sound like something for rich people or for when you’re established in your career and family life. It’s not. Investing can be as simple as putting money in an MMF or get a little advanced and getting a stockbroker to assist you invest in the stock market

8. Grow your financial well-being:

With each of these steps, you're protecting yourself from financial setbacks. If you can afford it, decide whether you'd like to do more, such as:

👉🏼Increasing contributions to your retirement accounts.

👉🏼Padding your emergency fund until you have three to six months of essential living expenses.

👉🏼Use insurance to protect your financial stability so a car crash or illness doesn’t derail you.
👉🏼Life insurance protects loved ones who depend on your income.
👉🏼Term life insurance, covering 10-year to 30-year periods, is a good fit for most people’s needs.

9. Estate planning: Protect your financial well-being:

Financial planning also means looking out for your future needs and making a deliberate strategic plan to secure the future for your loved ones. Creating a will can help ensure your assets are distributed according to your wishes. Other types of estate-planning documents can also provide your relatives with clarity on how you would like to be cared for, and who should manage your affairs. You don't want your wealth to be mismanaged once you are incapacitated for any reason.






Contact: [email protected]

As we honor the heroes who fought for a better future, we celebrate YOU the hero in your loved ones’ story.
By choosing to protect their financial future, you’ve built a lasting legacy of security.

Thank you for trusting us to be part of that journey. Happy Mashujaa Day!

Ishmar Expo Limited We are Traders Expo based in Kenya

Are you covered? Get Life insurance now! SMS LIFE to +254785810105

Happy Africa Day
__Busy to ensure no African is left behind by the tech revolution!

As the continent readies to celebrate Africa Day tomorrow [25 May], this week we announced two fascinating initiatives to improve connectivity for and into and across Africa:

# https://za.liquid.tech/about-us/news/liquid-intelligent-technologies-and-eu…

# https://blog.google/intl/en-africa/company-news/improving-connectivity-and-accelerating-economic-growth-across-africa/

One of the oldest businesses in our group is called Liquid Satellite which I first set up in London in 1998 after the UK deregulated its telecoms sector, and I saw an opportunity to build a satellite services business. It was the first time I had set up a business outside Africa.

At the time, we were participating in the creation of a new industry that is now ubiquitous: private satellite networks using small dishes. There was a huge demand from remote businesses like oil rigs and mines.

As the technology has evolved, we have stayed with it. The latest technology in this space is called Low Earth Orbit Satellites [LEOs]. You are no doubt familiar with the most popular one which is called StarLink, but there are at least three major competitors including Eutelsat’s One Web. There is another one from Amazon, and also a major Chinese initiative.

Our satellite group will continue to work with such groups based on our own business plan, collaborating where it makes sense, and competing in other situations. Don’t ask me to explain why we choose one group over another because we won’t share such sensitive information. This is a long game, calling for patience, and wisdom. As always we look at , , and .

Another of our businesses is called Liquid DataPort and it focuses on crossborder systems, as well as undersea cables. We partner with companies that lay undersea cables to promote routes into Africa. We have been involved with most cable projects into Africa for two decades. This group actually spun out of our satellite group, which came first.

We realized at the time that satellite technologies have major limitations when it comes to carrying the huge data demands of the Internet. We also realized that noone at the time was really interested in building a system that connected all African countries together using a single network.

I saw that as a huge opportunity... [I did not complain or take to social media or other routes to complain; I set about to get it done!]

The route on the map used by Google is not the only route we have. It’s the one they chose to use. We have more than 100,000 km of such routes across Africa, and they are used by different customers.

A job well done looks simple: In fact, it took us three years to dig a trench from Goma to Mbuji Mayi in the Congo rainforest. We had more than 5,000 people digging with picks and shovels. It is the world’s second-largest rainforest.

Building that infrastructure, our engineers encountered every challenge imaginable including rivers that were not on maps, landslides, continuous rain, snakes, and other wild animals. There were also rebels in some areas.

They had to deliver materials from South Africa and Kenya. During the construction, Covid struck but we never stopped.

I salute our because we never lost a single life or had major injuries. It would not have been possible without the local communities along the route who helped us providing workers, shelter, security and above all hospitality.

It took planning, experience, and a lot of grit. These are the people who are truly building modern Africa! You have not heard half the story yet, on how this was done.

Of course, we had to raise capital to do it!

I often joke that I’m Africa’s plumber because what I focused on over the last 20 years was not sexy stuff like mobile phones, stuff I did back in the 1990s and early 2000s.

We rather focused on Digital Infrastructure that will enable others to deliver all these services. Most people don’t even know that virtually all the major mobile operators are actually our customers, because they use our cables and satellite systems as well as Data Warehousing facilities called Data Centers, to enable them to deliver their own services.

Now we are working to improve these systems with AI.

It’s a brave new world, indeed.

Please read the press releases I shared with you above, and tell us your own entrepreneurial lessons.

Better still... just DO IT!






Image credit: This is the Google Cloud Umoja line described in one of the press releases above. As , what do YOU SEE? "Small opportunities are often the beginning of great enterprises". Demosthenes

Happy Africa Day
__Busy to ensure no African is left behind by the tech revolution!

As the continent readies to celebrate Africa Day tomorrow [25 May], this week we announced two fascinating initiatives to improve connectivity for and into and across Africa. You can read more about our new partnerships here:

Eutelsat Group One Web Satellite [Low Earth Orbit] Services to Africa
# https://za.liquid.tech/about-us/news/liquid-intelligent-technologies-and-eutelsat-group-bring-leo-satellite-services-to-africa/

Google Cloud Connectivity Expansion Across Africa and to Australia with Umoja ("Unity") Cable Route
# https://blog.google/intl/en-africa/company-news/improving-connectivity-and-accelerating-economic-growth-across-africa/

One of the oldest businesses in our group is called Liquid Satellite which I first set up in London in 1998 after the UK deregulated its telecoms sector, and I saw an opportunity to build a satellite services business. It was the first time I had set up a business outside Africa.

At the time, we were participating in the creation of a new industry that is now ubiquitous: private satellite networks using small dishes. There was a huge demand from remote businesses like oil rigs and mines.

As the technology has evolved, we have stayed with it. The latest technology in this space is called Low Earth Orbit Satellites [LEOs]. You are no doubt familiar with the most popular one which is called StarLink, but there are at least three major competitors including Eutelsat’s One Web. There is another one from Amazon, and also a major Chinese initiative.

Our satellite group will continue to work with such groups based on our own business plan, collaborating where it makes sense, and competing in other situations. Don’t ask me to explain why we choose one group over another because we won’t share such sensitive information. This is a long game, calling for patience, and wisdom. As always we look at , , and .

Another of our businesses is called Liquid DataPort and it focuses on crossborder systems, as well as undersea cables. We partner with companies that lay undersea cables to promote routes into Africa. We have been involved with most cable projects into Africa for two decades. This group actually spun out of our satellite group, which came first.

We realized at the time that satellite technologies have major limitations when it comes to carrying the huge data demands of the Internet. We also realized that noone at the time was really interested in building a system that connected all African countries together using a single network.

I saw that as a huge opportunity... [I did not complain or take to social media or other routes to complain; I set about to get it done!]

The route on the map used by Google is not the only route we have. It’s the one they chose to use. We have more than 100,000 km of such routes across Africa, and they are used by different customers.

A job well done looks simple: In fact, it took us three years to dig a trench from Goma to Mbuji Mayi in the Congo rainforest. We had more than 5,000 people digging with picks and shovels. It is the world’s second-largest rainforest.

Building that infrastructure, our engineers encountered every challenge imaginable including rivers that were not on maps, landslides, continuous rain, snakes, and other wild animals. There were also rebels in some areas.

They had to deliver materials from South Africa and Kenya. During the construction, Covid struck but we never stopped.

I salute our because we never lost a single life or had major injuries. It would not have been possible without the local communities along the route who helped us providing workers, shelter, security and above all hospitality.

It took planning, experience, and a lot of grit. These are the people who are truly building modern Africa! You have not heard half the story yet, on how this was done.

Of course, we had to raise capital to do it!

I often joke that I’m Africa’s plumber because what I focused on over the last 20 years was not sexy stuff like mobile phones, stuff I did back in the 1990s and early 2000s.

We rather focused on Digital Infrastructure that will enable others to deliver all these services. Most people don’t even know that virtually all the major mobile operators are actually our customers, because they use our cables and satellite systems as well as Data Warehousing facilities called Data Centers, to enable them to deliver their own services.

Now we are working to improve these systems with AI.

It’s a brave new world, indeed.

Please read the press releases I shared with you above, and tell us your own entrepreneurial lessons.

Better still... just DO IT!






Image credit: This is the Google Cloud Umoja cable route described in one of the press releases above. For at least 10 years I've told you here on this platform about building the cable route you see here running through the middle of Africa! As , what do YOU SEE?

"Small opportunities are often the beginning of great enterprises". Demosthenes

Last week marked a significant milestone at the University of Nairobi’s Award Ceremony, which celebrated the academic excellence of students from various fields. As a sponsor, we had the privilege of recognizing the outstanding achievements of the top Actuarial Science students through the Prudential Actuarial Support Scheme (PASS).

This initiative, a collaborative effort between Prudential and the University of Nairobi, is dedicated to nurturing actuarial expertise by offering mentorship and guidance to those embarking on their actuarial careers. Our support extends beyond individual accolades; it’s a step towards ensuring the enduring prosperity of the insurance sector.

The PASS initiative exemplifies our dedication to cultivating a resilient future for the insurance industry. Through our investment in the development of actuarial professionals, we are laying the groundwork for a robust workforce that will efficiently respond to the changing demands of our clientele and the broader community.

Here’s to the heart of every family, the pillar of strength, the embodiment of love – Happy Mother’s Day! Today, we celebrate the ones who give endlessly, love unconditionally, and inspire us to be our best selves. 💐

I stumbled across this school reports from the Easter break, 65 years ago. It felt very fitting to hear that I was “very backward” in spelling and reading – as I get set to launch my audiobook next week! In case you can’t read the handwriting, here are a few highlights:

Classics: “Very keen, but handicapped by a bad memory. Some progress.”

Mathematics: “The first half of the term saw a great improvement in his work, but once he began to get onto really new processes his keenness declined, and his standard dropped.”

French: “A slight improvement this term but his work is still below standard.”

English: “He is still very backward in this subject, especially in spelling and reading - constant practice in the latter is necessary.”

Drawing: “If he took a little care he could be good.”

Going through school with undiagnosed dyslexia wasn’t at all fun, but I’m glad I didn’t let it squash my big ideas. I hope this inspires anyone out there who might be struggling at school right now. Just remember there’s a whole lot more to life out there, and one day you’ll be able to look back on these reports and smile.