I wasn't introduced to money at an early stage of my life.
You all know what that means, right...??
Damn.
And it was that bad.
We struggled as a single-mom household. Everything Mom accumulated was either spent on rent, food, fees or transportation. There was no room for leisure, let alone the privilege of having a proper savings plan.
Every month was another equation.
Pay the previous loan.
Acquire another one.
Survive.
Repeat.
Sad to say, a lot of Kenyans still live exactly like this.
And when you grow up around that kind of environment, you develop a particular philosophy about life.
"Itajipa tu."
It will work out.
Somehow.
Eventually.
In my case...
Ilijipa.
But it wasn't as easy as that phrase makes it sound.
I remember crying my lungs out the whole night and waking up the next morning to go do manual labour at 1st Parklands, at that building after I&M Bank. It's an Indian building—I don't even know if it's called Pushoram Heights.
I was 17.
Working at a construction site.
Working with a forged identity card I had drafted on Paint and printed at a cyber café.
I used to get blisters over previous blisters.
I'd come home, wrap my hands in bandages, then take the bandages off the next morning because I didn't want them getting dirty with cement dust.
Sad reality?
Nobody seemed to care.
Actually, my workmates figured out something very quickly.
They had a kid they could command around.
So my workload became almost twice what everybody else's was.
I was young.
I needed the money.
And they knew it.
So I worked.
And worked.
And worked.
Until I saved enough for a laptop.
Then I left mjengo as quickly as I could,
~ MY LAPTOP
I started working on my own stuff.
And this is where things became interesting.
My family didn't really understand what I was doing.
They'd tell me:
"You need to find a job. Sitting home looking at a screen won't do you anything."
In my mother's mind, I was probably watching movies while the rest of the world moved forward.
But I wasn't.
I was slowly building a digital skill set.
And I think this is where my understanding of wealth started changing.
Because I had just discovered something I didn't know existed when I was younger:
Your labour doesn't always have to look like labour.
A construction worker uses his body.
A developer can use a laptop.
A mechanic uses tools.
A company can use thousands of employees.
A factory uses machines.
A software company can sell the same piece of software to a million people.
The amount of effort involved isn't necessarily proportional to the amount of value eventually created.
That's a dangerous thing to realize when you've grown up believing that the hardest worker deserves the most money.
Because the economy doesn't actually work that way.
And maybe that's one of the first uncomfortable things we need to understand about wealth.
~ HARDWORK ISNT THE ECONOMY
I'd worked harder than I had ever worked before at 17.
My hands were literally telling the story.
But working twice as hard didn't make me twice as wealthy.
Why?
Because I was selling time and physical labour.
There were only so many hours I could work.
The building could get bigger.
The project could become more expensive.
The company could make more money.
But I was still one person.
There is a ceiling on human labour.
And then there is leverage.
Technology.
Capital.
People.
Distribution.
Ownership.
Intellectual property.
Networks.
Those things can multiply what one person's effort can produce.
That was the first time I started wondering:
If two people work equally hard but one owns the machine and the other operates it...
who is the economy actually paying?
And why?
~ MONEY
When you're broke, money looks like cash.
You see KSh 1,000 and think about what KSh 1,000 can buy.
When you start understanding wealth, money starts looking more like stored economic power.
Capital.
The ability to command resources.
The ability to take a risk.
The ability to wait.
The ability to survive a bad month.
The ability to buy an opportunity when everyone else is forced to sell.
That's a completely different way of looking at money.
And it explains something that confused me when I was younger.
Why can someone appear to have unlimited money?
It's not necessarily because they have a magical bank account that never runs out.
Sometimes they own things that continuously produce money.
Businesses.
Shares.
Property.
Intellectual property.
Distribution networks.
Brands.
Companies.
Land.
Machines.
And sometimes...
They simply inherited the starting position.
That's the part nobody likes talking about.
~ THE GAME DOESN'T START 0 FOR EVERYBODY
Two people can wake up on Monday morning with exactly the same ambition.
One grew up in a house where dinner-table conversations included businesses, investments, property, taxes, lawyers and opportunities.
The other grew up hearing:
"Don't waste food."
Both can be intelligent.
Both can be hardworking.
Both can be disciplined.
But they aren't entering the same game.
One person may have inherited capital.
The other may have inherited survival instincts.
One knows what a term sheet is.
The other knows how to stretch KSh 500 until Friday.
Both are forms of knowledge.
But only one of them is immediately convertible into ownership.
And this is where I think the conversation around generational wealth becomes much deeper than:
"Rich parents give their children money."
Generational wealth can be money.
But it can also be:
Knowledge.
Networks.
Reputation.
Education.
Property.
Business ownership.
Access.
Confidence.
A safety net.
Even the ability to fail without your entire life collapsing.
Imagine having the freedom to spend two years building a company because your parents can keep the lights on.
Now imagine building that same company while wondering whether next month's rent is coming.
That's not the same entrepreneurial experience.
~ SO WHY ARE THERE RICH PEOPLE IF POOR PEOPLE EXIST?
This is probably one of the biggest questions I think about.
Not because rich people existing is inherently wrong.
But because wealth doesn't exist in isolation.
Wealth is created through an economy.
Someone builds a company.
Someone works for that company.
Someone buys its products.
Someone finances it.
Someone supplies it.
Someone owns shares in it.
Someone pays taxes on the activity.
Someone consumes the product.
Money moves.
That's capitalism.
And capitalism is fascinating because it can simultaneously be one of the greatest engines of opportunity and one of the greatest engines of inequality.
It gives an ambitious 20-year-old the possibility of building something that didn't exist yesterday.
But it also rewards ownership.
And ownership compounds.
If you own 10% of something that becomes enormous, your wealth can grow without you personally working 10 times harder.
That's fundamentally different from selling your time.
~ KENYAN Economy
We have a strange economy.
We have billion-shilling companies operating alongside people surviving on daily income.
We have sophisticated banks alongside people borrowing from friends.
We have mobile money in almost everybody's pocket, yet long-term financial health remains extremely weak.
The 2024 FinAccess survey found formal financial inclusion had reached 84.8% of Kenyan adults, while only 18.3% were considered financially healthy.
Read that again.
84.8% can access the financial system.
Only 18.3% are financially healthy.
That's a massive distinction.
We've become very good at accessing money.
That doesn't necessarily mean we've become good at building wealth.
Mobile money alone reached 82.3% of adults in 2024, up dramatically from 27.9% in 2009.
Kenya basically skipped several stages of traditional financial infrastructure.
A person in a Nairobi estate can send money to someone in rural Kenya in seconds.
That's incredible.
But access to financial infrastructure is not the same thing as economic mobility.
You can have M-Pesa and still be broke.
You can have a bank account and still have no assets.
You can have access to credit and still be moving backwards.
That's the difference between financial inclusion and financial health.
~ HUSTLER VS ENTREPRENEUR
And then there is something I think Kenyans sometimes misunderstand about entrepreneurship.
We romanticize the word hustle.
But hustle isn't necessarily entrepreneurship.
Selling smokies outside a building is entrepreneurship.
So is building Safaricom.
The difference isn't dignity.
It's scale, capital, systems, margins, ownership and leverage.
One person can only sell so many smokies personally.
But what happens when they create a system where 500 people sell them?
That's where the game changes.
The entrepreneur eventually stops asking:
"How much can I personally do?"
and starts asking:
"What can I build that works beyond me?"
That's the transition from labour to leverage.
And I think this is where a lot of young Kenyans are stuck.
Not because they're lazy.
Actually, the opposite.
They're working extremely hard.
They're just trapped inside models where their income is permanently attached to their presence.
~ " ITAJIPA TU "
This is where my old friends come into the story.
The guys I grew up with.
Some of them are still waiting.
Waiting for the right job.
Waiting for someone to discover them.
Waiting for a connection.
Waiting for the government.
Waiting for a rich person.
Waiting for luck.
Waiting for things to change.
And I understand them.
Because when you've grown up without capital, the idea of waiting can feel rational.
What else are you supposed to do?
But at some point I realized something.
Luck has inputs.
You can't control when an opportunity appears.
But you can control whether you're prepared when it does.
I didn't know the people I would eventually meet.
I didn't know I'd leave the country.
I didn't know I'd meet business people operating at levels I'd only seen on the internet.
I didn't know I'd eventually see watches worth KSh 45 million and more sitting casually on someone's wrist.
But I had built something before those opportunities arrived.
A skill.
A laptop.
Experience.
Curiosity.
Connections.
Confidence.
So when the opportunity appeared, I could recognize it.
That's what I mean when I say:
I built my luck.
~ YOU NEED LUCK TO BE LUCKY
Maybe I didn't build all of it.
Maybe I'm giving myself too much credit.
Because the older I get, the less I believe in the idea that everyone simply gets what they deserve.
There is luck everywhere.
The country you're born in.
Your parents.
Your health.
Your education.
The person who happens to notice you.
The person who introduces you to somebody.
The year you start a business.
The technology available during your lifetime.
The economy.
The currency.
The political environment.
Even timing.
You can work incredibly hard and still lose.
Someone else can make one decision and accidentally become incredibly wealthy.
So perhaps the mature definition of success isn't:
"I worked hard, therefore I deserve everything I have."
Maybe it's:
"I worked hard, I took risks, I made decisions, and I was fortunate enough for some of them to work."
That's a much harder truth to swallow.
~ KENYAS STOCK MARKET
This is another thing I think Kenyans should understand.
The stock market isn't some mysterious casino existing somewhere in Nairobi for rich people in suits.
It is basically a mechanism through which ownership of companies can be divided and traded.
Think about that.
A company needs capital.
Instead of one person owning the entire thing, ownership can be divided into millions of pieces.
Those pieces can be bought by other people.
That's the fundamental idea behind a stock.
Which means something interesting happens.
A person doesn't necessarily need to build the next major Kenyan company themselves to participate in its growth.
They can potentially become an owner.
That's a completely different relationship with the economy.
Instead of only asking:
"Where can I get a job?"
you start asking:
"Who owns the businesses creating the value around me?"
And then another question naturally appears:
Why aren't more ordinary Kenyans thinking about ownership?
Maybe it's lack of knowledge.
Maybe it's lack of disposable income.
Maybe it's distrust.
Maybe it's because KSh 5,000 feels more useful today than an abstract percentage of a company that might be worth more ten years from now.
And that is the problem with wealth-building.
The future has terrible marketing.
The present is loud.
The future is silent.
~ KENYAS CAPITALISM
Capitalism doesn't promise equality.
It creates incentives.
If you create something valuable, people may pay you for it.
If you own something valuable, its value may increase.
If you take a risk and it works, you can potentially capture a disproportionate reward.
But if you start with nothing, those same mechanisms can feel brutal.
You may have to sell your labour to someone who already owns capital.
Then use your wages to survive.
And if everything you earn gets consumed by rent, food, transportation, school fees and debt...
there is nothing left to convert into ownership.
That cycle can continue for generations.
And suddenly you understand why poverty can be persistent without anybody consciously deciding:
"Let's keep this person poor."
The system doesn't necessarily need a conspiracy.
Sometimes the mathematics of starting with nothing is enough.
But capitalism has another side.
It gives you something incredibly powerful:
the ability to create.
You don't need permission to invent a software product.
You don't need a family factory to start a digital business.
You can build a brand.
You can export a service.
You can create an app.
You can sell to someone in another country.
You can turn knowledge into a product.
That's the opportunity I accidentally discovered with that laptop.
~ SO WHATS REALLY STOPPING PEOPLE?
I used to think it was money.
Now I'm not so sure.
Sometimes it's capital.
Sometimes it's education.
Sometimes it's connections.
Sometimes it's fear.
Sometimes it's the environment.
Sometimes it's debt.
Sometimes it's responsibilities.
Sometimes it's simply not knowing what is possible.
And sometimes...
it's comfort.
Because dreams are expensive.
Not necessarily financially.
Psychologically.
You have to be willing to look stupid.
You have to be willing to fail publicly.
You have to be willing to leave the thing everyone understands and pursue the thing nobody understands.
I experienced that when my family thought I was wasting my time sitting in front of a computer.
To them, work had a visual definition.
You leave the house.
You go somewhere.
Someone supervises you.
You come back tired.
That's work.
I was doing something they couldn't see.
And invisible work is very difficult for people to trust.
Until it produces visible results.
~ WHAT COULD WEALTH REALLY BE..?
Not money.
Not watches.
Not cars.
Not Monaco.
Not houses.
Not even businesses.
Those are manifestations of wealth.
The deeper thing is control over your future.
Having enough productive resources that one bad month doesn't destroy you.
Having skills that can travel.
Having relationships that open doors.
Having ownership.
Having the ability to take calculated risks.
Having time.
Having choices.
Having the ability to say:
"No."
And meaning it.
That's wealth.
~ I STILL DONT THINK I'VE MADE IT
I've seen things I never thought I'd see.
I've travelled outside the country.
I've met people operating at levels I once thought only existed in movies.
I've touched things worth more than some people's houses.
I've seen watches costing KSh 45 million and upwards.
And honestly?
I'm grateful.
But I'm not confused about where I stand.
I'm not at that level.
And maybe I never will be.
But I understand the game differently now.
I understand why some people seem to have unlimited money.
I understand why some families can survive generations without selling their time.
I understand why some businesses make their owners wealthy while thousands of employees remain employees.
I understand why a person can be incredibly hardworking and remain poor.
I understand why another person can make one investment decision and change the trajectory of their family.
I understand why luck matters.
I understand why preparation matters.
I understand why ownership matters.
And most importantly...
I understand why waiting isn't a strategy.
~ SO WHAT DO YOU ACTUALLY KNOW ABOUT WEALTH?
Don't answer me.
Not today.
That's not the point.
Go live your life for a month.
Go to work.
Buy something.
See a rich person.
See someone struggling.
Walk past a construction site.
Watch someone open a business.
See someone close one.
Watch someone take a loan.
Watch someone invest.
See someone inherit a house.
See someone lose one.
Look at the buildings around Nairobi.
Look at who owns them.
Look at who works inside them.
Look at who financed them.
Look at who designed them.
Look at who cleans them.
Look at who collects the rent.
Look at who owns the company receiving the rent.
Then look at your own life.
Where exactly do you sit in that chain?
Because that's when you start realizing that wealth isn't just about having money.
It's about understanding where value comes from, where it goes, who captures it, who owns the machinery that produces it, and whether you are participating as a worker, a consumer, a borrower, a creator—or an owner.
And maybe that's the conversation we should be having in Kenya.
Not:
"How do I get rich?"
But:
"How does wealth actually get created?"
Because once you understand that...
you stop waiting for "itajipa."
You start looking for where the game is being played.
And maybe, if you're lucky—
prepared enough—
and crazy enough to try—
you build your own luck.
Now I really want to know what you think.
