Shares at the Nairobi Securities Exchange (NSE) posted their largest one-week gain on record, leaving investors Sh220.24 billion wealthier as market capitalisation jumped 6.9 percent to a new peak of Sh3.419 trillion. The surge was driven mainly by heavyweight stocks including Safaricom, Equity Group, KCB Group and Stanbic Holdings.
Safaricom alone added Sh78 billion to its valuation, rising 6.1 percent to Sh1.36 trillion after its share price climbed to Sh33.95. Equity gained 13 percent, translating to Sh33 billion, while KCB and Stanbic advanced 11.9 percent and 16.8 percent, adding Sh25.7 billion and Sh13.7 billion respectively.
The rally has put the bourse on track to replicate last year’s strong performance, when equities outperformed bonds, bank deposits and property. Safaricom’s gains followed the announcement of a higher interim dividend of Sh0.85 per share, while banking stocks attracted investors positioning ahead of full-year results expected within weeks.
Unlike previous rallies dominated by large-cap stocks, smaller and mid-sized counters also joined the party. Twenty-one stocks posted double-digit gains, a move analysts linked to increased retail activity following the launch of the Ziidi Trader mobile trading platform.
Market activity spiked sharply, with the number of transactions more than doubling to 101,284 from 43,564 the previous week, underlining the immediate impact of direct share trading via M-Pesa. Equity turnover rose 55 percent to Sh7.34 billion, while volumes jumped 81 percent to 225.88 million shares.
Ziidi Trader, a partnership between Safaricom, the NSE and Kestrel Capital, allows investors to trade shares via M-Pesa without opening individual CDS accounts. Shares are held in an omnibus account managed by Kestrel, which tracks ownership records. On its official launch day, the platform accounted for more than half of all NSE transactions.
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The renewed retail participation follows a prolonged bear market that ran from 2015 to 2023, during which foreign investors dominated trading and local investor numbers stagnated. By the end of 2025, individual local investors stood at 1.25 million, down from nearly two million in 2022. The NSE now targets nine million active retail investors by 2029.
Top gainers during the week included Sasini, Eveready East Africa, Car & General and Sameer Africa, buoyed partly by corporate actions and strategic shifts. Several other counters across banking, insurance, manufacturing and agriculture also recorded double-digit gains.
So far this year, the bourse has gained 16 percent, adding Sh475 billion in value and outperforming other investment options such as Treasury bonds and fixed deposits, which are offering returns of up to 14 percent and about seven percent respectively.
