7 May 2007, by Elly Wamari in Nairobi, Kenya. Mergers. Partnerships. Expansions. When these become buzzwords among businessmen and women, the simplest conclusion that can be drawn from the scenario is that here are markets that are sensing good prospects.
 
Which is precisely the situation in Kenya at the moment. For the past roughly four months, company CEOs and directors have been thumping their chests and talking mergers, partnerships, and expansions, discussing those that have already taken place and revealing planned ones.
 
Starting with mergers, two not so big banks in the Kenyan market — CFC Bank and Stanbic Bank — are about to amalgamate, and when they do so, the resulting firm will become the fifth-largest banking institution in the country in terms of assets, according to reports. Stanbic is an arm of Standard Bank of South Africa.
 
The merger, announced a few weeks ago, is yet to be concluded. Due diligence investigation, which is an analysis of each bank"s financial health, is yet to be complete. Last year, both banks posted some healthy profits. There is a high chance the due diligence will return a positive outlook of things.
 
Then the Steadman Group, a Kenyan media monitoring and research firm, has announced plans to open a subsidiary in South Africa by merging with South Africa"s media monitoring company called Monitoring South Africa (MSA). This should happen in April. Steadman also plans to penetrate the Nigerian market. It hopes to buy Media-Track, also a media monitoring firm, in the West African state.
 
Kenya"s mobile phone service provider, Safaricom, recently formed alliances with Vodacom in Tanzania and MTN in Uganda to enable its subscribers to roam within the East African region without having to acquire separate telephone lines.
 
Partnerships have also been extended to horticultural production. Strict standards guidelines for horticultural export commodities have led to a wider out-grower relation between small producers and the large farms.
 
Horticultural commodities entering the European market are required to meet certain codes of standards, which seem to interfere with the economics of the small-scale grower. Many of them have gone round that problem by building partnerships with established farms. They produce on behalf of those farms and benefit from their technological and logistical support.
 
In an expansion programme, one of Kenya"s major water bottling company, Keringet, has just invested about US$ 1.5 million to raise its bottling capacity. It is targeting wider reach in neighbouring Tanzania and Uganda, citing increased demand. Now that says something about most of these realignments. The market must be redefining itself.
 
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