Match to Singapore or new term? Ruto's shift to big-ticket projects with Sh5tr fund

The Nairobi Expressway around Westlands. [Wilberforce Okwiri, Standard]

President William Ruto’s plans to spend Sh5 trillion on infrastructure building by 2032 are perhaps the boldest show of how his administration’s priorities have changed in the three years that he has been in power.

The president has, in the recent past, been pushing a big, big-ticket infrastructure agenda, a stark contrast from the hustler narrative of empowering initiatives such as the Financial Inclusion Fund, better known as the Hustler Fund, affordable housing and universal health. 

The shift, analysts say, is with the knowledge that a credit score at a Credit Reference Bureau (CRB), which may have been rehabilitated, is private and may change from positive to negative in months.

On the other hand, a major infrastructure such as dualling a key road, touches a cross section of people ranging from farmers and traders to Kenyans commuting for work and even big industries, and can be used to show delivery by a regime.

When he took up power, Ruto almost immediately got to work on what were seen to be his pet projects at the time, including the Hustler Fund, subsidising agricultural inputs and implementation of the affordable housing programme. 

The Ruto administration launched the Hustler Fund on November 30, 2022, two months after he took the oath of office on September 13. 

The Hustler Fund was sold as having potential to bring about a new economic order for many Kenyans who could not access credit through mainstream lenders and had been left to predatory lenders that were charging them astronomical interest rates on short-term loans, which Ruto has referred to as “deep market failure”.

The Head of State also focused on increasing production with the fertiliser subsidy programme that he said would help farmers increase crop production and reduce Kenya’s reliance on food imports.

In subsidising farming inputs, Ruto had, on his first day on the job, directed petroleum sector authorities to do away with fuel subsidies, which he dismissed as subsidising consumption.

The president now sees as having achieved the goals he had in mind in setting up the Hustler Fund, subsidising production, building affordable housing, universal health, as well as other areas.

“We lowered the cost of production. We brought the price of fertiliser down, and in doing so, we restored profitability to the smallholder farmer,” he said last week Friday during Jamhuri Day, adding that the cost of maize flour has reduced, the tea sector is rising, and coffee is rebounding. The dairy and sugar sectors have been revamped.

“Today, Hustler Fund has become one of the most transformative instruments of empowerment in our nation’s history, disbursing over Sh80 billion and expanding the margins of financial inclusion at an unprecedented scale,” he said, noting that nine million Kenyans are repeat customers for the fund while seven million Kenyans who had been negatively listed at CRBC have repaired their credit histories.

“It has restored dignity to millions. It has brought them back into the equation. They are no longer left behind.”

He cited overwhelming success across other areas – Kenyans are saving more through the NSSF, with the fund growing to Sh670 billion last year from Sh312 billion in 2023, construction of over 240,000 affordable homes through the affordable housing programme and 28 million Kenyans registered through Social Health Authority (SHA), up from eight million in NHIF (National Health Insurance Fund) as well as engaging more than 110,000 Community Health Promoters.

President Ruto is now focusing on the next chapter – infrastructure building, which he says he is doing innovatively, without borrowing or raising taxes – through the National Infrastructure Fund (NIF) that is expected to enable the government to deliver projects worth Sh5 trillion within seven years.

These range from dualled roads, mega dams equipped with power plants, extension of the Standard Gauge Railway and refurbishing airports.

In his Jamhuri Day address, he said the Cabinet will this week “approve the architecture of the new National Infrastructure Fund as the engine that will align the country’s financial resources with Kenya’s development goals”.

And so the much-touted match from being a developing country to a “first world country” begins. Without room to borrow and Kenyans resisting tax hikes, Ruto sold the fund as the only alternative Kenya has for an economic take off, with the next option being “inaction”. 

“Choosing inaction would condemn our nation to stagnation,” he said, adding that leveraging mature national assets and tapping into PPPs was an innovative alternative financing mechanism that would steer forward the “national development imperative”.

This would enable him to raise Sh5 trillion in infrastructure over 10 years that will then be used to dual 2,500km (kilometres) of highways, tarmac 28,000km of roads, expansion of Jomo Kenyatta International Airport, Mombasa and Lamu port, and the extension of the Standard Gauge Railway from Naivasha to the border with Uganda.

The administration also said the Sh5 trillion will also go into boosting food security by building 50 mega dams, 200 mini-dams and 1,000 micro-dams and thus put 2.5 million acres under irrigation, and generating an additional 10,000 megawatts of energy to power value-addition, agro-processing and industrialisation. The President last Friday said the government is set to repair Mombasa Road following its degradation during the construction of the Nairobi Expressway as well as build an expressway from Thika to Museum Hill.

He also plans to dual the roads to Ngong, Ongata Rongai and Kiserian in what could significantly ease congestion within the Nairobi Metropolitan area that is made up of Nairobi, Machakos, Kajiado and Kiambu counties.

A proportion of the money that the government will get from the sale of Safaricom and Kenya Pipeline Company (KPC) will be used as seed capital for NIF, which is then expected to crowd in private sector funds.

In putting the proceeds of privatisation in the infrastructure fund, Ruto said this would break a cycle where money received from the sale of government assets has not had a major impact but instead been absorbed in budgets.

Kenya has in the past raked in billions of shillings from the partial sale of Kenya Airways, KenGen, Kenya Re and Safaricom. This, he noted, ended up “paying salaries and debts, leaving no enduring national assets behind”.

“Our goal is simple: for every shilling in the NIF, we will attract ten more shillings from long-term investors, including pension funds, sovereign partners, private equity funds, and development finance institutions, allowing us to develop without the constraints that come with debt and taxation,” the President said.

A look at the infrastructure projects shows that while generally spread across Kenya, the high-impact projects are in the vote-rich areas and possibly aim at bringing closer the people who may have previously felt neglected.

Today, Kenyans across different social media platforms say they will be singing ‘tutam’ in 2027 should the projects that their localities have been promised be completed. 

One such user’s social media post notes: “If and only if President William Samoei Ruto delivers the Isiolo-Mandera road before 2027, his re-election in north eastern Kenya will not be a question, it will be a certainty”. Another post reads that the President has turned Kenya into a construction site “from roads, affordable housing…. He has changed his promise to action within three years… he will easily secure Tutam”.

Another post that politics aside, “the National Infrastructure Fund… will accelerate the dream of achieving a First World Kenya. The fund will unlock sustainable financing for transformative projects, boost investor confidence, create jobs, and fast-track national development across all regions”.

The fund has, however, been criticised by politicians and observers who note that it lacks a legal backing despite the insistence by Ruto that the recently enacted State Owned Entities Act of 2025 will provide the legal basis for the Fund.

“The NIF illegally removes Constitutional Controls and safeguards and places the use of those funds in the hands of one individual. Expect unbridled looting and kickbacks. The debt burden is being casually tossed onto Kenyans,” said Lawyer Paul Muite.

The Consumer Federation of Kenya (Cofek) Secretary General Stephen Mutoro flagged major concerns on the NIF, noting that it does not have a clear governance framework and that the implementation of projects through PPPs has already exhibited weak discipline, while parliamentary and Auditor-General oversight for the fund remains uncertain. 

“Across Africa, such funds tend to fail when they are structured to sidestep accountability rather than strengthen it,” said Mutoro.

Ruto has, however, been fighting back and on Sunday, he dismissed some of the critics of his grand infrastructure projects as people who have been in power but failed to make any strides to help Kenyans. “The person you are waiting for has been in power for 50 years, but the road to their homes is dusty and muddy. If they cannot make the roads to their homes, how will they make roads to your homes?” he said.

“That is why they are saying it is impossible because they have never planned anything; they have just been in petty politics.”

While the president oozes confidence that the Hustler Fund, SHA and subsidies to agriculture have worked, the success of these and other pet projects of his has been questioned. 

While the president said the Hustler Fund has become the go-to place for many people, including businesses looking for credit, it has been criticised as having failed to make a meaningful impact on the lives of people it aims to help.

The fund initially started offering microloans to individuals, but over time, the products have been enhanced to include higher limits for individuals as well as loans to groups of at least 10 people borrowing up to Sh1 million. A recent study by the Kenya Human Rights Commission found that the fund had “failed to achieve these objectives and proved structurally flawed, economically unsustainable, and politically compromised”. 

“By December 2023, over Sh9.6 billion had been disbursed, yet there was no measurable impact on enterprise development or job creation,” said the report. “Loan sizes ranging from Sh500 to Sh1,000 were too small to start or grow businesses, repayment terms of 14 days were unrealistic, and disbursements were poorly matched to actual financial needs.”

“The default rate stood at 68.3 per cent, and there was no regulatory framework for loan recovery, with the estimated total cost to the taxpayer reaching 71.5 per cent. These statistics pointed to an economic sinkhole.”

The NGO recommends the disbanding of the fund and instead channelling the resources to other funds such as the Women and Youth Enterprise Funds, which it noted are “better-structured financial inclusion initiatives with proven performance”.

The Ministry of Cooperatives, where the fund is domiciled, disputed the findings of the report, dismissing it as lazy. While the issues raised by the report, including the small size of the loans advanced to borrowers, the Ministry said it lends up to Sh50,000 and has instances where there are borrowers taking loans as much as Sh150,000.

“The Hustler Fund base limit is way above the market ticket size of digital products in the country, which is around Sh250. Clearly, the NGO either doesn’t understand the credit market landscape or they feigned ignorance to buttress their political motive,” read an August 2025 statement by the Ministry.

It added that the fund, where the government has so far injected Sh14 billion, has become a sustainable one, weaning itself off dependency on Treasury as borrowers repay and the money is advanced to other borrowers.

The fund is co-creating products with banks “to facilitate entry into the formal financial systems by our beneficiaries with proven good hustler Fund credit behaviour”, according to the Ministry.