Lead image for Sovereign wealth fund: Getting the basics right.
Kenya has just done something few countries get the chance to do. The Sovereign Wealth Fund Act, 2026 creates an institution with the potential to change how this country relates to its natural resource wealth for generations to come, converting what is dug from the ground today into an asset still serving Kenyans 100 years from now. That is worth taking seriously, and right.
In 2016, while undertaking postgraduate study at the University of Nairobi, I researched this question because it seemed one of the most consequential a country in Kenya's position could face. Kenya's fund existed only as a proposal then.
The research compared it against five countries that had already built such funds, and against the international governance standard known as the Santiago Principles, to understand what tends to make these institutions succeed or fail.
A decade later, with the law, it seems worth returning to that comparison — not to keep score, but because the questions it raised are exactly the ones Kenya now has to answer in practice.
The Act gets a great deal right. It keeps the fund's three purposes — cushioning shocks, financing infrastructure, and saving for future generations — legally distinct rather than blended into one account, since a shilling meant to survive 40 years cannot be managed the same way as one meant to be spent this year.
It gives the future generations, or Urithi, component real protection: it cannot be borrowed against. It routes all revenue through a central bank account before allocation, giving the institution best equipped to understand macroeconomic risk a genuine role from the outset.
And it ties infrastructure spending to the national development plan in language built to outlast any single blueprint — sensible, given how close Vision 2030 is to its own horizon.
Measured against the questions that research set out a decade ago, the Act gets well over 90 percent of the foundational architecture right. Two things are still worth Kenyans watching closely as implementation begins — not because they overshadow what has been achieved, but because they matter precisely when everything else has been done well.