Kenya’s piracy hunt

Welcome to another month. ☀️

It’s the second month of H2 2026. Somehow, “there’s still time” is starting to sound like a scam. Anyway, never give up on those goals for the year.

Let's dive in.

As petrol prices climb and disposable income declines, South African consumers are making the same kind of choice across three very different parts of their lives: television, groceries, and mobile data. 

What the numbers say: 29% of working South Africans have downgraded a TV streaming service, 27% have switched to cheaper supermarket brands, and 24% have moved to cheaper cellphone or data plans, according to a savings report by Old Mutual, a South African digital bank.

The interesting part is that the same household often makes all three decisions at once: paying less for TV, groceries, and data, according to the report.

Explain like I’m new here: When money gets tight, consumers usually cut discretionary spending first. A premium TV package becomes a cheaper bundle, a branded grocery basket becomes a house-brand basket, and a large data plan becomes a smaller one.

But instead of suffering from this consumer downscaling, MultiChoice, the DStv operator owned by Canal+, is actually leaning into it. By slashing equipment prices and lowering the barrier to entry for new subscribers, they triggered a massive surge in sign-ups. Canal+ reported that subscriber acquisition in MultiChoice countries jumped 40% in H1 2026, and June marked its best acquisition month in South Africa in a decade.

Woolworths, the retail giant, is facing similar pressure from shoppers who are chasing promotions and essential purchases. The retailer has warned that its earnings per share (EPS) could be up to 10% lower for 2026.

The bigger picture: The most striking part of Old Mutual’s survey is that these behaviours have remained relatively consistent for three consecutive years. South Africans are not behaving like consumers waiting for a quick recovery. They are behaving like consumers who have adjusted to a world in which premium entertainment, premium groceries, and premium mobile plans are all being questioned at the same time.

Zoom out: For companies such as MultiChoice and Woolworths, that is a much more significant challenge than a single weak quarter. It suggests that value, not loyalty, is becoming the deciding factor in South African consumer spending.

Somewhere in Kenya tonight, a person watching a premium movie through a website called UltraHD-Movies-Free-Official-2026.biz (not a real piracy website, but you catch our drift) is having a perfectly normal evening. The government would like to make that evening considerably less normal.

The pirates have attracted attention: Kenya has launched a nationwide crackdown on digital piracy after estimating that illegal streaming, software piracy, and unauthorised content distribution cost the economy KES 92 billion ($712 million) annually and deprive the Treasury of about KES 17 billion ($131.5 million) in tax revenue.

The government said piracy is draining income from musicians, filmmakers, authors, journalists, software developers, and sports broadcasters, while also exposing users to malware, fraud, and identity theft.

Explain like I’m new here: For years, digital piracy has survived because it often felt less like a crime and more like a workaround.

Can’t afford the subscription? Borrow a login. Need expensive software? Download a “patched” version from a forum with too many pop-up ads. Missed a movie release? Someone has uploaded it to a streaming site whose domain changes every few weeks.

Kenya’s response is unusually coordinated. The Kenya Copyright Board, Communications Authority, Media Council of Kenya, and Copyright Tribunal are being brought under a new enforcement framework, and the country is also developing its first National Policy on Digital Piracy alongside a new copyright bill.

Zoom out: The funniest thing about piracy crackdowns is that governments eventually discover the same uncomfortable truth: people pirate when legal access is too expensive, too fragmented, or too inconvenient. Kenya seems to understand that. Alongside tougher enforcement, it said it will work with industry to expand affordable legal content options.

The real battle is not just pirates versus police. It is pirates versus pricing. The real test will be whether affordable legal content can become more attractive than the shortcuts that have made piracy so stubbornly resilient. 

Who else noticed? Kenya has been pushing a ton of consumer-centric policies recently; it's impressive. Let’s see which ones get off the ground.

After 44 years in Egypt, HSBC Egypt, the local arm of the British banking giant, has found a buyer for its entire retail banking business: Emirates NBD Egypt, the Egyptian subsidiary of Dubai’s state-controlled banking group.

The deal that has been brewing for months: HSBC placed its Egyptian retail franchise under a “strategic review” in October 2025, triggering months of speculation involving CIB, Emirates NBD, QNB Al Ahli, and other potential bidders. By February 2026, several banks had reportedly received approval to begin due diligence, while HSBC executives were publicly insisting that Egypt remained a strategic market for corporate and investment banking.

Now the speculation has turned into a definitive agreement covering the assets and liabilities of HSBC Egypt’s entire retail business. The financial terms have not been disclosed, but HSBC Group expects a pre-tax gain of about $300 million from the transaction.

Explain like I’m new here: Think of HSBC as a global bank that has decided it no longer wants to spend energy serving ordinary checking-account customers in many countries. Instead, it wants to focus on multinationals, trade finance, investment banking, and wealthy clients who operate across borders.

Egypt is the latest stop on that journey. HSBC has already exited or scaled back retail operations in Canada, France, South Africa, Sri Lanka, Australia, Argentina, Bahrain, and Bangladesh.

State of play: This is not HSBC shutting a small consumer desk. HSBC Egypt entered the market in 1982 as the Hong Kong Egypt Bank and built a nationwide retail footprint of 43 branches and about 1,518 employees by the end of Q1 2026. 

Its Q1 2026 report still showed that the bank spent EGP 56.47 million ($1.1 million) in land and buildings, EGP 31.74 million ($630,000) in leasehold improvements, and EGP 1.03 billion ($20.4 million) in machines and equipment, including automated teller machines (ATMs) and core banking systems. 

But its spending on physical branches under construction fell to EGP 108.8 million ($2.2 million) from EGP 234.3 million ($4.6 million) at the end of December 2025, suggesting HSBC was reducing or completing branch construction projects as it reviewed the future of its retail business. 

Why Emirates NBD wants this: Emirates NBD Egypt is buying customers, deposits, cards, mortgages, and relationships that would take years to build organically.

Zoom out: The real story is not that HSBC is leaving Egypt; it is that global banks, especially wealth-focused lenders, are evidently deciding that mass-market retail banking is not where they earn their best returns—as Standard Chartered’s strategic retail banking retreat in Kenya is proving.

HSBC Egypt is making a key operational decision here to serve fewer customers directly, and make more money serving the companies and wealthy clients moving money around the world.

At this point, Telecom Namibia, the country’s state-owned telecom operator, has spent long enough with an acting chief executive that the word acting is beginning to do a lot of heavy lifting.

The extension: The company has extended Armando Perny’s appointment as acting chief executive officer (CEO) for another six months, keeping him in the role until January 31, 2027.

Perny took over after former CEO Stanley Shanapinda resigned in July to become executive secretary and CEO of the Communications Regulators’ Association of Southern Africa (CRASA), the regional body that coordinates telecommunications, broadcasting, and postal regulation across Southern African Development Community (SADC) countries.

Explain like I’m new here: Telecom Namibia is not a startup experimenting with management structures. It is the country’s national telecom operator, providing broadband, voice, and data services to consumers, businesses, and government agencies.

Perny has served as the company’s chief marketing officer since 2019, so the board is relying on someone who already knows the business while it works through the leadership transition.

The real story: The company said the extension is about leadership continuity as it focuses on network expansion, digital connectivity, operational efficiency, and customer experience.

That is the official explanation. The more interesting question is why a permanent replacement has not yet been announced.

Zoom out: Shanapinda’s departure may ultimately matter more beyond Namibia than within it. His new CRASA role gives him influence over efforts to harmonise telecom regulation across Southern Africa, including areas such as licencing, spectrum policy, and digital infrastructure coordination.

For Telecom Namibia, however, the immediate priority is simpler: keep the network running, keep customers connected, and avoid letting a temporary appointment turn into a long-term operating model.