The Kenya Human Rights Commission (KHRC) has called for the immediate termination of the Hustler Fund, warning that the flagship Bottom‑Up Economic initiative has failed those it aimed to serve. In a scathing new report titled “Failing the Hustlers”, KHRC asserts that the programme is fundamentally flawed and beyond reform.
Launched by the government in November 2022, the Fund was intended to provide credit to low-income Kenyans overlooked by traditional lenders. However, according to KHRC, it has “locked borrowers into a debt cycle” rather than empowering them economically. Beaching out small loans with a mandatory savings deduction and a punitive 14-day repayment window, the fund has led to default rates as high as 68.3%—meaning the state loses roughly KSh 340 of every KSh 500 loaned.
The report also highlights chronic governance and transparency issues: the Fund was launched without a legally mandated oversight board, internal audit trails were absent, and the Auditor‑General was unable to conduct a full review due to missing documentation.(Kenya Human Rights Commission (KHRC))
KHRC concludes that these structural and financial weaknesses cannot be remedied through piecemeal tweaks. Instead, the Fund must be abolished entirely. “Quick money has become dead money,” the commission states.
Government Pushes Back
Reacting swiftly, the Ministry of Cooperatives & MSMEs, led by CS Wycliffe Oparanya, rejected KHRC’s findings as biased and politically motivated. Oparanya accused the report of relying on outdated early data—specifically from the first month of operation—to generalize its conclusions. He also criticized the KHRC for failing to consult ministry officials or the Fund’s management before publishing.
In defence of the Fund, the government clarified that only KSh 14 billion has been injected—not the KSh 50 billion figure cited by critics—and that over 26 million Kenyans have accessed credit. By contrast, more than 9 million borrowers are now eligible for higher-tier “Bridge” loans, and over 5 million have maintained good repayment records.
Oparanya also defended the Fund’s average daily disbursement of KSh 68 million and highlighted its role in building a behavioral credit-scoring system that could improve financial inclusion across the country.
