NAIROBI, Kenya – Co-operatives and MSMEs Development Cabinet Secretary Wycliffe Oparanya has fired back at the Kenya Human Rights Commission (KHRC), accusing the rights body of publishing a “skewed, elitist and politically motivated” report on the Hustler Fund.
In a strongly worded statement on Monday, Oparanya dismissed KHRC’s recommendation to scrap the flagship financial inclusion programme, calling the report’s findings inaccurate and biased.
“The title of the report explicitly betrays the whole purpose of the study,” said Oparanya, criticizing the KHRC for not engaging with his ministry or the Fund’s administrators during their research. “Professionalism demands a response from key players. The conclusions made are keen to sentence the Fund to death without trial.
KHRC: Fund Is a “Recipe for Financial Failure”
The KHRC had warned that the Hustler Fund, launched in November 2022, lacks a sustainable model and fails to genuinely empower Kenyans at the bottom of the economic pyramid — the very group it was designed to help. It further recommended that the programme be shut down altogether, saying reforming it would not fix its political, legal, or design flaws.
Oparanya rubbished the report’s financial analysis, noting that the Hustler Fund was not capitalized with Ksh.50 billion as claimed, but rather Ksh.14 billion, which has since revolved into over Ksh.72 billion in disbursements.
He added that over 9 million Kenyans borrow from the fund regularly, with more than 5 million having built strong credit histories and qualified for larger loans under the “Bridge” product.
“The KHRC report is lazily drawn and politically timed,” Oparanya claimed, pointing to its originally scheduled release date—June 24—as evidence of political motives, coinciding with the one-year anniversary of the anti-Finance Bill protests.
CBK Report Cited in Defence
To further bolster his case, Oparanya cited a recent Central Bank of Kenya report that found the Hustler Fund had surpassed institutions such as the Agricultural Finance Corporation in reaching and financing farmers at the grassroots level.
He also revealed that efforts are underway to transition repeat borrowers into formal banking systems through partnerships with commercial banks, expanding their access to more robust financial services.
“The NGO either doesn’t understand the credit market landscape or feigned ignorance to buttress their political motive,” he added.
