Eighteen Years, No Cover: Kenya's Sacco Savers Still Wait for a Promised GuaranteeEighteen Years, No Cover: Kenya's Sacco Savers Still Wait for a Promised Guarantee

That failure now sits beside a second one. The forensic audit of the Kenya Union of Savings and Credit Co-operatives (KUSCCO), the umbrella body whose collapse left a hole of roughly KSh 12.5B ($96.3M), was completed in September 2024 and has never been published. A saver has had to go to the High Court to try to see it. We say both failures have the same cause, a state that treats Sacco members as an afterthought, and both can be fixed within weeks.

A KSh 100,000 Promise in Section 59

The Sacco Societies Act set up a Deposit Guarantee Fund in sections 55 to 59. The fund is meant to be run by a board of trustees that includes the Treasury's Principal Secretary, the Central Bank Governor and the Commissioner for Co-operative Development, financed by contributions from regulated Saccos and invested in government securities and bank deposits.

Section 59 is the part that matters to an ordinary member. It protects deposits, not shares, up to KSh 100,000 per member, after any loans the member owes are deducted. A teacher with KSh 80,000 in deposits and no loan would be covered in full if her Sacco failed.

That cover would reach almost everyone. The Sacco Societies Regulatory Authority (SASRA) told MPs this year that about 92% of deposit accounts in regulated Saccos hold KSh 100,000 or less, and that 89% hold KSh 50,000 ($385.18) or less. These are not wealthy savers who can absorb a loss; they are the boda rider, the nurse and the market trader.

Trustees Never Named, Money Never Collected

By every available account, the law has been ignored. In a petition before the High Court in Nairobi, Constitutional Petition E443 of 2026, saver Simiyu Robert Wanyonyi argues that the government has never put the fund into operation.

His lawyers say it has no liquid reserves, no appointed trustees and has never compensated a depositor, and they cite a SASRA affidavit in which, they say, the regulator's chief executive accepted that the fund was not set up and that no trustees were appointed.

Those are claims in a live case, and SASRA will have its say in court. But the regulator's own submission to MPs in July discussed the guarantee as a proposal, tied to amendments to the Sacco Societies Act that remain before Parliament.

Meanwhile the money at stake has grown. SASRA's latest figures put deposits in regulated Saccos at KSh 832.74B ($6.42B) at the end of 2025, up 11.12% in a year, with total assets of KSh 1.21T ($9.32B). Kenya protects bank depositors through the Kenya Deposit Insurance Corporation. The state has left a deposit base close to a trillion shillings with no safety net at all.

KUSCCO's Audit, Locked Away Since 2024

KUSCCO shows what that gap costs. The union pooled surplus cash from Saccos and lent it on. When it failed, member Saccos had to write off what they had placed there: Balozi Sacco wrote off KSh 437.5M ($3.37M), Afa Sacco KSh 361.6M ($2.79M) and Stima DT Sacco KSh 108M ($832,000). Every one of those shillings belonged, in the end, to ordinary members.

The Commissioner for Co-operative Development gazetted KUSCCO's liquidation after its members voted to dissolve it, and liquidator Waithaka Ngaruiya was appointed under Gazette Notice 15270 of 23 September. He has told borrowers to keep paying. Savers have been told far less.

The PwC forensic audit is the document most likely to show where an estimated KSh 12B to KSh 13.3B went. Accounts of its findings link the losses to ghost loans, falsified commissions and mismanagement by executives, but members cannot check any of that for themselves.

The petitioner's lawyers say the Cabinet Secretary for Co-operatives confirmed a net deficit of about KSh 12.5B on the Senate floor on 13 May 2026. Yet the report itself remains private. On 12 October, Lady Justice Aburili of the High Court directed the petitioner to obtain it within 14 days, and his lawyers have given PwC seven days to hand over a certified copy.

A member who lost money should not need an advocate and a court order to read the account of how it was lost.

The Case Against Haste, and Why It Fails

There are honest objections. Publishing an audit could prejudice criminal cases against former officials. A guarantee could tempt Sacco boards to take more risk, knowing members are covered. And the fund would not have refunded KUSCCO's losses directly, because the union was a lender to Saccos, not a deposit-taking Sacco itself.

None of these justifies two years of silence or eighteen years of delay. Audits can be released with names of people under investigation redacted, as public bodies routinely do.

The risk-taking argument applies to banks too, and Kenya answered it with a deposit insurer funded by the banks themselves and tighter supervision, not by leaving depositors bare.

And while the fund would not have caught KUSCCO, it would have protected members if any of the Saccos that wrote off hundreds of millions had itself gone under. The next failure may well be a Sacco, not a union.

This newsroom has argued that the books behind co-operatives must be open to the members who own them, and that public money should never move on secret studies. Sacco savings are private money held under public regulation, which makes the duty of disclosure stronger, not weaker.

Three Deadlines for Co-operatives, SASRA and Parliament

We call on the State Department for Co-operatives and the KUSCCO liquidator to publish the PwC forensic audit, with only the names of people under active investigation redacted, by 31 October, rather than wait for a court to order it.

We call on the Cabinet Secretary for Co-operatives and SASRA to appoint the Deposit Guarantee Fund's trustees and start collecting Sacco contributions under the existing Act by 31 December. The 2008 law already gives them that power; the pending amendments are a reason to improve the fund, not to keep postponing it.

And we call on the National Assembly to pass the Sacco Societies Act amendments before it rises for the year, so that the fund has the governance and money it needs when the next Sacco fails.

Kenya's Saccos hold the savings of millions of people who will never buy a Treasury bond or own a share. The state promised them a floor under their savings. Eighteen years is long enough to wait for it.