In Kenya, a job title is not just employment; it is identity, access, and a full-service lifestyle. Business cards open doors, security guards salute, bank managers return missed calls, and distant relatives suddenly remember your clan. Formal employment does more than pay salaries; it quietly runs people’s lives.

That is why many professionals struggle badly once employment ends. Retrenchment, retirement, resignation, or a failed political attempt often exposes an uncomfortable truth. Without the employer’s badge, many highly capable people suddenly appear lost, not stupid, just unprepared for independence.

Kenya’s labour data puts this into perspective. According to KNBS, only about 17 to 20 per cent of working Kenyans are in formal employment, yet this small group enjoys disproportionate structure, stability, and social capital. The other 80 per cent survive in informal work, where self-organisation is not a skill; it is oxygen.

Corporate life comes with invisible support systems that slowly replace personal capacity. Office drivers handle movement. Personal assistants manage calendars, schedule meetings, and remind you of your own deadlines. Support staff process school fees, book flights, organise shopping, and sometimes coordinate household repairs. Some offices indirectly manage private homes better than the owners do. Life becomes a series of forwarded emails and approved requests.

Over time, judgment, initiative, and even memory get outsourced. Decisions come with templates. Problems arrive pre-solved. Authority is borrowed from the organisation, not earned individually. So when employment ends, the shock is not just about money; it is about suddenly having to think again.

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A 2023 IHRM survey showed that over 60 per cent of retrenched professionals struggle to re-enter productive work even when they receive severance packages. Capital exists, ideas exist, but execution collapses. The structure is gon,e and so are the guardrails.

This explains why some very successful executives fail at private business. They grew companies where they were employed, expanded markets, managed teams, and hit targets. Yet when they start their own ventures, things fall apart. Managing systems you do not own is different from building one from scratch. Reporting to a board is easier than waking up and reporting to yourself.

Politics offers a public version of the same lesson. Kenya has seen senior executives leave comfortable offices to contest elective seats. While employed, they commanded crowds and respect. On their own, without employer brands, logistics, and organised support teams, many struggle. IEBC results consistently show first-term candidates from business ownership backgrounds outperform corporate converts. Personal networks beat polished PowerPoint skills every time.

In villages across the country, the pattern is familiar. You meet someone introduced as “he used to be a top executive.” Apart from executive English and impressive stories, there is little to show. Years after losing a job, some are still job-hunting well past their productive age. Even when offered capital to start something, they stall. They are excellent at receiving instructions, not at giving themselves direction.

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Contrast this with the jua kali sector. Informal workers contribute over 30 per cent of Kenya’s GDP and employ millions. They wake up daily with no HR department, no insurance, and no calendar reminders. What they build instead is adaptability, social capital, and resilience. When one plan fails, another begins before lunch.

Employment is not the enemy. Jobs build skills, discipline, and exposure. The problem starts when employment replaces personal capacity instead of strengthening it. Some job titles open doors that people mistake for personal achievement. When the title disappears, the doors close.

The lesson is simple and uncomfortable. As you climb the corporate ladder, build parallel strength. Networks not owned by your employer. Income streams that do not need approval. Life skills that survive your last working day.

Life needs both the employed professional and the jua kali hustler. Different lanes, same economy.

The danger lies in confusing the company system with personal strength. Jobs end. Life does not pause.

About the Author

Mulumi Mwangi is a seasoned businessman with more than five decades of life experience, bringing a rare depth of perspective to both enterprise and writing. Trained as an electrical engineer, he has founded, built, and managed ventures across diverse sectors, including advertising, marketing, agribusiness, real estate, and fintech.

His writing is firmly grounded in lived experience. It draws from family life as a father, husband, brother, and uncle; from public life through his service as a political party official; and from the hard lessons of business, both failure and success. These experiences, combined with everyday social interactions, have shaped a reflective and pragmatic worldview.

Mulumi’s work is offered as a personal perspective rather than a prescription. His views are candid, experience-driven, and open to debate—acknowledging that insight is often refined through dialogue, reflection, and the humility to accept that one may be right or wrong.

Contact: [email protected]

In the preamble to this two-part series, Peter Drucker cautioned against the perils of applying yesterday’s logic to today’s problems. Yet much of the commentary by former employees of Kenya Airways falls precisely into this trap, advancing remedies that events have already rendered obsolete. The five claims that follow, put forward as expert aviation analysis and concluding this series, are at odds with publicly available facts and do not withstand scrutiny.

1. CLAIM: KQ’s fleet groundings stem from poor maintenance planning.

VERDICT: False.

The grounding of aircraft is not a peculiarity of Kenya Airways but a post-pandemic affliction that has spread across the global aviation industry. After more than a year of COVID-19 shutdowns, aircraft manufacturers curtailed production while skilled workers dispersed, some to other jobs, others into retirement. The result has been a tangle of supply-chain bottlenecks: prolonged lead times for essential spares such as rotables and consumables, overstretched maintenance, repair and overhaul facilities – particularly for engines – and fierce competition for scarce inventory.

Large airlines, cushioned by scale, have found ways to cope. Some deploy spare aircraft from their fleet to cover for those delayed in maintenance. Others have bought new planes simply to cannibalise them for parts, a practice known in the trade as “rob-to-service.” A few have even kept ageing aircraft such as the fuel-hungry four-engine Airbus A340, flying well past intended retirement, judging inefficiency preferable to inactivity.

Kenya Airways, like most smaller carriers, enjoys no such latitude. Its predicament is not one of deficient planning but of limited scale. To soften the impact, the airline has partnered with Lufthansa Technik to provide comprehensive component support, an acknowledgement that the problem is structural, not managerial.

2. CLAIM: KQ has prioritized its passenger business at the expense of cargo, forfeiting a more lucrative revenue stream to foreign carriers.

VERDICT: False

Far from neglecting cargo, KQ has expanded it. Over the past two years, the airline has doubled its dedicated freighter fleet from two Boeing 737s to four 737-800s, a tacit acknowledgement of cargo’s growing importance to airline economics. In some markets, freight can generate up to 40 per cent more revenue than passenger services. It is worth noting that beyond its fleet of dedicated freighters, KQ utilises the belly-hold capacity of its passenger aircraft to transport cargo, thereby extracting additional value from its scheduled services.

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That said, cargo economics are shaped as much by directionality as by volume. Although Nairobi is the region’s largest cargo export hub by tonnage, traffic flows are overwhelmingly one-way. Many of KQ’s destinations generate little inbound freight, a constraint that requires careful calibration of fleet size and deployment.

Nor can KQ be held responsible for the periodic shortage of freighter capacity out of Nairobi. These episodes largely reflect global market dynamics; established cargo operators have deployed aircraft to higher-yielding jurisdictions, particularly in the Far East, where shippers pay as much as USD 8 per kilogram compared with USD 1.80 – 2 from Nairobi. In such a market, capacity follows price, not neglect.

3. CLAIM: KQ’s aircraft are underutilised. Rivals extract more value from their fleets by flying longer hours, while KQ sacrifices profitability through lower utilization.

VERDICT: False.

For three consecutive years, Kenya Airways has led not only its region but the world in the utilisation of the Boeing 737. Its Embraer 190 fleet ranks among the global top five, while utilisation of the Boeing 787 Dreamliner sits broadly in line with international averages, despite constraints in spare parts. Far from idling its assets, KQ operates them at levels that compare favourably with the industry’s best.

4.⁠ ⁠CLAIM: Kenya Airways earns less revenue than its northern neighbours because it handles fewer transit passengers through its hub.

VERDICT: False.

The claim rests on a narrow view of what constitutes a successful hub. Some of KQ’s regional competitors operate hubs that function largely as transit nodes akin to bus termini optimised for moving passengers swiftly from one flight to another. Nairobi’s Jomo Kenyatta International Airport (JKIA) serves an added purpose. It is not merely a conduit but a destination in its own right.

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Passengers arrive in Nairobi to access Kenya’s beaches and safari circuits, as well as its mountains, deserts, lakes and the Great Rift Valley – all within hours of landing. Beyond tourism, JKIA draws substantial point-to-point traffic linked to Nairobi’s role as a diplomatic and commercial centre. The presence of the United Nations Environmental Programme (UNEP), headquartered in the city, alongside numerous multinational firms, generates steady demand for business travel.

In short, KQ’s hub supports a more diversified traffic mix than a pure transit model. Measuring the airline’s performance solely by transit volumes therefore understates both its strategic value and the revenue potential it confers.

5. CLAIM: KQ lacks the technical and financial expertise to negotiate competitive aircraft lease rates and therefore pays above industry norms.

VERDICT: False.

Aircraft lease rates are shaped less by negotiating power than by market conditions. At present, the global aviation market is characterised by an acute shortage of aircraft, for both finance and operating leases. In such an environment, aircraft, new and used alike, are allocated on a first-come, first-served basis, governed by logic of willing buyers and willing sellers. Prices observed in one year offer little guidance to those prevailing in the next.

Lease pricing is also sensitive to the perceived risk of the lessee. Smaller airlines, typically those operating fewer than 50 aircraft, are judged riskier than large fleet operators and consequently pay a premium for access to scarce capacity. Airlines based in oil-rich states, or those able to pay lease obligations upfront, enjoy more favourable terms than carriers dependent on commercial borrowing. The industry, in short, does not operate on uniform benchmarks. Lease costs reflect the financial standing of each airline, or, where available, the strength of government guarantees rather than any presumed lack of technical or financial competence.