NSE Seeks Media Houses’ Support to Air Live Trading Feeds

By David Njagi

NAIROBI, Kenya – In a bid to demystify capital markets and attract more Kenyans to formal investing, the Nairobi Securities Exchange (NSE) is planning to provide live trading feeds to media houses at a moderate fee. The move aims to make real-time stock market activity more accessible to the general public.

The live feeds will enable audiences to follow price movements, trading volumes, and other key bourse activities as they happen. Previously, TV stations such as Citizen TV aired similar feeds but stopped due to high costs. Currently, only the Business Daily online platform runs a continuous NSE ticker, which costs approximately Ksh. 15,000 (about $115) per month.

“To demystify the capital markets, we are very keen to engage all our media houses, including social media platforms, to see how we can support them with application programming interface (API) tickers at a very moderate to low cost,” said Shem Ouko, Data Services and Operations Manager at the NSE.

Ouko spoke during a media training workshop hosted by the NSE and organized by the Association of Freelance Journalists in Kenya (AFJ). The workshop aimed to build journalists’ capacity in reporting on capital markets and sustainability issues.

During the same event, it emerged that the NSE is also rolling out an agency model for securities trading across the country. The initiative seeks to tap into the millions of Kenyans who currently do not participate in capital markets due to distance, lack of information, or complex account opening processes.

The agency model will be available in both institutional and individual forms. Under the plan, the NSE will first partner with the investment divisions of commercial banks before expanding to standalone agents.

“We want to make it easier such that the agent—whether institutional or individual—is able to directly support an investor to buy or sell securities on location. Nobody has to come to Nairobi,” Ouko explained.

The agency model mirrors Kenya’s successful mobile money agent network, which brought financial services to remote areas. If implemented effectively, it could significantly boost retail participation in the stock market.

Kenya’s capital markets have long been seen as Nairobi-centric and accessible only to wealthy or corporate investors. By combining live media feeds with a decentralized agency trading network, the NSE hopes to grow the investor base, improve financial literacy, and deepen the country’s capital markets. The exchange sees both moves as critical steps toward a more inclusive financial ecosystem.