Despite the global financial crisis, Islamic finance has demonstrated strong growth with new areas of business such as mutual funds and Takaful industry attracting a lot of attention. We need to understand this business model that will support our relative comparative advantage in the EAC region. Kenya was the first country in the East and Central African region to introduce Islamic banking.
In this regard, two banks were licensed in the last two years to exclusively offer Shariah-compliant products with many other conventional banks establishing a window specifically for Shariah-compliant products. With this, I am proud to inform this gathering that the concept of shariah complaint banking has emerged as an alternative vehicle for mobilisation and supply of finance.