The institutional trust deficit: what Kenya's brands are getting wrong

Kenya has a growing institutional trust problem. Citizens, consumers, and stakeholders increasingly approach organisations — public and private — with scepticism. And the organisations failing to manage this are not failing because of what they have done wrong. They are failing because of how they are communicating.

Visibility without credibility

The instinct when trust is low is to communicate more. More posts. More campaigns. More press releases. But volume without credibility makes the problem worse. It signals that the organisation cares more about being seen than about being understood.

What earns trust

Trust is earned through three things: consistency between what you say and what you do, transparency about the things that are difficult to say, and specificity about the value you actually deliver. None of these require a large budget. All of them require strategic discipline.

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