M-PESA is Kenya’s strongest brand for 2026. That’s the result of the latest Superbrands East Africa ranking, released on 4th November. Safaricom, which owns M-PESA, came second. Samsung came third, just 0.001 points behind Safaricom.
Tech brands took seven of the top 10 places. WhatsApp was fourth, Google fifth, Bolt eighth and YouTube 10th. The 2024 list we covered had three: M-PESA, Safaricom and M-KOPA, which sells phones and solar kits on credit. M-PESA also came first in 2022.
Superbrands is a branding organisation that has worked in East Africa since 2007. It has research firms ask adults in Kenya, Tanzania and Uganda to score the brands in their market. In Kenya the firm is Kantar, and 2,250 adults were asked about just over 1,900 brands. Each brand gets three marks out of 10: quality, reliability and distinction. Distinction asks whether a brand is well known in its sector and different from its rivals.
Here’s the full top 30:
Awareness is the share of people surveyed who know the brand.
| Rank | Brand | Category | Awareness | Score |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | M-PESA | Mobile money | 98% | 91.909 |
| 2 | Safaricom | Telecoms | 96% | 89.623 |
| 3 | Samsung | Appliances and electronics | 91% | 89.622 |
| 4 | Search, social and streaming | 88% | 89.584 | |
| 5 | Search, social and streaming | 87% | 89.527 | |
| 6 | Naivas | Supermarkets | 96% | 89.193 |
| 7 | Dettol | Soaps | 84% | 88.833 |
| 8 | Bolt | Ride hailing and taxi | 78% | 88.786 |
| 9 | Kenya Airways | Airlines | 92% | 88.707 |
| 10 | YouTube | Search, social and streaming | 88% | 88.675 |
| 11 | Dettol | Disinfectants | 93% | 88.470 |
| 12 | Quickmart | Supermarkets | 87% | 88.360 |
| 13 | TikTok | Search, social and streaming | 83% | 88.349 |
| 14 | Coca-Cola | Soft drinks | 92% | 88.334 |
| 15 | Colgate | Dental and toothpaste | 95% | 88.306 |
| 16 | Citizen TV | TV stations | 96% | 88.245 |
| 17 | University of Nairobi | Universities | 84% | 88.066 |
| 18 | Sunlight | Detergents and laundry soaps | 82% | 87.911 |
| 19 | Fanta | Soft drinks | 93% | 87.876 |
| 20 | Vaseline | Body and skin care | 90% | 87.823 |
| 21 | Equity Bank | Banks | 88% | 87.818 |
| 22 | Mercedes-Benz | Cars | 68% | 87.795 |
| 23 | Radio Citizen | Radio stations | 86% | 87.755 |
| 24 | LG | Appliances and electronics | 84% | 87.751 |
| 25 | Range Rover | Cars | 62% | 87.628 |
| 26 | KFC | Fast food | 76% | 87.545 |
| 27 | Glovo | Food delivery apps | 84% | 87.478 |
| 28 | PK | Sweets and gum | 68% | 87.435 |
| 29 | Kenyatta University | Universities | 89% | 87.313 |
| 30 | Toyota | Cars | 90% | 87.264 |
Why a well-rated brand can rank lower
The three marks don’t decide the rank on their own. Range Rover has the highest quality mark in the top 30, at 9.37. Its three marks average 9.15, and only M-PESA’s 9.22 is higher. Yet it’s 25th, and it’s also the brand the fewest people know: 62%. We think that’s because awareness feeds into the final score, though Superbrands’ research page doesn’t give the formula.
Bolt went the other way. Only 78% of people know it, the lowest in the top 10. But its distinction mark of 9.14 is second only to M-PESA in the top 30, and it finished one place above Kenya Airways, which 92% know.
So the brands at the top are the ones many people know and also rate well. M-PESA has both. Its 98% awareness is the highest in the top 30, and so are its marks for distinction (9.29) and reliability (9.25). It’s 2.286 points ahead of Safaricom, nearly the whole 2.359 points that separate Safaricom from Toyota in 30th. This week we reported that M-PESA brought in KES 100.1 billion in revenue in half a year.
Who’s missing from the top 30
Samsung’s category is household appliances and electronic goods, which covers more than phones. Apple, Tecno, Infinix and Xiaomi aren’t in the top 30. Neither are Airtel, Uber, Facebook, Instagram or X, even though Facebook’s sister app WhatsApp is fourth. Equity is the only bank on the list. The release stops at 30, so we can’t tell how far down the others sit.
Why the 2024 comparison is shaky
The jump from three tech brands to seven looks big, and part of it may come from the survey itself. The 2024 survey covered Nairobi, Mombasa and Kisumu. This year’s release describes the list as “voted by consumers from around the country”.
Six of the 2024 top 10 are now outside the top 30: the Kenya Red Cross, which was third, plus Supa Loaf, M-KOPA, Kenpoly, the Daily Nation and Bamburi Cement. Citizen TV fell from fourth to 16th and Radio Citizen from seventh to 23rd. We think a change that big has something to do with who was asked and which brands were scored, as well as anything Kenyans changed their minds about. We also don’t know whether WhatsApp, Google or Bolt were scored in 2024, only that they weren’t in that top 10.
Tanzania and Uganda
| Rank | Kenya (2026) | Tanzania (2025) | Uganda (2026) |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | M-PESA | Colgate | Rwenzori Water |
| 2 | Safaricom | Simba S.C. | Airtel |
| 3 | Samsung | Young Africans (Yanga FC) | MTN |
| 4 | NMB Bank | MTN Mobile Money (MoMo) | |
| 5 | Pepsi | Tororo Cement | |
| 6 | Naivas | M-PESA | Makerere University |
| 7 | Dettol | Samsung | Blue Band |
| 8 | Bolt | Airtel Money | Jik |
| 9 | Kenya Airways | Chai Bora | White Star |
| 10 | YouTube | CRDB Bank | Mulago National Referral Hospital |
Only M-PESA and Samsung make two of these lists, Kenya’s and Tanzania’s. M-PESA in Tanzania is run by Vodacom, not Safaricom. Two football clubs, Simba and Young Africans, sit second and third there. Uganda’s list has three telecoms names in a row behind a bottled water brand, and shares no brand with Kenya’s or Tanzania’s top 10.
Don’t compare positions across the three. Ipsos, not Kantar, ran the Tanzanian and Ugandan surveys, with 1,000 adults each. Tanzania’s list also dates from 2025, and Superbrands counts 70 categories there and 40 in Uganda, against 110 on the same page for Kenya (the release says 112).
What the seal numbers show
Superbrands’ release opens by saying Kenyans are looking beyond price, to quality and trust. The numbers it gives for that are about the Superbrands seal, a badge brands can put on packaging and ads once they qualify and join its programme. Its research page says 86.4% of Kenyans surveyed are more likely to buy a brand carrying the seal, 84.1% are more likely to trust it and 63.3% would pay more for it.
So these are figures about Superbrands’ own badge, released by Superbrands. The page doesn’t say what joining the programme costs, and 26% of those asked mistook the seal for a manufacturer’s logo. The survey also asked about influencers: 58% trust their recommendations at least some of the time, 10% trust them consistently and 42% don’t. If you’re a brand paying influencers, that 10% is the number to look at.
For the rest of us, this ranking won’t help you choose a phone or a bank. It tells you which names Kenyans know and feel good about, and on that M-PESA is clear of everyone. Safaricom and Samsung are effectively tied. We wouldn’t call the move since 2024 a Kenyan turn towards tech until Superbrands says how the score is built, which towns it surveyed and what the margin of error is. Neither its research page nor the release gives any of the three.
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