NSE Q2 2024: Which sectors actually grew, and which just looked like they did

The NSE All-Share Index climbed 4.1% in Q2 2024. That number is real. What it hides is almost as interesting as what it reveals. When you strip out the banking sub-sector — which contributed 3.2 percentage points of that gain almost entirely through KCB and Equity Group — the rest of the market was close to flat. Telecommunications added a modest 0.4 percentage points, mostly on revised Safaricom subscriber data that the market had already priced in by April. Manufacturing and allied sectors actually shed 0.8 percentage points on compressed margins driven by elevated import costs for industrial inputs. The lesson here isn't that Q2 was a bad quarter for Kenya equities. It's that a single-number index headline can look like broad momentum when the real story is sector concentration. Before you decide that the market “had a good quarter,” check how many names are doing the heavy lifting. In Q2 2024, the answer was: fewer than it looked.

Two sub-sectors deserve a closer look because their Q2 performance was reported misleadingly in several financial newsletters. The agricultural segment posted a 6.2% nominal gain, which sounds strong until you factor in the KES/USD depreciation that affected dollar-denominated commodity pricing. In real, shilling-adjusted terms, the underlying farm-gate revenue for listed agri companies grew by roughly 1.9% — still positive, but far more modest than the headlines suggested. Real estate investment trusts (REITs) were the quieter story: I-REIT structures held relatively stable NAVs despite the interest-rate environment, which is notable given how aggressively commercial property valuations were squeezed in Q1. The takeaway for retail investors: read the actual interim reports, not just the index performance tables. The NSE publishes all issuer disclosures on its portal. It takes twenty minutes to cross-check a sector narrative against real filing data — and those twenty minutes have a measurable impact on the quality of your portfolio decisions.