Kenya has become very good at taxing behaviour it wants to discourage. Betting. Alcohol. Tobacco. Even the payment rails that make those industries frictionless.

Excise duty has quietly grown into one of the state’s most flexible levers, expanding from traditional products into modern consumption and digital transactions.

If excise duty can shape behaviour, it can also repair the harm. A verified social impact tax credit would let big taxpayers fund county mental health outcomes, ease pressure on public budgets and make care investable.

But here is the uncomfortable question: After we collect the money, do we invest enough in cleaning up the damage?

The case for doing so is no longer moral. It is commercial.

The World Health Organisation estimates depression and anxiety alone cost the global economy roughly $1 trillion a year in lost productivity. In Kenya, the loss shows up as burnout, substance abuse, absenteeism and families pushed into crisis by untreated illness.

The supply side is painfully thin. Kenya has roughly 150 psychiatrists serving more than 50 million people. Even when people are ready to seek help, the system often cannot meet them halfway.

Kenya does not lack money. Kenya lacks a scalable, predictable way to pay for prevention and early care.

Treasury has proposed Sh138 billion for the health sector in the financial year 2025-26. Within that envelope, mental health continues to compete for space against more visible and politically urgent line items.

Mental health becomes the kind of budget that is easiest to postpone because the consequences show up slowly in productivity and household stability rather than in dramatic headlines.

Meanwhile, the country is sitting on long-term capital searching for investable ideas. Pension assets have grown past Sh2.5 trillion. Kenya has money. The problem is the pathway.

Mental health has not been made bankable.

SCALABLE AND MEASURABLE

Corporate Kenya understands incentives. What the tax code rewards, the market scales. That is why we have proposed a Mental Health Social Impact Tax Credit that gives large taxpayers a clear reason to fund verified mental health delivery, while giving the government a structured way to buy outcomes without ballooning the annual budget process.

This is not an untested idea. Other markets have used tax policy to mobilise private capital into public-good outcomes, including healthcare and other social services.

The ‘sin tax’ conversation in Kenya often stops at moralising. That misses the point. Betting, alcohol and tobacco are not only heavily taxed. They are also heavily regulated and heavily scrutinised, with public debate regularly linking them to addiction, financial distress and mental health harms.

A verifiable mental health investment programme, structured as a private-public engagement and recognised through a tax credit, offers something most CSR does not: measurable outputs, credible proof and a direct financial rationale.

For CFOs and finance teams, this matters because it moves mental health spending from ‘nice-to-have’ to an auditable productivity and risk-management investment.

This is not donation accounting. It is a productivity investment that can be measured, audited and defended.

COUNTY SPONSORSHIP 

Under the proposal, a large taxpayer in betting, alcohol, tobacco, banking or other high-excise sectors could sponsor a county mental health budget through a structured agreement with the county government and an accredited delivery partner.

The funding would not be a blank cheque. It would be tied to verifiable outputs, such as screening coverage, referral rates, time from screening to care, follow-up and retention, workforce well-being metrics and substance-use recovery pathways.

An independent verifier would confirm delivery. The county would receive predictable support. The company would receive a tax reward proportional to verified outcomes.

This approach does three things at once. It removes pressure from annual county budgeting. It makes mental health bankable by standardising outcomes and verification. And it opens the door for additional financing vehicles, such as outcome-based contracts and impact bonds.

Mental health services are already being deployed at scale across the 14 Lake Region Economic Bloc counties, starting with Bomet, Kericho, Kisii and Migori, extending lessons from work undertaken in Vihiga county.

The initiative is being undertaken by Thalia Psychotherapy in conjunction with partners such as the Ministry of Health, Insight Health Advisers, Villgro Africa and Reckitt catalyst.

The technical model exists. The financing innovation must follow.

If you are a CFO or finance director, the business logic is straightforward. Untreated mental illness increases medical claims, turnover, safety incidents and compliance risk. It depresses productivity through presenteeism and weakens consumer purchasing power and repayment behaviour.

A verified tax credit linked to measurable mental health delivery is a resilience investment for the workforce and the customer base that keeps the economy moving.

Kenya has already shown it can innovate at the intersection of finance and everyday life. Now it should use those same tools to fund the resilience of its people.

Large taxpayers should join a structured, verifiable private-public financing push for county mental health budgets, backed by a tax credit framework that rewards outcomes.

That is how mental health stops being a peripheral programme. That is how it becomes infrastructure. And when it becomes infrastructure, capital will follow.

Dennis Mwangi is the managing director of Thalia Psychotherapy