Disclosure · Transparency report · Updated 12 January 2026

Where our money
comes from,
and why it can't
buy a rating.

Kenya Forex Firm has reviewed forex brokers and trained Kenyan traders since 2014. This page is our open ledger: every revenue stream we operate, who pays us, who never does, who owns the company, and the firewalls that keep money on one side of the wall and scores on the other. It is also the canonical source for our ownershipFundingInfo structured data.

Read the funding statement Ownership enquiries →

Affiliate disclosure on file

Paid partnerships · always labelled · Editorial Policy

Revenue ledger · FY 2025Approx.

Broker affiliate commissions

58%

Academy tuition & mentorship

24%

Forex signals subscriptions

11%

Labelled display advertising

Mix of operating revenue · restated each financial year

Owner: Patrick Mahinge - 100%
Structure: Private · bootstrapped
Established: 2014 · Nairobi, Kenya
Broker equity held: None. Ever.

Founded in Nairobi

Traders trained to date

Editor's years in the markets

External investors or broker owners

In one breath

The short answer

We are a publisher and a trading school - not a broker, not a fund, and not a counterparty to your trades. Money flows in from four disclosed directions, and none of them is allowed near the scoring rubric.

Who pays us

Brokers pay flat affiliate commissions when readers open and activate accounts via our labelled links. Students pay tuition for academy courses and mentorship. Members pay for signals subscriptions. Advertisers pay for banners that are visibly marked as advertising. That is the entire list.

Who never pays us

Your losing trades. Our commissions are fixed per activated account or calculated from the broker's spread at no additional cost to the trader. We hold no client funds and decline revenue-share deals that would profit when traders lose. Learn more in our ethics and editorial policies.

Who oversees it

Founder and editor-in-chief Patrick Mahinge signs off every score, a conflicts register is reviewed each January, and material review changes are dated and explained publicly. Full corrections and feedback policies.

The open ledger

Our revenue streams, line by line

Four lines, no fine print. The shares below are an approximate mix of operating revenue for the 2025 financial year and are restated annually.

Broker affiliate commissions

Fixed fees paid by brokers when a reader opens and funds an account through our disclosed links.

When you follow a link such as kenyaforexfirm.com/goto/open-account/ and open a live account, the broker pays us a flat, pre-agreed commission (the industry-standard CPA model). The amount is fixed per activated account - it does not rise if you deposit more, trade more, or lose money. Commissions are negotiated at broadly comparable rates across partners, so no broker can outbid another for a better ranking.

Example: our “Best Brokers in Kenya” rankings, CMA-regulated broker reviews and comparison tables.

Share of revenue

58%

Largest line - and the one most regulated by our disclosure rules.

Academy tuition & mentorship

Fees from our forex training programmes, live sessions and one-on-one mentorship in Nairobi.

Kenya Forex Firm began in 2014 as a trading school, and education remains a core, reader-funded business. Tuition from structured courses, weekend workshops and private mentorship is paid directly by students - never by brokers - which keeps a large share of our income completely independent of any trading platform we review.

Example: beginner-to-advanced forex trade training, live trading sessions and the trader community.

Share of revenue

24%

Paid by readers, never by brokers - our independence anchor.

Forex signals subscriptions

Recurring subscriptions from traders who use our market analysis and signal desk.

Our analysts publish professional market analysis and trading signals. Subscribers pay a recurring fee for this research. Subscription revenue rewards accurate, useful analysis - it has no connection to which broker a subscriber chooses, and signals are never used to steer readers toward a paying partner.

Example: daily market outlooks and signal packages delivered to members.

Share of revenue

11%

Rewards accurate analysis, not link-clicking.

Labelled display advertising

Banner placements sold to financial brands - always marked “Advertisement” or “Promotion”.

We sell a limited number of clearly labelled banner placements (for example, time-bound broker deposit-bonus promotions). Advertisements are visually separated from editorial content, marked as such, and never influence review scores, rankings or the order in which brokers appear.

Example: the limited-time spread promotions shown beside - never inside - editorial articles.

Share of revenue

Capped, labelled, and kept out of editorial layouts.

Affiliate model, explained

How broker commissions actually work

Affiliate commissions fund most independent publishing on the internet - including this page. What matters is the structure. Ours is a flat CPA: one fixed fee per activated account or a share of what the broker charges (at no additional cost to the trader), identical in spirit across partners, and unrelated to what happens to your money afterwards.

You compare

You read our independently produced reviews and pick a broker on merit.

You open an account

You follow a disclosed link - marked “Partner link” - and fund the account yourself, directly with the broker.

The broker pays us

A flat, pre-agreed activation fee is paid to Kenya Forex Firm. It is the same whether you deposit KES 10,000 or KES 1,000,000.

We fund the newsroom

Commission revenue pays for testing accounts, market data, research hours and the free content you are reading now.

How to spot our links

Partner links run through paths like /goto/open-account/ and carry a “Partner link” label.
Every review article opens with an advertiser disclosure - before the headline analysis.
Unless otherwise stated, assume that every link that leaves our website to a broker's website is an affiliate link.
This page is linked from our footer site-wide as the master disclosure.

What this means for you

Account terms are identical - spreads, commissions and bonuses are set by the broker, not by your referral path.
Where we have negotiated welcome offers, using our link can cost you less, never more.
You can always open an account directly with a broker. Our opinion of them does not change.

Independence, engineered

The editorial firewall

A ranking you can buy is an advertisement pretending to be a review. Ours is produced by a fixed rubric, re-tested at least quarterly on live accounts, and can only change when the evidence does.

The seven-pillar review criteria a.k.a rubric

P01

Regulation & licensing

CMA-licensed firms weighted highest; offshore status checked against tier-1 registries.

P02

Trading costs

Spreads, commissions, swaps and deposit/withdrawal fees measured on live accounts.

P03

Platforms & execution

MT4/MT5 and proprietary apps tested for speed, slippage and uptime.

P04

Deposits & withdrawals

M-Pesa, bank and card rails tested end-to-end, in Kenyan shillings.

P05

Customer support

Response time and quality tested in English and Swahili, across channels.

P06

Research & tools

Depth and accuracy of market analysis, calculators and alerts.

P07

Education

Quality of learning materials for beginner and advanced traders.

Sign-off rule

We compute all scores from live test evidence - never negotiated. Any material change must be dated, reasoned, and signed by the editor-in-chief following our feedback and corrections policy.

Regulation weighs heaviest: brokers licensed by Kenya's Capital Markets Authority (CMA) start with a structural advantage in our rankings, because a Kenyan licence means Kenyan recourse. Paying us a commission changes exactly one thing on this site - the disclosure line that says we were paid.

Hard lines

What we never accept

Some offers are declined before they are finished. These five rules are contractual inside our team and public outside - hold us to them.

Payment for rankings or scores

No broker can buy, rent or influence a position in our rankings. Scores come from our review rubric - computed, tested and signed off by the editor - not from a media order.

Rule 01

Undisclosed sponsored content

Anything a partner pays us to publish is labelled “Advertisement”, “Sponsored” or “Partner content” - visibly, at the top, before you read a word.

Rule 02

Commissions tied to trader losses

We refuse revenue-share structures that pay us when clients lose. Our affiliate terms are flat fees per activated account; your losing trade earns us nothing.

Rule 03

Broker equity or board ties

No officer, editor or staff member of Kenya Forex Firm may hold shares, options or directorships in a broker we cover. Full stop.

Rule 04

“Guaranteed returns” advertising

We do not run ads promising profits, “sure odds” or risk-free trading - from brokers, signal sellers or anyone else. Leveraged trading has no guarantees, and we will not pretend otherwise.

Rule 05

The ownershipFundingInfo statement

Ownership & funding

The statement below is reproduced verbatim in our schema.org structured data as the Organization's ownershipFundingInfo property - the machine-readable version of this section.

Formal statement · 12 January 2026
Kenya Forex Firm is a privately held, founder-owned media and education company. It is 100% owned and controlled by its founder and editor-in-chief, Patrick Mahinge, has been bootstrapped from personal savings and operating revenue since its founding in 2014, has never raised external investment, and holds no equity, ownership or loss-sharing relationship with any forex broker it reviews. Operating revenue comes from disclosed broker affiliate commissions, academy tuition, signals subscriptions and clearly labelled advertising.
Patrick MahingeFounder & Editor-in-Chief

Patrick Mahinge

Founder & Editor-in-Chief

12+ years in the forex, FinTech and digital-markets space.
Founded the firm in 2014 and has owned it outright ever since.
Personally signs off every broker score and every material correction.
Paid a fixed salary from pooled operating revenue - no per-lead broker bonuses.

“With us, you don't just learn to trade; you become a trader.” - the academy's founding promise, and the reason our income has to stay honest.

Funding history - how the company was paid for

2014
Founded - bootstrapped
Patrick Mahinge starts Kenya Forex Firm in Nairobi with personal savings. First training cohort; no outside capital, then or since.
2016
First broker partnerships
Affiliate relationships signed and our advertiser disclosure published. CPA-only terms from day one.
2019
Signals & live sessions
The signals desk and live trading sessions launch, adding subscription revenue independent of broker referrals.
2021
5,000th trader trained
The academy passes 5,000 trained traders; tuition becomes a durable second pillar of funding.
2023
Research portal opens
fx.kenyaforexfirm.com launches with structured broker reviews, including a dedicated CMA-regulated category.
2026
This statement
Ownership & funding disclosure published in full and wired into our structured data (schema.org ownershipFundingInfo).

Where the money goes: back into the newsroom.

Revenue is reinvested into the things that make our reviews worth reading - live test accounts, market data feeds, analyst hours, and the free education content on our blog. There is no dividend-paying investor class to please; the only return we chase is reader trust.

FY 2025100%reinvested

Editorial & broker research34%
Free education content26%
Technology & market data22%
Operations & team18%

Policy, not promises

Conflicts of interest

Independence is a set of boring, enforceable rules. These are ours - applied to every employee, analyst and contributor of Kenya Forex Firm.

No broker holdings

Editors and analysts certify annually that they hold no equity, debt or options in any covered broker.

Personal trading declared

Staff who trade retail accounts must declare the broker used; reviews of that broker are handled by another analyst.

Gifts ceiling - KES 5,000

Hospitality or gifts above KES 5,000 in value from a partner or prospect are declined and logged.

Commission rates are flat

CPA rates are kept broadly comparable across partners so that payout size can never dictate ranking order.

Annual recusal register

A conflicts register is reviewed by the editor-in-chief every January; recusals are minuted and retained.

Corrections are public

When a review changes materially, the article is dated, the reason stated, and the change logged.

Asked often, answered plainly

Questions, answered

The questions traders actually send to support@kenyaforexfirm.com - answered the way we'd want them answered.

No. Spreads, commissions, deposit bonuses and account terms are identical - and occasionally better, where we have negotiated welcome offers - whether or not you use our links. The broker pays us out of its own marketing budget; nothing is added to your trading costs.

No, and the structure makes it pointless to try. Our affiliate commissions are flat per-activated-account fees at broadly comparable rates, so a richer partner does not earn us more per referral. Rankings are produced by our seven-pillar rubric, re-tested at least quarterly, and signed off by the editor-in-chief. Payment changes nothing but the disclosure line.

No. We are a publisher and an academy - not a broker, not a counterparty, and we never hold client funds. Our commissions are paid when an account is opened and activated; they are never calculated from your deposits, trading volume or losses. We specifically decline revenue-share deals that would profit from client losses.

Patrick Mahinge, our founder and editor-in-chief, owns 100% of the company. It has been privately held and bootstrapped since 2014 - funded by personal savings and, since, by operating revenue. No external investor, fund or broker has ever held shares, board seats or veto rights over editorial decisions.

From the company's operating revenue - a fixed salary drawn from the pooled income described on this page. Patrick receives no per-lead or per-deposit bonus from brokers, so his personal income is not tied to which links readers click.

No. We provide education, analysis and broker research. We do not manage client accounts, custody funds, or guarantee returns. Leveraged forex trading carries a high level of risk - that is why our risk disclaimer sits on every page, including this one.

For machines & regulators

For the record - the structured data

Search engines read the statement above as schema.org JSON-LD: an Organization with founder, contactPoint and an ownershipFundingInfo property pointing to this page. Webmasters and auditors are welcome to copy it.

application/ld+json · schema.org

ownershipFundingInfo

{
  "@context": "https://schema.org",
  "@type": "Organization",
  "@id": "https://kenyaforexfirm.com/#organization",
  "name": "Kenya Forex Firm",
  "foundingDate": "2014",
  "founder": {
    "@type": "Person",
    "name": "Patrick Mahinge",
    "jobTitle": "Founder & Editor-in-Chief"
  },
  "address": {
    "@type": "PostalAddress",
    "addressLocality": "Westlands",
    "addressRegion": "Nairobi",
    "addressCountry": "KE"
  },
  "contactPoint": {
    "@type": "ContactPoint",
    "telephone": "+254-710-251-380",
    "email": "support@kenyaforexfirm.com"
  },
  "ownershipFundingInfo": "Kenya Forex Firm is a privately
    held, founder-owned media and education company. It is
    100% owned by Patrick Mahinge, bootstrapped since 2014,
    has never raised external investment, and holds no
    equity or loss-sharing relationship with any broker it
    reviews. Revenue: disclosed affiliate commissions,
    academy tuition, signals subscriptions and labelled
    advertising. Full statement:
    https://kenyaforexfirm.com/how-we-make-money/"
}

Canonical source · kenyaforexfirm.com/how-we-make-money/

Where our moneycomes from,and why it can'tbuy a rating.

The short answer

Our revenue streams, line by line

Broker affiliate commissions

Academy tuition & mentorship

Forex signals subscriptions

Labelled display advertising

How broker commissions actually work

You compare

You open an account

The broker pays us

We fund the newsroom

How to spot our links

What this means for you

The editorial firewall

Regulation & licensing

Trading costs

Platforms & execution

Deposits & withdrawals

Customer support

Research & tools

Education

What we never accept

Payment for rankings or scores

Undisclosed sponsored content

Commissions tied to trader losses

Broker equity or board ties

“Guaranteed returns” advertising

Ownership & funding

Patrick Mahinge

Funding history - how the company was paid for

Founded - bootstrapped

First broker partnerships

Signals & live sessions

5,000th trader trained

Research portal opens

This statement

Where the money goes: back into the newsroom.

Conflicts of interest

No broker holdings

Personal trading declared

Gifts ceiling - KES 5,000

Commission rates are flat

Annual recusal register

Corrections are public

Questions, answered

For the record - the structured data

Ownership enquiries go straight to the founder's desk.

Where our money
comes from,
and why it can't
buy a rating.