'I cannot teach you integrity': How employee theft is hurting small businesses in Africa

When popular Kenyan food creator That Girl Boina took a two-week holiday to Europe, she expected to relax. A week into the trip, an Instagram direct message exposed a problem that would ultimately lead to the closure of her business. A customer wrote that she had liked everything at the studio, but had been asked to send money to a different number — not the number on the wall.

Boina had opened Waxaholic Studio, a waxing and hydrafacial parlour in Nairobi's central business district, on 1 September 2024. A year later she had hired a receptionist and two specialists and felt confident enough to take her first international trip of the year.

She trusted her staff. It was two rooms and a reception, she recalls thinking — how do you mess that up? It never occurred to her that she might be getting clients while someone else was stealing from her, she tells the BBC.

The discovery prompted Boina to examine the business more closely. It had made a profit in the first few months, but revenue began to fall in early 2025. She initially dismissed the decline as a seasonal slump, then realised there was a problem. In hindsight, she says, everyone around her was making money apart from her.

She had already considered closing because the business was not making a profit, but her initial investment, three employees depending on it and her vision for it kept her going. The customer's message became the turning point. If she was not making money and was willing to wait and see where it went, but the staff were not giving her the same energy, she asked, why were they still open?

Rather than confront the employees, Boina decided to close the studio. That weekend she put it up for sale but found no buyer. She sold some of the equipment and took the rest, including decorations, home. Waxaholic Studio closed in October 2025.

She remembers a friend taking her to a restaurant, where she started crying and the two sat in silence. Boina describes the experience as the worst feeling she has ever felt. The closure was not just a financial setback, but the loss of something she had built to secure her future.

In September, nearly a year after the business closed, Boina shared a video on TikTok recounting the experience, explaining she had needed time to heal before speaking publicly. The video went viral after being reposted on X, formerly Twitter, garnering close to one million views. It drew responses from many Kenyan business owners who described how theft — from payment diversion to stock theft and the sale of expensive equipment — had pushed their businesses to the brink, forcing them to fire staff, sell up or shut down.

Boina says that although she has recovered emotionally, she is yet to recoup the money she invested in setting up and running the studio. The reaction showed employee theft is a huge problem for many small business owners in Africa, where a handful of employees may control payments, stock and supplier transactions, often with limited oversight.

A 2022 survey by PwC, one of the world's biggest consultancy firms, found that 63% of respondents in East Africa said their organisations had experienced economic crime, compared with a global figure of 46%. Big retailers have not been spared either. Nakumatt, one of Kenya's biggest retailers, collapsed in 2020, partly because of significant stock losses attributed to employee theft, and Tuskys has also collapsed this decade amid wider problems partly attributed to such theft.

At its peak, Tuskys had more than 6,000 employees and over 60 branches across Kenya and Uganda. In 2015 the retailer hired loss-prevention firm Hipora Business Solutions East Africa to help tackle fraud. An audit found Tuskys was losing more than 100 million Kenya shillings a month to employee theft, Business Daily reported. The alleged schemes included cashiers pocketing money, manipulating till transactions and colluding with suppliers over goods received. Nakumatt also suffered significant stock losses, with a Kenyan policy firm reporting that more than $100m worth of stock was unaccounted for.

Hipora, which works with businesses across East and Southern Africa, says employee theft accounts for more than 60% of losses recorded by small businesses. Its boss John Wanjohi says the practice has evolved, describing employees as acting like a cartel that colludes with clients and suppliers to perpetuate theft. The theft does not always involve money diverted to a phone; it can take subtle forms that are harder for owners to detect.

For Cris Njoki, founder of IKOJN, a Kenyan ready-to-wear clothes brand, the problem lay further up the supply chain. She found that one of her staff was asking suppliers to quote higher for raw materials, with the two sharing the excess after the company paid the invoices. Njoki investigated and confronted the employee with the evidence, and the employee subsequently left. Since then she has centralised procurement and created a paper trail: finance speaks to the supplier and then makes payment.

Across the continent in Accra, Ghana, sports journalist Muftawu Nabila's electronics shop was nearly brought to an end by employee theft. The Joy News journalist, who used proceeds from his YouTube channel to open the shop, says he was robbed by two different employees in four years, and theft by a third nearly forced him to close. The first was let off with a warning; the second tripled monthly sales but left when her university semester resumed. Before travelling to the United States to cover the Fifa World Cup in June 2026, Nabila hired a third attendant, leaving the business with little supervision. While others had taken smaller amounts, sometimes as little as 50 cedis at a time, the third attendant operated on a larger scale: on $200 of daily sales, she could take up to $30. The theft continued for two months, until Nabila tried to restock and realised the money coming in was not enough. He began counting stock every morning. When confronted, the employee denied the allegations, but a stock count she conducted herself revealed a significant gap between inventory and sales receipts. He told her that if she went home that day, she should not come back. His journalism salary allowed him to rebuild the business. For him the shop is a way of creating jobs, which made the theft particularly frustrating: the money has to be generated from the shop to pay staff, electricity bills and rent, he asks, so if some is stolen, where is he expected to generate it?

Theft happens in businesses around the world, but its consequences can be particularly severe for small businesses in Africa. Many operate on tight margins, with limited access to finance, high borrowing costs and unpredictable tax environments. Purchasing power is also lower in many African markets, limiting how much businesses can recover through sales or pass on to customers. This is especially significant on a continent where the informal economy accounts for a large share of employment and economic activity. For businesses without much of a financial cushion, the loss of cash, stock or equipment can threaten their ability to pay staff, restock or keep operating. What might be a manageable loss for a larger company can push a small business to the wall.

Wanjohi says many small businesses lack proper safeguards. At one struggling pharmacy branch, his team tightened controls over cash handling, stock movements and cashier operations, and daily sales subsequently rose from 80,000 Kenya shillings to 200,000. He says many businesses seek help from loss-control specialists only after the problem has become serious. Detecting suspected theft, however, is only part of the challenge; employers must also follow the law when investigating allegations. Boina's remark — that she cannot teach integrity — has become a summary of the whole picture, even as owners' experiences teach them that building the safeguards remains their own responsibility.