Before Peace Comes the Payslip.
Fifty-five years ago, a group of workers made a simple but radical bet: that they would do better together than apart. That bet became Hazina Deposit-Taking Sacco. Today, with an asset base of over Ksh 18.71 billion, over 37,000 members, and 66 offices stretching nationwide, it’s a bet that has paid off — not just in dividends, but in something harder to measure. Dignity. Stability. Peace.
As the world marks the 104th International Cooperative Day and the 32nd UN International Day of Cooperatives under the theme Cooperatives for a Peaceful World, Hazina’s story is worth telling carefully.
The link between financial insecurity and social unrest is well documented. Families under economic strain fracture. Communities divided by scarcity breed tension. It is in this context that Hazina’s founding belief — Together we Prosper — takes on a meaning that goes well beyond a tagline.
When a Kenyan worker deposits into their Hazina Sacco account, they are not only saving. They are purchasing a measure of peace.
Besides savings, Hazina DT Sacco is powering members dreams. Its loan book surged 12.5% to Ksh 12.97 billion in 2025, disbursing funds that have financed school fees, built homes, grown businesses, and covered medical bills across the country. A 17% dividend rate rewarded members’ discipline and loyalty, putting real returns back in members’ pockets.
But numbers alone cannot capture the mother in Vihiga who, for the first time, did not have to choose between her child’s education and next month’s rent. Or the smallholder farmer in Siaya who accessed an affordable loan and planted three times the acreage he managed the year before. Behind every statistic is a human being living with greater certainty, and certainty, in communities stretched thin, is the seed of peace.
Hazina’s upward trajectory is hard to ignore. According to the SACCO Societies Regulatory Authority (SASRA) Annual Report, the institution ranks as the 10th largest deposit-taking Sacco in Kenya. When members choose to keep their savings here, guarantee each other’s loans, and return year after year, they are casting a vote of confidence – in the institution, and in each other.
The Sacco’s 2023–2027 Strategic Plan is the blueprint behind this growth. Designed for accelerated and sustainable development, it has sharpened the institution’s focus on innovation, member-centric service, and expanded reach. Satellite offices in Siaya, Mombasa, Vihiga, and Kitale ensure that distance is never a barrier to belonging. The Hazina Member Portal – where members can instantly view deposits, check guarantors, and download statements — reflects a Sacco that is keeping pace with a digital generation without leaving anyone behind.
Beyond Financial Services
In the coastal sub-county of Lunga Lunga, Kwale — a region battered by recurring drought — Hazina donated and installed three 10,000-litre water tanks at Lunga Lunga Secondary School, ending years of water scarcity for students who had long endured thirst alongside their studies. Further west, two tanks and a solar-powered pump with a full water connection were installed at Mokowon Primary School in West Pokot, turning classrooms from places of hardship into genuine spaces of learning. These are just but a few examples of the Sacco’s Corporate Social Responsibility initiatives. With CSR activities set to extend to Nyamira and Vihiga branches this year, the ripple continues to widen.
What distinguishes Hazina from many financial institutions is the openness of its design. Operating on an open common bond, the Sacco welcomes members from every sector and every walk of life — civil servants, market traders, teachers, recent graduates. All equally welcome.
The Sacco also invests in its members beyond the transaction. Financial literacy programmes equip people with the knowledge to make sound decisions long after they leave a branch. The annual Investors’ Forum brings members together for dialogue, transparency, and shared planning, a forum that is, in its own quiet way, a practice of democratic peace.
The theme of this year’s International Cooperative Day — Cooperatives for a Peaceful World — is not merely aspirational. It is grounded in the observable reality of institutions like Hazina: cooperatives that pool resources, share risk, distribute returns equitably, and rebuild the social fabric that fragmented economies erode.
First championed by the International Cooperative Alliance in 1923 and formally recognised by the United Nations in 1995, the International Day of Cooperatives has long made the case for collective financial action. In 2026, that case feels more urgent than ever.
For Hazina Sacco, peace is not an abstract ideal. It is the calm a family feels when school fees are paid. The confidence of a business owner whose loan came through. A child in Kwale drinking clean water before morning lessons. It is 37,000 Kenyans — from every corner of the country — choosing to grow together, and finding, in that choice, something that money alone cannot buy.
