Nairobi, May 3 -- Kennedy Osano embodies the most glittering Kenyan dream - the idea that you can move from promise to the promised land through sheer work ethic, belief and, sometimes, luck.

Brilliance, yes. But also resilience. It is a Faustian bargain with a "brutal trade-off", as he calls it: "If I don't work this hard, we can easily go back to the life of not having enough."

He wanted to make something for himself. Out of himself. So he did. Now Director of African Business for British payments firm Ebury, he admits he has always chased bigger things. In Djibouti, he was given the entire 14th floor as his office. "I wanted the whole building," he says.

Fatherhood, he adds, became the oxygen that fuels his ambition. That also expla...