In 1888, the British government granted a royal charter to the Imperial British East Africa Company, a private commercial enterprise, to administer the territory that would become Kenya. It was colonialism on the cheap: a corporation doing government's work. The company built roads, established trading posts and attempted to control the ivory and other trades.
It was chronically underfunded and administratively incompetent. By 1895 it was bankrupt. The British government took direct control, establishing the East Africa Protectorate.
The age of corporate colonialism gave way to the age of Crown colonialism.