Africa’s economic outlook is on the up, with the African Development Bank in its 2019 African Economic Outlook report forecasting sustained rise in the average GDP (gross domestic profit) growth rate for the continent – from an estimated 3.5 percent in 2018 to 4 percent this year and 4.1 percent in 2020. Growth in investment is one of the major factors contributing to this, with private equity (PE) investors letting the money do the talking and PE funding for African businesses having increased from 2017 to 2018, by around U$300 million (Sh36 billion). East African Perspective Over the course of…
Author: NLM Editor
Justice Maraga was appointed to the Supreme Court Bench in 2016. He was viewed as a “safe pair of hands” after an “activist” Willy Mutunga, who had introduced radical changes to the Judiciary much to the chagrin of the Executive. His judicial philosophy could not be discerned easily from his past judgments but on first instance, began by a dress down of judges in Naivasha in 2016 for “issuing injunctions on the Executive” thus forestalling government projects and. This, and the reintroduction of colonial-era robes, put off most. He has, however, grown into his role as the President of the…
By Dennis Ndiritu The Constitution of Kenya was enacted in 2010. It has been termed as a transformative constitution because its architecture and design is meant to address historically ignored wrongs. Walter Khobe in his article, ‘Reflections on five years of Transformative Constitutionalism in Kenya: Chimerical or viable?’ notes that the present Constitution was developed with a historical and social background, to address the authoritarian regime of law epitomised by human rights abuses, social exclusion, unequal power relations and arbitral dispossession of property among other numerous wrongs. It doing so, it established institutions meant to assist in this agenda. Such…
By Kevin Motaroki When he was making the case for the ratification of the Constitution of the United States, Alexander Hamilton wrote, “The Judiciary…will always be the least dangerous branch to the political rights of the Constitution.” Hamilton believed that the courts would stand above the political fray and act as a bulwark against tyranny from all directions. This is the test of the independence, impartiality and objectivity of judicial institutions everywhere. It’s difficult to defend the Kenyan Supreme Court on these grounds today. As far as judicial and rank niceties go, its patently naïve, unreasonable, even outright dangerous, decisions…
By Geoffrey G. andHomi Kharas It is difficult, if not foolhardy, to attempt to succinctly summarise such a broad-ranging and complex subject as the future of neoliberalism in emerging markets. So, in these brief concluding remarks we do not seek to offer anything close to a final word on the topic, but rather to sketch out some guideposts for ongoing discussion. One initial takeaway is that current debates on neoliberalism and the future of capitalism in the US and Europe do not always easily map onto emerging markets’ experiences. In many countries in the West, this debate is often framed…
BY Shadrack Muyesu Socio-political Given a choice between family and stranger, the average man, no matter how sophisticated, is likely to choose family. It’s a natural survival instinct; creatures gravitate towards their own kind, for that is where they find sanctuary. In sociology, relationships expand outwards. We move from the nuclear family, constitutionally recognised as ‘the natural and fundamental unit of society and necessary basis of natural order’, towards the extended family. Extended family units coalesce to form a clan several of which come together to form a tribe and ideally, the nation. Essentially, political preferences are choices between families.…
By Kevin Motaroki “When I was growing up, I always felt my father didn’t know how to do things “easily”, and I actually lacked respect for him because I found that every time we were in a difficult situation, he would take the difficult road. He wouldn’t give bribes… He didn’t know how to do it. I just couldn’t understand him, as a child, and when I compared him with other parents, who gave money to get things done, I wondered, ‘why can’t he just do it?’ I didn’t understand until very late in life that my father abhorred corruption,…
By Kevin Motaroki The surest sign that there is something fundamentally wrong with the path the country is taking is if its people are overwhelmingly pessimistic about their odds. Odds of landing a job, of eating a decent meal, of getting their children a proper education, of buying gods and services at reasonable prices. An Infotrak survey in June showed at least 48 percent of Kenyans feel the country is on the wrong trajectory. It is gloomy news in almost every way. Kenya’s official unemployment rate stands at 12.2 percent as of 2018; some sources quote higher figures. Out of…
By Alexander Opicho Conventional history on nationalism and the struggle for freedom from colonialists and a series of post-colonial brutalities in East Africa does nothing else but worship men as the freedom fighters. And they are, but that is not the end of that conversation. It is also a historical skewing of facts. Patriarchal heroism has means the history of East African politics has been written by circumlocution around male hero-worship. The truth is women fought, women have been fighting and women are fighting for freedom from social and political oppression in East Africa. Silence about them is a disservice…
By NLM Writer Deputy President William Ruto’s frequent ‘Tangatanga’ tours across the country give the chance to meet voters whose votes he will be seeking in 2022. His staff and army of bloggers in his office call the travels all sorts of names including ‘#MashinaniEmpowerment’, and the people who attend the political rallies disguised as development initiatives, the ‘Hustler Nation’. But these almost daily countrywide rallies come with a cost to the taxpayer. As of June 22, 2019, reports put the number of tours made by the deputy president at a record of 300 in just 18 months since the…