Author: NLM Editor

By SGI Oriaro Dr Ekuru Aukot has been a reputable legal scholar and teacher. I personally will forever be grateful to him and others who served in the Committee of Experts that saw through the Constitution of Kenya, 2010. Sadly, I find the Ekuru Aukot of Third Way Alliance pretty different. We lost him. It may not shock Kenyans that a person who has read widely on democracy and the rule of law testified to the Supreme Court that it is constitutional for elections not to be held in 25 of 290 constituencies, a departure from what the constitution that…

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By Prof John Harbeson Ethiopia and Kenya remain among the world’s more fragile states according to the 2019 Fragile States Index produced annually by the Washington-based Fund for Peace. They rank 16th and 17th, respectively, among sub-Saharan African countries and 23rd and 25th among the 174 states in the survey, even though they were the 1st and 2nd most improved countries in the world in the 2019 survey. At the same time, though their specific circumstances differ quite dramatically, they are two of the few countries that have been currently contemplating changing their constitutional political systems. Though nominally one of…

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Reflecting on socio-politics worldwide, Prof Francis Fukuyama’s conclusion in ‘The End of History and the Last Man’ holds that the strongest democracies are those with fewest social differences (read, the fewest tribes). There are always going to be biases, but where they are harder to identify, politics becomes a little bit more sophisticated. It’s no longer a choice between “our people and their people” but rather, a question of “who amongst our people is better”. It is the reason western and Arab nations manifest a stronger sense of nationalism compared to say, sub-Saharan Africa. The richer the people are, the…

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The Judiciary occupies a hallowed place in any system of laws. As the final arbiters, courts are not only tasked with guiding the country through process but they must also stand out as fierce custodians of rights. It’s an important mandate they can never hope to discharge if they are timid and uninspiring. Nor can they if, acting in concert with other organs and on account of political correctness, they breach the very principles they are sworn to protect. To borrow the celebrated words of Justice Brandeis in ‘Olmstead et al v United States’, in a government of laws, the…

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The World Bank just released a report on the economics of China’s Belt and Road Initiative (BRI). It provides estimates of the potential of Belt and Road transport corridors for enhancing trade, foreign investment, and living conditions for people in the countries that they connect. The report also tries to answer an important question: what happens to the internal geography of countries when they increase connections with others? The question is important for national and subnational governments. Spatial equity in development outcomes ranks high as a barometer of political success. We know from research that regions with better access to…

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FUAD ABDIRAHMAN When Mwai Kibaki was elected in 2002, among his campaign pledges was to root out corruption, and recover billions of shillings looted and stashed outside by his predecessor and associates. When he appointed John Githongo as the Permanent Secretary for Governance and Ethics, the country believed his re-solve. When Githongo contracted Kroll & Associates (UK) to conduct an audit of the country’s economic health, their findings sent reverberations through the sys-tem; they presented data detailing the scale of looting during Moi’s tenure, re-vealing that the former president had at least Sh100 billion stashed overseas. For some reason, the…

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By Genevieve Jesse and Dhruv Gandhi On June 14, the Sustainable Development Goals Centre for Africa released its 2019 Index and Dashboards Report, which assesses the impact of government efforts on achieving the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). The assessment covers data gaps, national strategies, budgeting practices, stakeholder engagement, coordination at the executive level, and legislative actions throughout 52 African countries (Seychelles and Libya are excluded for lack of data). This year’s report repeats previous SDG Centre for Africa assessments that rank North Africa as the best-performing region on the continent and Central Africa as the worst-performing region, though individual countries…

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By Antony Mutunga In March 2018, at the 10th Extraordinary Session of the African Union, attending states agreed to create the African Continental Free Trade Area (AfCFTA) – as well as sign the free movement protocol by order of interest and the Kigali Declaration. Although not all states signed all three instruments, the majority – 44 out of 55 – agreed to formally establish the AfCFTA after rounds of negotiations between 2015 and 2017. The next step was for at least half of the founding nations (22) to ratify the legal instruments to bring the order into effect. During the…

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By Claudio Ndeleva Mutua A modern democratic state is, by necessity, supposed to incorporate the views of the people it governs in the decisions that affect them directly. While the election of representatives to public bodies, including the legislatures, has been one of the hallmarks of the traditional democracy, there has been a shift towards more participatory democracy in recent decades. The participatory mechanism was initially conceived and designed as a way for citizens’ views and input to have an influence on the political and bureaucratic decision-making process. It was also imagined that participatory mechanisms would become tools for holding elected…

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By Kevin Motaroki What is your last great act as chair of the Board? That would be cleaning up the Fund – and therefore. Its image – by instituting proper structures to facilitate its mandate and operations. I , however, wouldn’t peg that on a specific activity or item for, I think, it has been a continuous process. It is a team effort, of course. We have documented our achievements, challenges, lessons and recommendations in a report, the YEDF End of Term Report, 2019. It is an honest assessment of the Board’s work, which gives the public an opportunity to…

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