Author: NLM Correspondent

By Kevin Motaroki When President Uhuru Kenyatta formally leaves office as Kenya’s chief executive in 2022, his overdue but, inevitably, less-than-gracious exit will be a fitting opportunity to reach for the celebrated words of US President Gerald Ford who, in 1974, declared, after Richard Nixon’s resignation, “…our long national nightmare is over.” Although it is unlikely that Kenyans will express any such optimism, these words, nevertheless, will capture then as they do now the widespread sense of disgust in Kenya at the malignant nature of the UhuRuto presidency. The President has so far chosen his wars haltingly, careful not to…

The speed limit is 110 km per hour on the new highway that Abadalla Chande uses to haul his truckload of animal feed from Tanzania to Kenya, two nations that share a common market often hailed as a model for the continent. But Chande is parked on the tarmac, caught up in a snarl of red tape. He is in a long line of trucks waiting for cargo to be scanned or for documents to be checked by officials. Kenya and Tanzania are the two largest economies in the East African Community (EAC) common market. It was set up in…

By Shadrack Muyesu Early this year, the ministry of Agriculture released the now infamous Dairy Industry (Licensing) Regulations of 2018. Inter alia, the Regulations proposed to criminalise the selling, offer for sale or exposure for consumption of any milk in its raw form without a license issued by the Board. The Regulations further proposed to prevent producers from buying or selling raw milk unless they did so in bulk, through organised groups of farmers including cooperatives and registered companies authorised by the Board or under contractual agreements with processors. In essence, they were aimed at kicking the small retailers out…

By Daniel Mutegi Giti We have experienced uncertainty in the last several months as counties threatened to shut down operations to protest what they said was a skewed revenue-sharing formula. If for nothing, lessons were learnt. As a result, we need to adopt ways for our devolved units to both develop much-needed infrastructure, and to mobilise extra resources for other services. One of the best methods is increasing the role of private sector, with one such method being Public Private Partnerships (PPPs). PPPs imply a variety of arrangements to facilitate participation of the private sector in development. It operates on…

By Kevin Motaroki During five weeks between mid-June through July 2014, armed gunmen who in most cases claimed to be part of the Somalia-based armed Islamist group Al-Shabaab, attacked a passenger bus and at least eight villages in the Kenyan coastal counties of Lamu and Tana River. The attackers killed 87 people, including four security officers, and destroyed approximately 30 buildings and 50 vehicles. Kenyan security forces were slow to respond to the attacks, leaving villages unprotected; when they eventually responded, their actions were often discriminatory, beating, arbitrarily detaining and stealing personal property from Muslim and ethnic Somalis in the…

Kenya exported its first shipment of oil, worth about $12 million, under a deal with the Chinese petrochemical company, ChemChina. Members of a civil society group are demanding transparency, calling on the Kenyan government to show how the Chinese firm won the bid to buy the oil and how much revenue the country is getting from the sale. After years of exploration, Kenya exported its first crude oil shipment in August. Amid the excitement of Kenya joining the list of oil-producing countries, some civil society groups are accusing the government of keeping oil deals with a Chinese company secret. Charles…

By Dennis Ndiritu Land is a very emotive issue that falls at the heart of the Kenyan people. Its management has vexed the country for a long time and has been the accelerator of post-election chaos leading to the development of a land management structure led by the National Land Commission (NLC), whose functions, apart from constitutional provisioning, have been judicially anchored by the courts through various landmark decisions such as ‘Republic v County Government of Kiambu & Others [2014] eKLR’, ‘Serah Mweru Muhu v Commissioner of Lands & Others [2014] eKLR’, ‘Hassan Hashi Shirwa & Another v Swaleh Mohamed…

By Shadrack Muyesu In some ways, I am like MacDonald Mariga; I have never voted and I am not about to. While this has never stopped me from questioning government excesses and having expectations, I am afraid that it is a luxury I won’t be enjoying for too long. Voting has become a de facto necessity enjoying a status above the entire realm of rights as the unwritten qualifier to these rights. We say that men are born with rights yet subtly emphasise that they do not deserve these rights unless they vote. Say you do not vote and you’re…

By Kevin Motaroki The subject is politics. We have understood it to be an imperfect arrangement from the beginning. Necessarily transactional, there is no pretence at love or passion in it for most, just parties conducting business: you elect me, you get cited services. Governor Mike Mbuvi Sonko packaged himself as one of the few who would go beyond that description, because “I believe in leaving a better society than I found.” He was, he promised, that kind of politician. When Sonko won City Hall as governor of Nairobi in 2017, the prize was attained, in part, for campaigning against…

More Kenyans consider themselves optimists, compared to citizens of other major African economies, a new survey has found. The Global Optimism Outlook Survey found that 70 percent of Kenyans view themselves as optimists, above the global average of 56 percent, and the continental average of 64 percent. In terms of geographic regions, South America was found to be home to the largest number of optimists (74 percent). Commissioned by Expo 2020 Dubai, and conducted by YouGov, the Global Optimism Outlook Survey tracked people’s priorities for the future, looking at sustainability, economic growth, technology, travel, and more. More than 20,000 people…