Author: NLM Correspondent

By Shadrack Muyesu Considering the industries it sustains, is it not time information was considered a factor of production on its own? Take the law, for instance. For many years, lawyers preyed on the ignorance of the lay person who was not able to access the information they needed because it existed in complex jargon only lawyers could interpret. A lawyer in in his robe was a marvel. He was literally a depository of knowledge whose wisdom was necessary for completing the simplest of transactions and determining the smallest dispute. To amplify Lord Justice Denning, they were the law. Beyond…

By Emmanuel Ekiru In his famous lecture delivered at Fort Hare University, South Africa – The 2010 constitution of Kenya and its interpretation: Reflections from the Supreme Court’s decisions –Emeritus Chief Justice Willy Mutunga underscored the fact that the Constitution has restored “traditional dispute resolution (TDR) mechanisms” with constitutional limitations. He said, “We live in our country where courts are not the only forums for the administration of justice. Traditional disputes resolutions mechanisms keep these institutions as free as possible from the lawyers, ‘their law’ and the ‘law system of the capital’.” Dr Mutunga’s arguments pointed to the fact that…

By Chrispin Bosire The Supreme Court pronounced itself on the status of the mandatory death sentence in resolving the conflict between “Godfrey Ngotho Mutiso v Republic and Joseph Njuguna Mwaura & 2 Others v Republic”. The Supreme Court adopted a cogent analysis of Article 24’s limitation of rights approach, demonstrating a succinct intention to place the country on the path of a robust legal and human rights culture. If this path continues, then the future of the Human Rights discourse in Kenya is bright and subject to tremendous positive progress. The foundational axiom underpinning the penalty is embedded in the…

By Dominic Wabala During his State of the nation speech in early May, President Uhuru Kenyatta revealed that the Anti Counterfeit Agency in 2017 seized goods worth over Sh1.7 billion and destroyed others worth over Sh700 million. Kenya, he said, has been losing over Sh30 billion revenue annually in tax evasion, unlicensed goods and counterfeit leading to loss of jobs and negatively affecting foreign direct investments. “The impact of counterfeit goods spans a very broad scope ranging from consumer goods, cosmetics, automotive parts and pharmaceutical products among others,” the President said in his statement in Parliament. In the same month,…

By David Onjili In line with attaining Kenya’s long term investment needs’, there have been efforts – such as the establishment of the Nairobi International Finance Centre Authority – to align the economy to Vision 20130. The main goal here is to increase the level of activity at the bourse, increase market capitalisation and also increases liquidity to make Nairobi a financial hub. Thus, news of the introduction of a Derivatives Markets has been met with enthusiasm because the bourse currently does not meet the threshold to make Nairobi a financial hub continentally. These are exciting times for those in…

By Gilbert Ng’ang’a When Kenya announced late May that it would not sign a free trade agreement that China has been negotiating with the East African Community (EAC) partner States, this marked the beginning of a new era for Nairobi’s economic architecture. After two years of intense lobbying by Beijing to have the East African states—Kenya, Uganda, Rwanda, Burundi and Tanzania—agree to the trade deal, Nairobi, unexpectedly, pulled the trigger. With that, Kenya’s trade relations with China, will never be the same. Disregarding the expected diplomatic brouhaha that such an action would bring between two nations, Kenya said the decision…

By Antony Mutunga The convergence of information technology, the Internet and e-commerce may well become as transformative as the industrial revolution – Kofi Annan A century after the first industrial revolution from the 1760s, a second one happened in late 19th Century. The second industrial revolution took form and ushered in the age of mass production through the use of electric power. Not long after, humanity was at it again when, in the 1970s, the third industrial revolution began. It was characterized by the use of information technology and electronics to programme machines and networks to automate production. This caused the…

Freshworks in Africa expansion plans Freshworks, a leading provider of cloud-based business software, plans to substantially increase its commitment with specific investments in marketing, sales and partner resources to better serve its customers in the region. IDC (international Data Corporation) predicts the overall African IT spending to reach $33.4 billion in 2018, with Kenya being one of the top contributors. The year 2017 saw Freshworks building their African foundation with the company’s flagship ‘Partner Program’ receiving immense interest from regional resellers and adding Techbiz, CloudHop and VivaGlobal to their partner ecosystem. MediaTek unveils new smartphone chipset MediaTek has announced the…

For all the promise it holds for the future, artificial intelligence is still guilty of historic bias. Voice recognition software struggles with English accents that are not American or British and facial recognition can be guilty of racial profiling. As this technology increasingly outpaces human discourse on race, China seems to be getting ahead on recognising a diverse range of faces across the wider world, despite its own struggles with racial insensitivity. Facial recognition in particular has trouble differentiating faces that are not white, according to a study by MIT’s Media Lab. While tech companies grapple with how to teach…

BY Tioko Ekiru Emmanuel The discovery of commercially viable oil in Ngamia-1, Block 10 in northern Kenya is a boon the country in realisation of the much anticipated Vision 2030, which is projected to elevate the country into a newly industrialising, middle-income economy. Additionally, the discovery was espoused as an opportunity to heal the scars of historical stigmatisation, marginalisation and side-lining of the Turkana community by successive regimes. Having had the worst of ethnic domination and exclusion, the discovery was seen as a light at the end of a tunnel; regrettably, it seems to be an oncoming train. The Constitution…