Author: NLM Correspondent

The Luo have a saying – “waiting for rain that has refused to fall” – to caution against waiting in vain. Raila Odinga has become the rain that builds up heavy clouds, forces people to return everything into the house in anticipation of a heavy downpour then a strong winds come and send the clouds away.  The man who has a larger than life stature in Kenyan politics has become a case of “too close yet too far” in his quest to capture the presidency. One thing that has been Raila’s biggest undoing is his poor man-management. The fact that…

Arkan Uddin Yasin March 9, 2018. We all sat there, in disbelief and consternation. Could anyone be so cold? So unfeeling? So without compunction? “No man, for any considerable period of time can wear one face to himself and another to the multitude, without finally getting bewildered as to which may be true” – Nathaniel Hawthorne in The Scarlet Letter Sitting there watching, listening to the speeches, there was a buzz in my head that could not let me make out what they were saying. It did not matter. It was the return of the prodigal dhampir; it was watching…

By Ahmednasir Abdullahi What a gesture it was! Out of the blue, and to the bewilderment of citizens, President Uhuru Kenyatta and former Prime Minister Raila Odinga, on March 9, calmly announced that they had reached a political truce and shook hands. Of course, they were technically not at war! Neither, were the two leaders locked in a zero-sum legal dispute in any sense of the term. Indeed, they had not informed the country that there were ongoing negotiations between the two with a view to reaching a settlement. In fact, Raila has subsequently taken so much pride in the…

George Omuholo An apocryphal narrative from family sources recalls the day that an incensed Raila Odinga abandoned his three siblings in a car on Ngong Road, Nairobi in the 1970s. He had only recently returned from training in East Germany and had taken up a job at the University of Nairobi. His elder brother, Oburu Oginga, was then an elected councilor in Kisumu Municipal Council. Their two sisters, Beryl and Akinyi Wenwa Odinga, were in high school. The family matriarch, Mama Mary Odinga, was striving with the role of both father and mother while their father, Jaramogi Ajuma Oginga Odinga,…

Surely you’ve noticed it: Over the last few decades, throughout the developed world, stuff has gotten cheaper – cars, shrimp, and toothpaste. This is to be expected in an era defined by the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) and the World Trade Organisation. The point of free trade agreements is to make goods as cheap as possible. Well. Not all things. Some things—drugs and medical devices, for instance—haven’t gotten cheaper at all. That’s because most free trade agreements don’t actually make trade more free. Instead, they protect companies in industries like pharmaceuticals and tech. The result is that US…

Irene Njoroge Women are like tea bags; you never know how strong they are until they’re in hot water. Those were words from Eleanor Roosevelt, a wife to Franklin D. Roosevelt, the 32nd President of the US, from 1933 to 1945. The truthfulness of this statement resonates well with women writers, for who many do not realise just how tenacious and strong they are until they read what they have to say – in literature. The continent is blessed with writers whose works have had an influence on Africans as well as people from other races across the globe. The…

Janek Sunga The challenge for non-Western countries has always been modernising without westernising. According to Danai Gurira, the Zimbabwean-American actress, the movie Black Panther answers the question that Africans have always wondered: “Who would we have been if we weren’t colonised?” I would like to think she means the heights of scientific advancement that Africa would have reached. Lupita Nyong’o is in the latest instalment to the Marvel Cinematic Universe, but you should also definitely watch it because of the scientific issues it raises. Science is a universal language. The laws of physics are built on a mathematical foundation, this…

David Onjili The essence of free speech is that we permit people with whom we differ to speak. Wrongheaded views will be aired. But free speech means no one gets the last word. We can, and indeed we should, use our own right to free speech to challenge expression we think is obnoxious or wrong. To do this, we must be ready to argue in public and also be allowed by the same public to express ourselves, however right or wrong they may feel we are. The truth is, Kenya is a nation where dogma, stereotype, tradition and authority are…

Africa’s under-developed infrastructure, non-tariff barriers and finance constraints will limit the potential benefits of a continental free trade agreement that is due to receive political backing before the end of this month, Moody’s Investors Service said in a report last month. The African Continental Free Trade Area (AfCFTA), which aims to create a single African market for goods and services, could boost intra-regional trade, which remains far lower than in developing Asian countries. “There is significant potential for further trade integration in Africa, which the AfCFTA could stimulate,” said Colin Ellis, Moody’s Managing Director and the co-author of the report.…

With African tech hubs, start-ups and founders starting to mature and gain deeper understanding of local markets after a few years of heady hype that was more about potential than substance, investors increasingly look towards the continent. Partech Ventures’ latest annual funding report shows that venture capital funding in 2017 reached $560 million, recording 53% year on year growth. The scale of growth in funding is seen in the number of investment rounds participated in by start-ups: in 2017, 124 start-ups participated in 128 funding rounds compared to 77 rounds in 2016. Partech’s reports include start-ups that have a primary…