Author: NLM Correspondent

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…

Joshua Malidzo Nyawa Strikes are considered “a right to self-defence” as they are a means of balancing power between the employer and the workers. The right to strike is a bedfellow of the right to bargain collectively. In Industrial relations matters, the workers’ ultimate arsenal in bargaining terms and conditions of service is the right to go on strike while the employer has the right to a lockout. The Strike is not the toy of ambitious Politicians. It is the red rainbow across the sky of industrial desperation. It is a permanent warning to politicians to keep their promises, to…

Joshua Nyabwa Separation of powers is a “vital tool to advance our democratic hygiene”, for it is generally accepted that when all powers are vested in one body, there can be no liberty and liberty can only be found where various powers are vested in different bodies. Since the days of pharaoh in Egypt to today, it is widely accepted that man is in nature selfish and the notion that ‘power corrupts, absolute power corrupts absolutely’, the democratic oxygen will be unhygienic if all these powers were to be vested in an individual. It becomes a pertinent question meriting an…

John Gichuhi Competition between businesses is a main characteristic of a well-balanced market. In simple terms, competition is the supply by more than one person of similar goods in the market. The law requires fairness, competitiveness and effectiveness in all markets. Proper risk analysis for a business demands prioritizing compliance with the law. Business objectives such as profits, sales or market share may not be achieved if a business spends a substantial portion of its income on unnecessary fines levied by regulators such as the Competition Authority of Kenya. The Competition Act No. 12 of 2010 sets out the legal…