Author: NLM Correspondent

F ifty Africans countries last month signed one of the three proposed legal instruments which are set to open the borders to make the continent the largest trading bloc in the world. Leaders from 44 of 55 African Union member states signed into existence the Continental Free Trade area (AfCFTA) agreement, which makes it, when it comes into effect, the second-biggest bloc after WTO in international trade. President Mahamadou Issoufou of Niger, who is has been hailed as the champion of the free trade deal across the continent, was the first to sign on behalf of his country, followed by President Paul…

Before the Court of Appeal elections early last month, Attorney General Kihara Kariuki’s swearing in was delayed because State House wanted to make sure he voted for their preferred candidate to secure his job. That failed and Kariuki had to be sworn in anyway, as government trained its sights on the position of the Court’s representative to the JSC. It is understood that the government fought fiercely in vain to prevent the re-election of Justice Mohamed Warsame. When that battle too failed, State mercenaries began looking for a loophole to have Warsame vetted afresh, drawing the ire of legal practitioners…

Robert Mugabe, the former president of Zimbabwe, has criticised his successor, Emmerson Mnangagwa, for turning against him. Mugabe told the South African broadcaster SABC that although he had “nurtured and brought Mnangagwa into government, and … we must undo this disgrace”, adding that Mnangagwa was only able to achieve power with the aid of the military. Mugabe’s belated sense of morality is the source of amusement to many, who consider his ousted government one of the most repressive and corrupt in Africa. Said Mugabe in reference to Mnangagwa, “He whom I nurtured and brought into government and whose life I…

President Kenyatta and Raila Odinga made up with each other publicly, and that is just about the story we know. Promised that “comprehensive details” of the deal would be made known soon, the country is yet to learn exactly what the pact entails, and how the two propose to actualise it. However, a source reveals that one of the things that Raila was very particular about was that the crackdown on the Judiciary had to stop, and particularly the targeting of CJ David Maraga and other judges of the Supreme Court. According to Raila, the CJ had done nothing to…

On March 17, 2018, the Know Your World Initiative and the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organisation (UNESCO) Associated Schools Project held the Sustainable Development Goals Challenge-UNESCO Associated Schools Project Network Partnership at the Starehe Boys’ Centre. This was a follow-up event following the Launch of the SDG Challenge held at the United Nations Office in Nairobi in 2017. Among others, the event offered students a chance to show how much progress they had made with SDG related Projects they had been carrying out in their schools. Projects The chemistry club at Pangani Girls presented a clean water project…

By Prof. John Harbeson The resignation of Ethiopian Prime Minister Haile Mariam Desalegn exposes the reality of a still elusive post-imperial Ethiopian state, nearly half a century after the fall of its last emperor, Haile Selassie I, in September, 1974.  Ironically, it was the unprecedented resignation of a prime minister and cabinet from service to the emperor early that year that precipitated the crisis that continues to this day. The core of the crisis is that there appear to be at best tenuous understandings shared among all parties and communities on what it may be about being Ethiopian today that…

Uncollected solid waste is one of Nairobi’s most visible environmental problems. Many parts of the city, especially low and middle-income areas, don’t have waste collection systems in place. In high income areas, private waste collection companies are booming. Residents pay handsomely without knowing where the waste will end up. The Nairobi county government has acknowledged that with 2,475 tons of waste being produced each day, it is overwhelmed. Nairobi’s current waste disposal system is fraught with major problems. These range from the city’s failure to prioritise solid waste management to inadequate infrastructure and the fact that multiple actors are involved…

By Ahmednasir Abdullahi Depending on tribe, business interests or party leanings, it’s generally unfashionable to criticize President Uhuru Kenyatta or second guess the good intention of de facto Opposition leader Raila Odinga. If ever there was any doubt, events following the recent truce between the two arch nemeses is clear evidence. Previously disgruntled opposition supporters have rationalised the friendship as a means towards the desirable end of electoral justice and inclusive government. For Jubilee, it’s simply a delivery of the national healing promise the President made on his inauguration – and one delivered with great haste. If the obvious lull…

We usually think of personality in terms of the differences we can see – Sarah is smiley and chatty, John frets a lot, while Noah is neat and tidy. These differences are fascinating, but if we focus only on observable behaviour, it doesn’t tell us much about the roots of personality. Looking inside our body gives greater clues. And a trickle of recent findings has recently turned into a torrent, as studies are now revealing how personality is linked with many aspects of our biology, from our hormones and our immune system to the microbes in our gut. These are…

Social media has, for the last decade, transformed our lives, particularly the way we communicate. Meredith Gould in “The Social Media Gospel: Sharing the Gospel in New Ways” observes that social media has forever redefined what it means to “participate”. She defines social media as “digital platforms used for content delivery”. If this transformation were to be quantified, the count for Facebook is more than one billion users; Twitter has more than 260 million monthly active users worldwide, who can communicate instantly with one another about anything, at any time (according to Centre for Technology Innovation). Social media innovations have…