Author: NLM Correspondent

By David Wanjala With the benefit of State resources at his/her disposal, dislodging an incumbent in the developing world, especially Africa, is as hard as, to paraphrase former President Mwai Kibaki, bringing down a Mugumo Tree (a revered sacred shrine in the Kikuyu culture), using a razor blade. Kibaki used the analogy in the late 80s at the height of the clamour for political pluralism against President Daniel Moi’s regime in which he served as vice president. For the sake of history, I must hasten to add that, indeed, the Opposition-orchestrated onslaught against Moi eventually carried the day. Moi yielded…

By Barack Muluka On August 8, the name Wycliffe Musalia Mudavadi will for the first time in 28 years not appear on any ballot paper in Kenya’s General Elections. Mudavadi came to Kenya’s political scene in early 1989, following the death of his father, Moses Subston Budamba Mudavadi. The elder Mudavadi died as one of the most influential and powerful people in President Daniel Arap Moi’s Government, and Member of Parliament for Sabatia Constituency. It came as no surprise that the senior Mudavadi’s eldest son, Wycliffe, should ascend to the Sabatia seat. The younger Mudavadi has since had an exciting political career…

Six years ago, a deputy commanding general for US Army Special Operations Command gave a conservative estimate of 116 missions being carried out at any one time by Navy SEALs, Army Green Berets, and other special operations forces across the globe. Today, according to US military documents, special operators are carrying out nearly 100 missions at any given time — in Africa alone. It’s the latest sign of the military’s quiet but ever-expanding presence on the continent, one that represents the most dramatic growth in the deployment of America’s elite troops to any region of the globe. “Africa’s challenges could create a threat that surpasses the threat that the…

Kenyans are an interesting lot. They say life’s hard. That Uhuru Muigai Kenyatta and William Samoei Ruto are bad, bad men and so they are tired. But their reaction tells a different story. When Egyptians got tired, they turned Cairo into a war zone, lighting such a fire under Hosni Mubarak’s backside that in three few months, he had vacated his seat. And when they didn’t like the new government, they carried their beds to Tahrir, camping there until Muhammad Morsi and his Muslim Brotherhood friends left. In Tunisia, a tired Mohamed Bouazizi set himself on fire if only to…

By Shadrack Muyesu Agricultural policymaking is exclusively a national government function. One thing that the food crisis and the maize importation saga have proved is the fact that Kenya is marshalled by a reactionary government with no clear long-term plan of guaranteeing food security. It’s also telling on the quality of our economic plan, the Vision 2030 blueprint and the fickle-mindedness of Kenyans, which makes lying such an easy task for government. The Vision 2030 Economic Blueprint, in its first Medium Term Plan (MTP), overlooked agriculture and tourism to prefer public expenditure on infrastructure as the foundation for national transformation.…

By ArKan Yasin There is a Capitalist idiom, “Borrow a dollar from a bank, the bank owns you; borrow a billion dollars from the bank, you own the bank”. It is a lesson in the utility drawn of possession and by it, Safaricom owns Kenya. Safaricom’s footprint occupies 51% of the economy, with a subscriber base of over 23.3 million. To put this is context, in a total population of 45.6 million with a labour force of 17.7 million with an unemployment growth rate of 24.3% and total mobile subscriber base of 33.6 million, Safaricom holds 23.3 million. Put another…

By Kenyatta Otieno Kenya is ever in a state of perpetual elections mood. General Election results are always the beginning of another five years of political what not and what ifs. We live on election fever. A visitor to Kenya will wonder if being Kenyan other than being an athlete comes with an engrained talent in political analysis. He may also be forgiven for thinking post-election violence is waiting for Moses Kuria and his ilk to open their mouth. We eat, drink and sleep politics, a big burden for a fledgling democracy in a Third World country. In every engagement…

By Arkan Yasin On January 16, 2017, President Uhuru Kenyatta unveiled over 500 police vehicles in what has been termed a police modernisation programme. Local news and media organisations maintained an event driven perspective and therefore missed the significance of this insidious programme. Here, we will endeavour to assess the broader context in which the militarisation of the police force – for that is what it is – continues to happen. The socio-anthropological ideological blindness of Africa’s intellectual elites does not allow them to perceive the suspension of the Constitution and implementation of de-facto Martial Law by the passing/implementation of…

Kenya’s political leaders have always relied on the backing of members of their ethnic group and it will be no different this time around It is therefore not surprising that some political analysts have been looking at the voter registration in the candidates’ ethnic strongholds as an indicator of who may have an upper hand. Kenya’s five major ethnic groups make up about 70% of the population. In order to win the presidential race a candidate needs to forge ethnic alliances to get a majority of that vote. However, President Uhuru Kenyatta says that he expects this election to be…

BY Mwendwa Chuma “Get up, stand up; stand up for your rights. Get up stand up; don’t give up the fight!” – Bob Marley, Singer Arecent ruling of the High Court in Petition No. 296 of 2016 awarded Members of County Assemblies an eye-watering Sh4.2 billion of our hard earned and reluctantly remitted taxes for what the court termed as “losses for the 8 months they will not be in office”. The rationale was that the MCAs were entitled to serve for five years, and that the period between the date of the last general elections (4th March 2013) and…