Author: NLM Correspondent

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…

More wealth leaves Africa every year than enters it – by more than $40bn (Sh4 trillion) – according to research that challenges “misleading” perceptions of foreign aid. Analysis by a coalition of UK and African equality and development campaigners including Global Justice Now, published last month, claims the rest of the world is profiting more than most African citizens from the continent’s wealth. It said African countries received $162bn (Sh16.2 trillion) in 2015, mainly in loans, aid and personal remittances. But in the same year, $203 (Sh20.3 trillion) was taken from the continent, either directly through multinationals repatriating profits and…

By Kenyatta Otieno I woke up scared by the news that Peter Kenneth was trailing Mike Sonko in the Jubilee Party nominations for Nairobi Governor. I knew Sonko had the numbers but I expected the party to “guide” the democratic process and award the ticket to Peter Kenneth; I was disappointed. Sonko will fly the JP flag against ODM’s Dr Evans Kidero. A Pharmacist-turned-business executive will face off with a man without any meaningful prefix to his name other than “Hon” from the elective seats he has held. Hate him or like him, Mike Sonko is in a class where…

Kenyan folk stories celebrate women as strong, fierce heroines of the distant past. Women in some communities in western and central Kenya are said to have enjoyed considerable power directly or indirectly as chiefs, queens, queen mothers and advisors. One of these communities even started off as being matrilineal. Women led and fought fearlessly to extend their territory. Although this community has since become patrilineal, its nine clans are still named after the daughters of its legendary descendants. In more recent times, women endured the same hardships as their male counterparts in the political struggle to free the country from…

By Isaac Swila With less than 70 days to the elections, all indications are that the battle for the Nairobi Gubernatorial seat with be a neck-and-neck race between the incumbent Dr Evans Kidero and Nairobi Senator Mike Mbuvi Sonko. Kidero, flying the Orange Democratic Movement (ODM) flag under the National Super Alliance (NASA) banner, boasts a massive financial war-chest, the power of incumbency, which to a greater extent matters a lot in local politics, while his erstwhile rival, Sonko, also has a lot of resources. Besides the duo, there is the affable, Canadian-educated Miguna Miguna, who is vying for the…

By Muyesu Shadrack “…You can transplant an English Olive in Africa but you must never expect it to thrive with the same foliage and green as it does somewhere in Manchester or England…” – Denning LJ It’s largely uncontested that the Presidency as an institution has so far been an abject failure. The democratic experiment has delivered very little of the good governance it promised on the advent of multipartysm and later, the promulgation of the Constitution of Kenya 2010. Political commentators blame the current state on the average citizen who they say, “keeps electing bad leaders.” And if a…