Author: NLM Correspondent

By David Wanjala Gullible. Cheap. Short sighted. Whatever you want to call it, the adjective will fit quite nicely in describing the perennial failure of political leadership in the “Luhya Nation” to rise to the occasion when it is most crucial. Masinde Muliro and Kijana Wamalwa, the doyens of Luhya politics, are the standard. In recent times, those who have stepped into the shoes of the two fallen heroes have utterly failed the people of Mulembe big time, with their antics, almost all of the time, only succeeding in providing comic relief. There is a former Member of Parliament from…

By Kenyatta Otieno Development is a monster. It is as big as an elephant but sometimes everyone is blind to it. Everyone tries to touch it from where he is and the interpretation you get comes in many shades, depending on level of education, exposure and political persuasion. I will draw back from this elephant and look at development from the eyes of a son of a peasant with big dreams. Jubilee Government (or the as our President says, Uhuru Kenyatta’s government) has been shouting about the Standard Gauge Railway, and other infrastructural developments, as their achievement in their first…

At Kifuku, a cattle ranch in Kenya, the dry-stone walls are reminiscent of England; by the farmhouse, a pair of boats sit on an artificial lake. The farm has, however, been anything but calm of late. Since September, dozens of cattle-ranchers, some with assault rifles, have driven their cattle onto the farm’s 8,000 acres (3,238 hectares) of grass. Buildings have been wrecked, staff beaten up and a police officer shot and injured. “We’re all extremely tired and frustrated and short-fused and scared,” says Maria Dodds, the owner. By February 12, relief had arrived, in the form of an armoured car…

The rise of cyber attacks in the region can be attributed to a shortage of experts to tackle sophisticated cyber crimes. According to the Cisco Annual Cybersecurity Report, 2017, organisations are having perennial challenges fighting cyber-crimes because they are not investing enough funds to contain cyber-attacks. Small or medium enterprises in East Africa have at least one or two of their systems fully exposed on the Internet, with the internal staff unaware of the vulnerability. The majority of organisations spend less than Sh500,000 annually on cyber security while some have no budget at all and do not train their staff…

Two days will forever be etched in Amare’s mind. The first was when he finally accepted that he was gay. And the second was the day he realised that being gay could get him killed. That day his father, a gay pastor in Uganda, was shot dead for his sexual preference. “So I ran. I ran as far and a fast as I could,” he says. Amare is one of the thousands of gay refugees who have found solace in a foreign land. “Even if it means I have had to start from nothing, it is better than living in…

New UN climate chief says she’s worried about President Donald Trump – but confident that action to curb climate change is unstoppable. President Trump said he’d withdraw from the UN climate deal and stop funding the UN’s clean energy programme. But former Mexican diplomat Patricia Espinosa said that the delay in any firm announcement suggests the issue is still unresolved. ‘World will carry on’ Ms Espinosa said it would be more damaging for the US to leave the on-going climate talks process altogether than to stop funding the clean energy programme. The US pays approximately $4m (Sh400 million) towards this…

Dr Joseph Wandera When the history of Kenya’s democratisation process is written, the Anglican All Saints Cathedral – now celebrating its 100 years of existence – in the heart of Nairobi, will be part and parcel of that story. In 1963, Kenya celebrated independence from the British colonial rule. A “second independence” in the early 1990s was realised, with the return of multiparty politics, an achievement that owed much to intense clerical critique of authoritarian, corrupt, and extravagant one –party rule. During Kanu’s single party regime, there was limited scope for public discourse. The body politic was rent by surveillance,…

Reading Robert Bates, on begins to understand why the Tropical Equatorial Africa, despite being one of the most watered places on earth, remains food insufficient. One can also see why Vision 2030 economic blueprint is not the best idea. That less than 17% of Kenya consists of arable land should not be cited as an excuse for the perennial food shortages we have become accustomed to. After all, typical deserts in a number of Middle East states are food sufficient; some are even renowned exporters of fresh fruit and vegetables. With massive populations in cold, windy and stony environments, Far…

That government has only halfheartedly reacted to the doctors and nurses’ strike paints a not so rosy picture of its sensitivity to the health of Kenyans. The ramifications have been severe, with patients loosing their lives to treatable conditions. It’s easy to blame these deaths on the doctors but a rational assessment of the dire state of affairs in the public health sector against the history of their plight actually points to their victimisation. The bone of the bone of contention is the implementation of a collective bargaining agreement between the Kenya Medical Practitioners and Dentists Union, and the Ministry…

By Kenyatta Otieno It is election season in Kenya. The spin-doctors are up and about and the master, Mutahi Ngunyi, has come up with a sequel to his power-clinching treatise, Tyranny of Numbers. Mutahi opined in a local daily that tyranny of numbers, which is simply the numerical strength of Kikuyu and Kalenjin votes, does not hold water anymore. He minced his words, however, and he had to avoid bones so that the product was rich in breadth but lacking in depth. It is these bones that I have picked in my quest to question the validity of this tyranny…