Author: NLM Correspondent

Ndung’u Wainaina September was the remembrance and memorialisation month of the Westgate attack that caused the loss of 67 lives. To start us off, and lest we forget, it was both fatal and reckless for government to block credible inquiries into failures in pre-empting and ending the attack. No lessons were actually leant. A few days later, it was business as usual – same government musical rhetoric with little or no change. As a result of this indolence and incompetence by the State, months after Westgate, 147 students were murdered in Garissa University College in similar circumstances, besides several incidents…

It was primed as the “world-class, mixed-use new city, located within the greater Nairobi – East Africa’s new economic hub.” But since its launch in 2010, the development of Tatu City has been nothing but endless court drama that has delayed it four years as the partners’ battle for control. Beyond the glamour that marked the launch in 2010, Tatu City has come to symbolise the woes of foreign direct investment in Kenya. It has been characterised by an elaborate extortion scheme, fraud and theft. Those at the centre of the vicious battle in both Kenyan and Mauritius courts are…

Payton Mathau A report by the Directorate of Criminal Investigation (DCI) has reportedly found former Central Bank of Kenya Governor Nahashon Ngige Nyagah and a dozen others of being criminally responsible for conspiracy to defraud the owners of Tatu City and the neighbouring Kofinaf estate of Sh5.3 billion worth of land. The stolen land is owned by Kofinaf Company Ltd, which is in turned owned by a Mauritius-based company called Cedarsoc Ltd, which also owns in Tatu City. Kofinaf, according to the report, owns about 7,500 acres of coffee farms in Kiambu County, with several land titles and other holdings such…

David Wanjala The first business of the National Assembly after a General Election, and pursuant to the President’s proclamation of the list of elected members, is the election of the Speaker. This is followed by the swearing-in of members. The dynamics of our politics have changed, and with those are the chances that we are unlikely to see many of the familiar faces in Parliament today after the 2017 elections. But unlike in the past when new faces have sprung up following the unpopularity of incumbents on account of non-performance, what is likely to happen in 2017 will be mostly…

By Phoebe Nadupoi The National Rainbow Coalition (Narc) inspired a new sense of hope when it brought to an end the oppressive reign of then ruling party KANU in 2002. The country was pregnant with expectation and promise. A study by the Afrobarometer titled “A New Dawn? Popular Optimism in Kenya After the Transition” published in 2014 confirmed this up-beat mood that defied socioeconomic and cultural boundaries. In the same year the NARC government assumed power, some residents of Adungosi Centre in Teso frog-matched two police officers to the Provincial Police Officer’s office over extortion. A similar incident had been…

Professor Mĩcere Mũgo is a world-renowned Kenyan poet, playwright, literary critic, and scholar, is widely studied across the disciplines in the arts, humanities, social sciences and education. Mwalimu Mugo, as she is fondly known, was forced into exile in 1982 during the Daniel Moi dictatorship for activism and moved to teach in Zimbabwe, and later the United States. Among her publications are six books, a play co-authored with Ngũgĩ wa Thiong’o and three monographs. She has also edited journals and the Zimbabwean school curriculum. She spoke with Dr Tom Odhiambo when she visited Kenya in June. Odhiambo: So professor, I…

David Matende Last month, the largest newspaper in Eastern Africa, Nation, made important changes in its editorial department in an attempt to boost what its boss, Tom Mshindi, described as “day two” journalism. Earlier, one of Africa’s oldest newspapers, Standard, had overhauled the entire editorial staff, sending some of its top journalists into early retirement. It is not difficult to see why the managers of the newspapers went back to the drawing board. Over the last decade or so, news from the newsstands has not been music to their ears – sales have been on a perpetual downward spiral, making…

Peter Oduor “I definitely know what you are saying. I think I have heard that statement once or twice,” begins Dr Charles Muiru Ngugi, a lecturer at the University of Nairobi’s School of Journalism and the current chairman of Media Council Training and Accreditation Committee.  It is a cool Thursday morning; he is off campus, on leave and does not mind a discussion. The statement in reference is one that you have probably heard too; “I do not watch Kenyan news.”  A related one will be, “I do not read Kenyan newspapers.” If you have heard those remarks, chances are…

Tom Odhiambo Can the arts and the humanities offer hope to the dreams of East Africans who are weighed down by a worsening economic situation, internal wars, oppressive and suppressive regimes and an increasingly worsening socio-economic life? What can literature, drama, music, sculpture, dance, or the whole of artistic performance, stories, proverbs, sayings, philosophies, etc, of Ugandans, Tanzanians, Kenyans, Rwandese, South Sudanese, Sudanese, Ethiopians, Somalis, Burundians or Djiboutis, do to help the live through the overwhelming dystopia? First, we have to acknowledge that despite talk of scientific and technological advancements and economic progress, millions of people all over the world…

Oscar Okwaro Plato Africa remains the most insulted continent and a subject of countless studies that usually produce distorted “findings” about the largely misunderstood complex society. These findings have continued to fuel several existing myths about the vast continent once referred to as the “dark continent”. The “experts” on Africa have included missionaries, anthropologists, historians, scholars, journalists and pedestrian analysts, all who have succeeded in packaging half-truths and lies about the continent. These condescending analysts are consistent in their findings, which they repeat over and over such that Africans themselves, including intellectuals, actually begin to believe them. Since there has…