Author: NLM Correspondent

By Fuad Abdirahman When Somalia elected to take a neutral stand in the 2017 Gulf blockade of Qatar, the UAE rulers, who were keen on maintaining an influence over Somalia, did not take it lightly. That singular decision undid years of close relations. Consequently, Abu Dhabi made it its mission to make Somalia pay for that slight and, for a long time, Somalia has been the target of ugly geopolitics that may well undo its meagre gains of the last decade. The hostility is so bad that Somalia, currently struggling with a second wave of COVID-19, with overcrowded hospitals and…

By Ndung’u Wainaina The judiciary is the guardian of the Constitution. It behoves it to act proactively and decisively to defend and protect the Constitution and the core values it espouses. Today, the people of Kenya are increasingly confronted with a Presidency and Executive that are not only unconstitutionally hogging power but exercising excessive undemocratic overreach. The Constitution declares that it is the supreme law, that all law inconsistent with it is invalid and the obligations imposed by it must be obeyed. For this reason, courts are duty-bound to declare invalid all law or conduct inconsistent with the Constitution,…

The trade union movement represents the organized economic power of workers. It is the most potent and most direct social insurance workers can establish, and must not be allowed to disintegrate. By Edwin Wanjawa Kenyans have always rallied together — whether in parent-teacher associations or local community organizations, popularly known as chamas — to solve problems and make changes that improve their lives and their communities. Through unions, workers come together to strive for improvements at the place where they spend significant amounts of time. The freedom of workers to join together in unions and negotiate with employers, in a…

Professor John Harbeson In my monthly essays for the Nairobi Law Monthly, I try to focus single-mindedly on subjects that have meaning for sub-Saharan Africa in general, and Kenya and Eastern Africa in particular. But as I do so, always and increasingly in the back of my mind, a quiet but persistent voice asks, “doesn’t all this apply to the US as well?” The answer is invariably “yes”. This month, as I write, by contrast, the domestic terrorist assault on the US Capitol Building in Washington is front and center in my mind while, at the same time, I wonder…

Physicists, engineers and astronauts alike continue to speculate on the existence of life on the planet Mars. The latest expression of that interest is the Mars Rover Perseverance, which is currently travelling across the surface of the planet, collecting data on its weather and environment. Perseverance was launched on July 20, 2020 and was confirmed to have successfully landed on Mars seven months later, on February 18, 2021. Like its predecessor Curiosity, Perseverance has the goal of looking for ancient life and collecting samples of rock and regolith (broken rock and soil) for a possible return to Earth and further…

Although most prosecutors legally and ethically perform their duties, their practices and policies often produce unjust results, which spells the need for urgent reform By Austin Ekea The Office of the Directorate of Public Prosecution (ODPP), which derives its mandate from Article 157 (6) of the Constitution, is the national prosecuting authority in Kenya. The drafters of the Constitution 2010 saw it wise and necessary to relieve the Attorney General of prosecutorial powers, in whose office all state prosecution was vested. The AG also acted as the DPP prior to the 2010 Constitution. The main reason the Attorney General lost…

By Brahima S Coulibaly Soon, more countries will either be in or at high risk of debt distress. One of the key challenges and priorities for policymakers in 2021 will undoubtedly be sovereign debt sustainability and the broader issue of financing for development. To be sure, even prior to the COVID-19 pandemic, sovereign debt across sub-Saharan Africa had been increasing due to growing financing needs against the backdrop of insufficient domestic resource mobilization. The 2008-2009 global financial crisis resulted in ultra-low global interest rates and facilitated access to capital markets for many countries that took advantage of investor reach for…

Welcome to Paradise — also known as Baxter’s Beach, the Caribbean resort village at the center of Cherie Jones’s dazzling debut novel, “How the One-Armed Sister Sweeps Her House.” The year is 1984, and the orphaned teenager Lala is being raised by her grandmother Wilma. The trouble in Paradise is that men can’t control themselves, infidelity is a given, sex is currency and domestic abuse is in full bloom like lush tropical foliage. The novel’s title is derived from a cautionary tale Wilma tells a 13-year-old Lala: about a “good-for-nothing,” wayward sister with “a taste for things that her mother…

By Cynthia Wairimu There’s the fear of something, and then there’s extreme fear to the point that, in its presence, all manner of sense flies out of the window and instead one is filled with extreme anxiety, excessive fear, dread, panic and reactions that tend to be unreasonable. Even when the objects of fear are harmless and pose no danger. We call this having a phobia. Phobias can result from traumatic events, or watching others experiencing something traumatic or informational transmission excesses. We have heard of the most common of them such as arachnophobia – the fear of spiders, claustrophobia…

By Lydiah Kemunto Bosire I have long struggled with ‘brain drain’ because it is analytically loose, lumping the mobility of Zambian nurses to London in the same bucket as that of Kenyan students going to MIT. Last year, in a conversation with a former president of a leading global foundation, I asked how he’d addressed the issue of ‘brain drain’ in his work. The topic was on my mind because two potential investors – ironically, a white South African in Canada and an Indian-American in Europe, no doubt in their jobs because of some version of student or talent mobility –…