Author: NLM Correspondent

And a forthright judge speaks By Carmel Rickard As Kenya celebrated the 10th anniversary of its constitution, with virtual seminars, webinars and other discussions, one of the most serious challenges yet brought under the constitution is making its way through the courts. That problem is the failure of the country’s President, Uhuru Kenyatta, to appoint more than 40 judges nominated by the Judicial Service Commission. And, equally significant, his failure to abide by a court order that the judges be appointed. In February three Kenyan judges of the high court’s constitutional and human rights division delivered a damning judgment. The…

The era when the LSK paid for its colonial sins By Gilbert Munyumbu Understanding how the LSK attempted to restrain the Jomo Kenyatta regime from its excesses requires clarity in two main areas. First, we need to understand the general state of rule of law under the Kenyatta rule, and second, we must interrogate the Kenyatta government’s attitude towards systematic oversight and restraint, which come through both horizontal and vertical accountability, by tracing the relationship the government built with institutions emerging out of these two types of accountability. The interaction with the LSK itself would need to be relayed in…

In the months since the pandemic cratered the price of oil, the financial fallout has spread from drilling companies to refineries and oilfield maintenance companies. Now the crash has claimed another, more unlikely victim: The only system built to capture carbon emissions from a coal plant in the US, one of only two worldwide. The $1 billion system, known as Petra Nova, was built in 2017 to catch CO2 from one unit of a coal plant near Houston. That plant is one of the dirtiest in Texas, both in terms of climate and air quality impacts. Petra Nova was meant…

Aviation has yet to take full advantage of the potential of APIs, and lags behind others such as Telecoms and Fintech. The air transport industry has been profoundly altered over the past few months and will continue to do so amid the ongoing shifts from COVID-19. Airports are still unusually quiet in many places and many airlines fear they may not recover their losses from seeing thousands of planes grounded. The knock-on effect is already causing huge job losses with fears of greater future potential redundancies, including at major airlines, travel companies and ground handlers globally. While some holidaying passengers…

Data analytics can reduce mundane, manual tasks and enable global trade teams to focus on strategic planning to deliver tangible benefits to their companies. By Keith Haurie   Customs authorities around the world are embracing the use of big data and data analytics, a development that creates risk and opportunities for importers and exporters. Indeed, the World Customs Organization (WCO) has pushed this agenda for several years. In 2016, for example, the WCO’s International Customs Day carried the theme ’Digital Customs: Progressive Engagement’. Customs agencies were urged to adopt the latest technology, and WCO members were invited to use cloud computing, blockchain,…

By Elijah Munyi The US and Kenya formally launched negotiations for a free trade agreement on July 8, 2020. With the US gearing up for presidential elections in a few months, these talks may not draw much global attention. But as a prototype for evaluating the substance of future US-Africa trade relations, a lot rides on Washington using this deal to make a bold statement of its commitment to effective North-South free trade agreements. The US is the third most important destination for Kenyan exports after Uganda and Pakistan, accounting for 8% of its total exports. Kenya exported goods worth $527 million (Sh530…

While premature deindustrialisation is a global phenomenon, the process will be more consequential for the continent. By Brahima S Coulibaly For decades, economic growth and structural transformation was equated with manufacturing-led development. This applied to most of today’s advanced and many emerging economies. With a global trend of premature deindustrialisation, an entirely different pathway could now open up for Africa, as examples from several countries show. Economists have long regarded economic transformation – the movement of workers from lower to higher productivity employment – as essential to successful economic development. Traditionally, the development of export-oriented industries, notably manufacturing, has been…

The case of the marauding Executive and a whimpering Parliament BY KEVIN MOTAROKI In the seven years Jubilee has been in power, it is countable the number of times that Parliament has stood up to the Executive. The two instances that quickly come to mind are the current standoff over the third basis of revenue sharing among counties, and secondly, in 2018 when Parliament rejected the Executive’s plan to implement a 16 per cent value added tax (VAT) on fuel. But even the two instances have to be put in their proper context: The standoff over the new formula for…

By Peter Wanyonyi The social evolution of agricultural versus pastoralist societies has long been the subject of fascinating research in African anthropology. One theory attributes the relative ethnic characters of African societies to their traditional economies. To wit: Agricultural societies relied mostly on crops for survival. When a farmer has planted crops, they take time to grow and be ready for harvesting. In the intervening period, any sort of tumult that results in the farmer being uprooted represents an existential threat, since the crops cannot simply be uprooted and moved elsewhere: the interloper takes them over, the farmer loses and…

By Antony Mutunga In recent times, the number of governments depending on Internet shutdowns to control protests or violence between communities has been on the rise. According to the #KeepItOn report on Internet shutdowns in 2019 published by AccessNow, the number of internet shutdowns across the world have increased from a total of 75 cases in 2016 to 213 in 2019. Internet shutdowns are basically intentional disruptions on the internet and mobile applications making them inaccessible or effectively unusable for a particular group of people or region. With the increase expected to continue, Asia and Africa remain the most affected…