Author: NLM Correspondent

By Chris Mwabe There is no greater sporting event in the world than the FIFA World Cup ― the golden child of the most loved game in the world. To put it into perspective, the 2015 NFL Super Bowl Final was estimated to have 114.4 million viewers in the United States and 30 million internationally. Meanwhile, the 2018 final of the World Cup drew an estimated 1 billion viewers around the world. Forbes Magazine reported that the cost of the most expensive advertisement in the US during the final match of the 2014 World Cup, according to the Standard Media…

By Kenyatta Otieno In May, the Land and Environmental Court in Kisumu ruled in favour of Eldoret businessman Jackson Kibor against his sons in a land dispute. The controversial businessman then threatened to file another case to be allowed to determine the paternity of the sons he had sued. I am writing this article on Fathers’ Day and meditating about fatherhood in the African setting. Kibor’s actions made me think of our cultures in relation to paternity. I am Luo; Kibor is a Kalenjin On the surface, this might present different scenarios but I believe the spirit of African customs…

By Prof Paul Tiyambe Zeleza The public execution of George Floyd, with its casual performance of suffocating and snuffing life out of the black body became a frightful spectral presence on the minds of tens of millions of people in the United States and around the world. It captured with terrifying clarity the utter depravity and degradation of a black life that validated the humanistic and historic demands of the Black Lives Matter movement. The spontaneous demonstrations that erupted across every state and hundreds of cities and towns in the United States, including some with small black populations and even among…

Algorithmic tools are in widespread use across the criminal justice system today. Predictive policing algorithms, including PredPol and HunchLab, inform police deployment with estimates of where crime is most likely to occur. Patternizr is a pattern recognition tool at the New York Police Department that helps detectives automatically discover related crimes. Police departments also use facial recognition software to identify possible suspects from video footage. District attorneys have leveraged predictive models to focus prosecution efforts on high-risk individuals. In San Francisco, the district attorney uses an algorithm that obscures race information from case materials to reduce bias in charging decisions. …

BY NEWTON ARORI In the exercise of its powers and the discretion given to it, the Industrial Court is obliged to have regard not only or even primarily to the contractual or legal relationship between the parties to a labour dispute but also to the application of the principles of fairness ― The Labour Court of South Africa Ordinarily, employers have the managerial prerogative in the renewal of a fixed term employment contract. In fact, an automatically renewable fixed term contract is a contradiction in terms, as it would subject the parties to an indeterminate employment contract. An employer is…

Over the next decades, the number of people in retirement age will increase markedly and put social security systems under severe stress The dramatic shift in demographics is best characterized by the increase in the global old-age dependency ratio: Until 2050, it will grow by a whopping 77 percent to 25 percent, i.e., faster than in the last 70 years since 1950. In many emerging economies the ratio is going to more than double within the next three decades, that is, in less than half of the time this development took in Europe and Northern America. The most prominent example…

MFS Africa, the pan-African payments gateway which connects wallets across different mobile money platforms through its API, has acquired Beyonic, a digital payments services provider for enterprises which operates in Ghana, Uganda, Tanzania, Kenya and Rwanda. As part of the acquisition, MFS Africa will absorb Beyonic’s entire team while Luke Kyohere, CEO of Beyonic, will join MFS Africa’s leadership team. MFS Africa will also offer Beyonic’s enterprise-focused service as a product under its wider brand. The acquisition, terms of which are undisclosed, remains subject to regulatory approval by the Fair Competition Commission in Tanzania. Since being founded in 2009, Johannesburg-based…

BY ANTONY MUTUNGA In April, Kenya legalized the use of unmanned aircraft systems, for both commercial and recreational purposes. Their sale, assembly, modification, manufacturing and testing is subject to approval by the Kenya Civil Aviation Authority (KCAA) under the Civil Aviation (Unmanned Aircraft Systems) Regulations, 2019. Kenyans looking to own or import a drone will have to register with KCAA in order to be issued with a certificate.  Foreigners on the other hand will be allowed to rent one locally and get a 30-day temporary permit. The earlier proposed permit charge was reduced to Sh3,000 from Sh20,000. According to Gilbert…

Prototypes indicate that they will look quite similar to regular eyeglasses and not some futuristic wearables. BY DAVID ONJILI The most reliable of global tech reviewers have been whispering about it for the past few years, but now it is just a matter of when and not if. Apple will be releasing the Apple Glasses most likely between March and June 2021. But what are some of the rumoured features that Apple is likely to incorporate in them? The Google glasses that were to revolutionize the wearable segment of tech devices failed miserably. According to Tech reviewer, Clara Yoon, the…

Collaboration between governments, airports and airlines will be vital for travel corridors to work effectively. BY JEREMY SPRINGALL In 2020 new vocabulary has seeped into global consciousness. From ‘new normal’ to the more practical yet equally disliked ‘social distancing’, the additions to this year’s dictionary paint a bleak, dystopian picture. But in the last few weeks, fresh terms are being met with interest from wanderlust-stricken travellers and cautious optimism from governments and businesses hoping to rebound from the economic damage of COVID-19. ‘Travel bubbles’, ‘travel corridors’ and ‘air bridges’ are terms to describe formal agreements between governments allowing travellers to…