Author: NLM Correspondent

Questions and reflections from the Law Society’s 100-years of history in restraining the Kenyan state BY GILBERT MUYUMBU More than 120 years since the first lawyers arrived in Kenya as vakils from India, the country’s premier bar association, the Law Society of Kenya (LSK), has emerged, evolved, fought battles, won some and lost others, all in an effort to ensure respect for rule of law across the country, not least by the Kenyan state. LSK’s precise origin is unknown, although some authors trace it to 1911. Prior to its formation, advocates practising in Kenya were regulated by Kenya’s High Court,…

BY YINKA ADEGOKE While the global Covid-19 pandemic has overwhelmed governments and citizens around the world in all kinds of ways many of the challenges they had at the start of 2020 are still very much present. The first three months of 2020 were the second hottest on record going back to 1880, according to the National Centres for Environmental Information. Climate adaptation costs in Africa are predicted to reach up to $50 billion a year by 2050 in the event of the planet warming by an additional 2°C. The risks associated with climate change may be at least as…

BY SHADRACK MUYESU  In 2013, when confronted with a question on whether Messrs. Uhuru Kenyatta and William Ruto could participate in the upcoming presidential election in spite of the charges facing them at the International Criminal Court, the Supreme Court affirmed an accused person’s right to be presumed innocent until proof of guilt is established and, in so doing, cleared the dynamic duo to contest the historic election. According to the Court, the presumption of innocence remained until the accused exhausted all appellate avenues available to them. Sometime later, the courts also decided that an economic crime could not be…

GAD OUMA is the kind of man the woke would say ‘gets it’. He is also the kind of man who would watch ‘Need for Speed’ – he is a sucker for fast cars, a Formula One buff, and an ardent Arsenal fan. When I remarked that he is an enemy of the people because he told me he represented Kenya Power & Lighting Co. against the People (remember Apollo Mboya’s class action suit?) he pondered reflectively – something he would do a hundred times more during our interview – determined I was joking (I was) and then laughed. He…

Last year, remittance flows to low- and middle-income countries (LMICs) overtook foreign direct investment (FDI) as the largest source of incoming capital, having previously overtaken official development assistance (ODA) and private portfolio balance. This year, the World Bank, in its recent report, “COVID-19 Crisis Through a Migration Lens,” predicts that remittance flows will decline by 20 percent globally as the coronavirus renders swaths of people unemployed across the world. The report attributes this trend in part to the fact that immigrants are a demographic particularly vulnerable to unemployment during crises. Moreover, the authors say, travel restrictions and flight cancellations have…

By Thomas Vinod  The COVID-19 experience illustrates the failure of markets in preventing pandemics and the potential of public expenditures on a global scale to eventually spur a response. In a similar vein, the world’s top carbon emitters, China, the United States, India, Russia, and Japan—responsible for a combined 60 percent of global effluents —have done little to avert a climate catastrophe, and they must now lead a global fiscal stimulus to tackle the problem. A big difference from the COVID-19 experience: Climate spending is not just to put money in people’s pockets, but to promote low-carbon economic growth. The…

A key concern is that COVID-19 will turn the current democratic recession into a depression, with authoritarianism sweeping across the globe like a pandemic.  The coronavirus outbreak presents a range of new challenges to democracy and human rights. Repressive regimes have responded to the pandemic in ways that serve their political interests, often at the expense of public health and basic freedoms. Even open societies face pressure to accept restrictions that may outlive the crisis and have a lasting effect on liberty. The pandemic is unfolding at a time when democracy is in decline. According to data compiled by Freedom…

It is evident someone powerful is pulling the strings behind KRA’s unrelenting war on Keroche BY SGI ORIARO Charity is said to begin at home but for some of Kenya’s local industries – those not known to get along well with the state – this is a cruel fairy tale. No single story illustrates this better than the years-long tax wars between Keroche Breweries and Kenya Revenue Authority (KRA). The brewery’s proprietors Tabitha and Joseph Karanja are entrepreneurs who have painstakingly worked their way up the ladder. The Karanjas say they started a hardware shop in Naivasha back in the…

Border closings, confinement, and other social distancing measures to retard the spread of COVID-19 have brought the global economy to a near standstill. Forecasts of output losses and unemployment rates have increased as governments face a crisis that is like no others. The economies of developing countries have been hit as hard as, or even harder than, those of developed countries even though their lockdowns have not been as stringent. Developing economies are suffering the indirect effects of COVID-19 on external demand from China and advanced economies, resulting in a commodity price bust and reduced tourism, remittances, and capital inflows. In the…

By Katharina Fenz, Kristofer Hamel, and Baldwin Tong For nearly six months, journalists, pundits, and researchers have explored the ongoing and expected impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic through several core lenses: public health, mortality, economic prospects, and, most recently, food security. These domains—which collectively constitute the first three Sustainable Development Goals—are the primary means by which the “temperature” of humanity can be quickly benchmarked. But as efforts to flatten the curve of infections now begin to take hold, policymakers would be well advised to start looking beyond the current crisis management phase to the medium term. With some 55 million more people now living…