Author: NLM Correspondent

By Joy Cherotich Kenya shelters about 500,000 refugees and asylum seekers, according to a report by the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees, UNHCR-Kenya. 53.7 percent of these refugees and asylum seekers come from Somalia, 24.7 percent from South Sudan, 9 percent from Congo, and 5.8 percent from Ethiopia. The rest are from Rwanda, Burundi, Eritrea, and Uganda. Based on UNHCR statistics, 44 percent of them reside in Kakuma and 40 percent in Dadaab. Urban refugees make up to 16 percent of the population of refugees and asylum seekers. A camp market assessment was done in Dadaab and Kakuma by…

With time, it is increasingly clear that the game was always to prop-up Gideon Moi By Kenyatta Otieno The coronavirus stopped reggae. For the first time in many decades, for a whole month from early March, nobody spoke about politics. It was not even featured on the local news where it has been a mainstay for as long as any of us can remember. Both the Kieleweke – which drives the BBI agenda — and Tangatanga brigades went on mute. Raila Odinga and William Ruto retreated to their cocoons in self-imposed quarantine. Then, in response to questions about their whereabouts,…

Three months after the first case of COVID-19 was detected in sub-Saharan Africa, the region has made progress in tackling the virus. Many countries implemented lockdowns and key public health measures early, and these appear to have helped slow down the spread of the coronavirus. However, there are concerns that if these measures are relaxed too quickly, COVID-19 cases could start to increase rapidly. “We are seeing some rapid increases compared to two weeks ago. Reported cases have tripled in five countries and doubled in ten countries, noting that most countries still have fewer than 1,000 reported cases,” said Dr…

The coronavirus testing row between Kenya and Tanzania is getting dirty with retaliatory politics creeping in. Tanzania last month called Kenya’s testing of truck drivers at the Namanga border point a smear campaign against tourism in Arusha, Tanzania. A statement from the Arusha Regional Commission said Tanzania had put in place a system of collecting samples for testing drivers crossing the Namanga border from Kenya. Curiously, the statement also gave a tabulation of infections at the border, including those of Kenyans, but kept the numbers for a certain country secret in a paragraph that reads: “Samples were taken from 44 truck drivers from Kenya on…

Kenyan authorities are potentially facilitating transmission of the Covid-19 virus while forcefully quarantining tens of thousands of people in facilities that lack proper sanitation, protective equipment and food, Human Rights Watch, Kenya Human Rights Commission, and Journalists for Justice said in May. The authorities have also held crowds of people in the arrivals area at the Nairobi airport for more than four hours with no physical distancing, sanitizers, or masks; ferried people in packed buses with little ventilation; and, at the quarantine facilities, failed to enforce quarantine guidelines issued by the Health ministry. The authorities also have forced people into quarantine…

The 2008-2009 global recession, African economies performed better than other developing countries, because of (a) higher commodity prices, which supported export earnings; (b) lower debt, which provided needed fiscal space, avoiding public sector layoffs; and (c) the resiliency of the informal sector, which continued to supply the domestic economy, maintaining incomes and consumption for the majority of households. Africa will not be able to count on these mitigating factors during the coronavirus crisis. Commodity prices are not favorable, fiscal space is extremely limited, and, as a result, the informal sector, where 60 to 80 percent of Africa’s labor force works,…

Covid-19 brings into stark relief a long-standing discourse on the role or derogations and claw-back clauses on the continent and now, more now than ever, clarity on this long-standing debate is needed. In response to Covid-19, countries in Africa have imposed total or partial lockdowns, in the process allowing authorities to take actions necessary to safeguard national security, maintain law and order, protect citizens’ lives and property, keep essential public services working, concentrate relief resources and direct them to the areas of greatest need, and in general to restore normality. While providing a degree of flexibility necessary to respond to…

By Constanze Stelzenmüller With the coronavirus requiring that states take quick action to protect their citizens, constitutional actors like courts, governors, and even citizens must be wary that pandemic responses do not morph into opportunities for authoritarians to solidify control. It has become a truism to assert that the pandemic highlights the enduring importance of the nation-state. What is less clear, but as important, is what it does to nation-states’ operating systems: constitutions. Constitutions provide the legal principles for the governance of states, and their relationships with civil society. They are the rule books that make the nation-state effective, legitimate…

BY SARA JAMES AND SARAH MIDFORD if recent television shows are anything to go by, we’re a little concerned about the consequences of technological development. Dystopian narratives abound. Black Mirror projects the negative consequences of social media, while artificial intelligence turns rogue in The 100 and Better Than Us. The potential extinction of the human race is up for grabs in Travellers, and Altered Carbon frets over the separation of human consciousness from the body. And Humans and Westworld see trouble ahead for human-android relations. Narratives like these have a long lineage. Science fiction has been articulating our hopes and…

Debates on the ‘father’ of African literature are patronising and sickening By Odongo Peter Why should African literature have a father? It seems the more we consider a matter settled, the more the matter keeps gazing at us. The issue of the father of modern African literature has been the subject of many literary debates, academic papers and even monographs. In an article in the Saturday Nation of 4th April 2020, Benson Otieno revisits this matter, with a forceful title dismissing claims that Achebe was the father of African literature. Otieno’s piece, ‘Why Achebe was not the father of African…