The High Court has once again suspended the government’s implementation of the Maisha Namba digital identity card, which is set to be renewed every 10 years. Justice Lawrence Mugambi has issued a conservatory order halting the implementation of the Unique Personal Identifier (Maisha Namba), the third-generation Maisha Card, the Maisha Digital ID, and the Maisha Database until a new application is heard and decided. Introduced in 2023 to replace second-generation identity cards, the Maisha Card features a Unique Personal Identifier known as Maisha Namba. The Haki na Sheria Initiative, a human rights group, has challenged this rollout for the second…
Author: Special Correspondent
Barack Obama has endorsed Vice-President Kamala Harris to be the Democratic presidential nominee, ending days of speculation over whether he would support her. Former President Obama and ex-First Lady Michelle Obama said in a joint statement that they believe Ms Harris has the “vision, the character, and the strength that this critical moment demands”. Mr Obama was reportedly among more than 100 prominent Democrats Ms Harris spoke to after President Joe Biden announced last Sunday he was dropping out of the race. In a statement at the time, Mr Obama praised Mr Biden’s exit, but stopped short of endorsing Ms…
A report by the Auditor General has revealed that the National Youth Service (NYS) cannot account for over Sh1 billion, which was possibly lost through irregular expenditures and payments. The audit report by Auditor General Nancy Gathungu flagged irregular expenditures amounting to Sh303 million, along with other unexplained illegal payments totalling millions of shillings. This report covers the period up to June 30, 2023. According to the report, taxpayers may have lost over Sh300 million paid to contractors for projects that have stalled for several years. Ms Gathungu reports that some projects were declared shoddy, resulting in no value for…
Anti-government protests on Tuesday spread to counties outside Nairobi to demand accountability in the national and county governments. The protests initially concentrated in Nairobi and Mombasa, expanded to other counties such as Kisumu, Nakuru, and Nyamira. The youth appeared to target the offices of several governors accused of corruption, poor service delivery, and nepotism, among other issues. Among the governors targeted were James Orengo (Siaya), Amos Nyaribo (Nyamira), Fernandes Barasa (Kakamega), Jonathan Bii (Uasin Gishu), Prof. Anyang’ Nyong’o (Kisumu), Abdulswamad Nassir (Mombasa), and Joseph Ole Lenku (Kajiado). In Nairobi CBD, businesses faced disruption as protesters clashed with police. Two protestors…
Donald Trump, the presumptive Republican nominee, received enough delegate votes on Monday to officially become the party’s nominee and announced that he has chosen Ohio Senator J.D. Vance as his running mate in the Nov. 5 presidential election. The former president garnered a majority of votes from delegates at the Republican National Convention in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. He reached the required threshold with votes from Florida, which were announced by his son, Eric Trump. Trump is scheduled to formally accept the party’s nomination in a prime-time speech on Thursday. He will lead the Republican Party through a third consecutive election, following…
Rwandan President Paul Kagame is on course to extend his 24-year rule by another five years in a landslide victory, with most of the votes counted from Monday’s election. He has 99.15 per cent of the vote so far, with about 79 per cent of ballots counted, partial results announced by the electoral commission show. The 66-year-old again faced no meaningful opposition, with leading figures banned. His two opponents shared less than 1 per cent of the vote. Mr Kagame thanked Rwandans for their trust in an address at his Rwandan Patriotic Front (RPF) party headquarters. “These are not just…
Families of the 32 Kenyans who were among the 157 victims of the March 2019 Ethiopian Airlines plane crash have started receiving compensation from Boeing, amounting to billions of shillings. The airplane crashed shortly after take-off from Addis Ababa’s Bole International Airport, killing 149 people on board, including 32 Kenyans, as well as individuals from various other nationalities. The flight was scheduled to fly from Bole Airport in Ethiopia to Jomo Kenyatta International Airport in Nairobi. In January, Boeing agreed to compensate the victims’ families after the United States Department of Justice found flaws in the plane’s design, issues that…
Veteran journalist, the late Laston Mutegi Njau has been eulogised as a Fearless journalist who throughout his long career called power to account. During his burial service at Chuka, in Tharaka-Nithi County, colleagues, friends and family gathered to celebrate the life of the media guru, whose career in the industry spans over 40 years. Born on December 22, 1949, Mutegi Njau joined Kenya Broadcasting Corporation (KBC) in 1979 as a scriptwriter and a producer at the then Voice of Kenya (VOK) and would go on to script the weekly current affairs programme, Dunia Wiki Hii and co-hosting the popular weekly…
Kenya joined the rest of the Member States of the African Union (AU) in commemorating the African Anti-Corruption Day on Thursday. July 11th of every year is set aside so that concerned Africans can pause to reflect on anti-corruption progress in their communities in regards to the successful or unsuccessful anti-corruption initiatives and interventions and to chat the way forward. The event’s commemoration theme reflected on the reforms required to strengthen existing whistleblower mechanisms including protection of whistleblowers, effective anonymous reporting systems and the role of citizens in advancing the elusive quest for accountable governance. The Ethics and Anti-Corruption Commission…
Kenya will not pay the Sh150 million ‘blood money’ required to save a Kenyan on death row in Saudi Arabia, Prime Cabinet Secretary Musalia Mudavadi has said. Appearing before the Senate plenary on Wednesday, Mr Mudavadi said the government lacks the necessary funds for the payment, but negotiations are ongoing after the Ministry of Foreign and Diaspora Affairs intervened to halt the execution. “I wish to state that, a few weeks ago, I officially wrote to the foreign minister of Saudi Arabia, intervening on behalf of Mr Munyakho. The execution was deferred and did not take place,” Mr. Mudavadi said.…