BY Michael Duncan The absence of a law to govern petroleum exploration and production in Kenya has stalled the issuance of new licences even as foreign companies register interest in the country’s blocks resulting from discoveries of crude oil deposits. The Nairobi Law Monthly has established that the Energy ministry is yet to gazette new blocks close to three years now. The government is said to be awaiting the new law, which will update the current Petroleum (Exploration & Production) Act that dates back to 1984. The Petroleum (Exploration & Production) Bill 2015, together with the Energy Bill 2015,…
Author: NLM writer
BY James Muliro The capital gains tax (CGT) continues to elicit more debate regarding its efficacy especially on the sale of equities. This comes even as tax experts say the government could raise the tax in June and thereafter in a gradual process meant to align it with other regional countries. The CGT was ‘sneaked’ into the Finance Bill 2014 and became effective from January 1, 2015. It levies a 5 per cent charge on the net gain from sale of property and marketable securities like shares and bonds. Residents are charged 30 per cent net gain while non-residents…
There’s no one absolute checklist that can tell whether a stock is attractive, but there are signs that bode well for any stock. Below are four: Rising Earnings Estimates: Buying into rising estimates increases the chance that more good news is coming. WSJ.com and Yahoo Finance are among sites whose stock-quote pages show current earnings estimates as well as how those estimates have changed in recent months. Room for a Higher Valuation: Value investing works. That is, shares that are inexpensive relative to some measure of economic appeal, like earnings, tend to outperform those that are expensive over long time…
Airtel Kenya launched a new bundled tariff last month to challenge conventional post-paid tariff models. This is aimed at taking on its biggest rival, Safaricom, as it seeks to grow the mobile telecommunications firm’s market share. The UnlimiNET bundle allows subscribers to enjoy 20 free minutes voice calls to any network, 100 free SMSs to any network and 100MB data daily from as little as Sh50 each day. For Sh100 a week, one gets 300MBs, 60 minutes to any network and 500 SMSs to any network. “We sought to find out the essential services that most of our consumers…
BY Oscar Okwaro Plato At the height of the Cold War, a clear binary emerged among writers in Africa regarding the stances they took or needed to take. There have been numerous other battles of ideology over which writers have been compelled to take sides, including colonialism, apartheid in South Africa and postcolonial dictatorship, among others. These issues have either united African writers or divided them. Those that have united African writers included colonialism and apartheid – African creative workers and writers were unanimous in their rejection of colonialism and its assumptions. Most writings just before and soon after…
By Tom Odhiambo The Somali are a people Kenyans love to have, if we accept the cliché. On the one hand the Somalis bring you all the little goods that we would wish to buy but can’t afford on the main street. So, we have loved the Somalis in Eastleigh, for helping us buy that flat screen TV, latest smartphone or “designer” suit. But we also suffer from a severe case of seeing in one Somali all Somalis. Kenyans casually talk about Somalis as if they are terrorists where al Shabaab is concerned. We aren’t the only ones who stereotype Somalis though. In…
BY David Matende As TV viewers stare at blank screens following the shutdown of the analogue signals of NTV, Citizen, KTN and QTV by the Communication Authority of Kenya (CAK), Kenya’s credentials as a press freedom proponent are under threat. The news darkness occasioned by the switch off was aptly symbolic of the gloomy phase the country finds itself under the increasingly intolerant government of President Uhuru Kenyatta. International press freedom watchdog, Reporters without Frontiers, says, in its 2014 World Press Freedom Index, that Kenya has dropped a significant 19 places from last year to position 90 out…
BY Kevin Motaroki As far back as Longido, some 80km out of Arusha, from the sleep-inducing lull of the well-paved road, the all-too-familiar dryness of the expansive Ilarusa environ (the Ilarusa are one group of Tanzania’s Maasai) the roll of the dozen hills one encounters, and the mild humidity in the air, one, almost too suddenly, gets the notion that there isn’t much difference between major towns in Kenya and this Tanzanian city. Well, one would be wrong. A little. Arusha is green. Not in the pretentious fashion that most of our towns are, with sporadic potted plants to…
BY Maore Ithula In the last few months, many women have been stripped in public in an unprecedented wave of a rare crime, with the felons accusing their victims of dressing indecently or provocatively. Many of the offenders have since been apprehended and they are now at various stages of being prosecuted. The Last month the Nairobi Law Monthly established that the offenders have a big psychological problem, which emanates from poor parenting. A family psychologist says such anarchic behavior among Kenyans stems from the rising numbers of dysfunctional families in the country. Dr Philomena Ndambuki, an education psychologist…
The sight of a haggard, impoverished Maurice Odumbe breaking down on national television as he recounted the heartrending story of his fall from grace during an interview sometime in January this year was a startling reminder of just how fickle all the money, fame and glory that comes with modern day sports can be. Viewers, and indeed many of his fans, were shocked to see a player who not so many years ago was the poster boy of the Kenyan national cricket team, now stripped bare of the infamous majestic flamboyance that once defined his lifestyle on and off the…
