African nationalists, pan-Africanists and believers in African solutions for African problems still believe that Robert Mugabe is the epitome of anti-Imperialism and anti-neocolonial struggles in Africa and that his policies have made Zimbabweans and Africans proud. I have read in the Kenyan media letters to the editor and opinion essays lauding Mugabe for taking back land from white Zimbabwean – or Rhodesians as some of them prefer to be known – and redistributing it to black Zimbabweans. I have listened to Africans in academic conferences claiming that African leaders need to be as focused as Mugabe in dealing with Americans and…
Author: NLM writer
A cliché goes that Nigeria is a sleeping giant. The implication is that when Nigeria wakes up, Africa will also wake up and onto a journey to progress. How nice! Nigeria is more of a stillborn than a living, breathing and progressive being it is often made out to be. Here stillborn doesn’t mean it died, it just means Nigeria is stuck in its own colonial invention and postcolonial dystopia. Nigeria’s stillbirth is the subject of Diekoye Oyeyinka’s book, Stilborn (2014), published by East African Educational Publishers. It is the story of Nigeria’s convoluted history from 1943 up to 2010. It…
Although the Nation was where I grew up and matured, I never rose to the topmost rung of that group’s editorial ladder. What seems paradoxical is that, precisely when, at last, the door seemed open for me to move to the apex, I quit to plunge into the tempestuous sea of something called Kenya Times. Even in 1984, when I returned to my country for a third engagement at Nairobi’s Nation House – more than a decade after I had completed a three-year tour of duty in Dar es Salaam – the ghost of “Tanzanian communism” was still haunting me with…
IS President Uhuru Kenyatta’s MediaMax Network plotting to acquire the Standard Group? If the answer to the question is yes, everyone should be worried at this apparent trend towards oligopolistic media ownership in Kenya. A fledgling by any definition, MediaMax’s rapacious appetite is unprecedented in the history of regional media acquisitions. Evidently not satisfied with acquiring the People Daily, K24 TV, Kameme FM and Milele FM just the other day, MediaMax is spoiling for more. Now, it has trained its sights on Kenya’s oldest newspaper, The Standard, the country’s first private TV, KTN, the popular Radio Maisha, racy city tabloid, …
If the European court which claims to be “International” has no evidence against Uhuru Kenyatta and William Ruto, it should drum up the courage to say so and leave our leaders alone. I say so because evidence is the nub and core of the court system which Europe itself has recently bequeathed to the world through colonialism. No, the question is not whether our two leaders are guilty. In line with Europe’s own tenets of “the due process”, the question is only that justice delayed is justice denied. Yet, after five whole long years of a wild-goose chase which has…
BY WILLY MUTUNGA We have just concluded the first in what I believe will be a series of dialogues between the Council of Governors and the Judiciary. The Judiciary supports devolution of power and resources, not as an act of political posturing but as a constitutional duty to give voice and meaning to the principles outlined in Article 10. Though devolution is a broad concept, in Kenya, the county governments are its most visible emblem and representation, and we welcome their representatives to dialogue. We in the Judiciary promote dialogue with all stakeholders not with the intention of breaking any…
Fuelled by the unprecedented discoveries in Turkana, the State has been in a rush to dish out oil prospecting licences to eager international companies. Indeed, the exploration windfall has continued without question. For instance, Block L16 in Arabuko-Sokoke Forest, Kilifi County, was given out to Texas-based CAMAC Energy.But now the development faces strong headwinds. An attempt by CAMAC Energy to carry out seismic studies in the pristine forest has struck unprecedented disapproval. Local residents have received the support of dozens of conservation groups drawn from different parts of the world to oppose oil exploration in this sanctuary for birds and…
Only one in four Kenyans has access to electricity, according to The Socio-Economic Atlas of Kenya published by the Kenya National Bureau of Statistics (KNBS).Thus, 10 million Kenyans don’t benefit from this crucial resource. Despite this, its use is unevenly distributed throughout the country, with only seven out of 47 counties showing rates above the national average. The mapping indicates that use of electricity is predominant in densely populated areas and in urban centres especially along the great north road. Meanwhile, almost half of Kenya’s population is poor.But there are sub-locations in Wajir, Mandera, and Turkana that have poverty incidences…
Food rations have been halved for half a million refugees in Kenya as aid agencies struggle to meet “immense” global humanitarian needs, the World Food Programme (WFP) said on Friday, according to reports by Thomson Reuters Foundation.From mid-November, the refugees were to receive just over 1,000 kilocalories per day of cereals, pulses and oil as WFP does not have the $10 million (Sh900 million) a month required to provide the full daily rations. Most are Somalis and South Sudanese who have fled to Kenya from neighbouring civil wars. Kenya hosts about 607,000 refugees.“The humanitarian needs globally are absolutely immense… and…
Kenya is among eight countries globally whose wildlife protected areas have been bestowed with the first Green List honour by the the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN). It’s the first African country with a few of its wildlife areas green-listed. The announcement was made at the IUCN World Parks Congress 2014 in Sydney, Australia.Dr Erustus Kanga, Mr Edwin Wanyonyi and Mr Arthur Tuda, all of Kenya Wildlife Service (KWS) received the awards on behalf of the Ol Pejeta and Lewa conservancies. Other countries, whose protected areas are the first to be listed on the IUCN Green List of…
