BY HAROLD AYODO Lawyers from the region can now offer professional services with ease in Kenya, Uganda, Tanzania, Rwanda, Burundi and Zanzibar. This follows the drafting of a Mutual Recognition Agreement (MRA) that seeks to allow cross border legal practice in East Africa. The outgoing East Africa Law Society (EALS) President James Aggrey Mwamu said that the document will be ratified by members before getting a nod from regional Governments.The MRA follows consensus by the Law Society of Kenya, Tanganyika Law Society, Uganda Law Society, Burundi Bar Association, Rwanda Bar Association and Zanzibar Law Society.Mwamu said that the MRA will kick start…
Author: NLM writer
Private equity player, Ascent, has opened offices in Kampala and is now eyeing Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, by close of the year.Ascent, which manages the Ascent Rift Valley Fund, raised $50million (Sh4.5 billion) to be invested in growth enterprises in Uganda, Ethiopia and Kenya. Richard Mugera will head the Uganda offices. Speaking during the launch of Ascent’s Kampala office, Mr. Mugera reiterated Ascent’s commitment to not only bring capital closer to the businesses, but also to learn the unique investment environment. “Ugandans are natural entrepreneurs. However, the growth of promising Ugandan enterprises is sometimes hampered by lack of access to growth capital…
BY EDITH HONAN | THOMSON REUTERS FOUNDATION Emerald-coloured tea bushes blanketing the rolling hills of Nandi County have long provided a livelihood for small-scale farmers, helping make Kenya one of the world’s biggest tea exporters.But ideal weather and bigger harvests, instead of producing bumper earnings, have led to a glut of Kenya’s speciality black tea. Samuel Busienei, a 72-year-old tea farmer, says he earns 40 percent less for each kilogramme of tea sold than he did three years ago and is considering tearing up his crop.“It was a very good life,” said Busienei, who first planted the crop in the…
BY TOM ODHIAMBO The market. The church. The media. What do these three have in common? Not much, at face value. But really a lot, if you dig a little bit more. These three have become the unholy alliance that is lulling Kenyans into facile hopefulness whose consequences is really hopelessness. This trinity is powerful, very. It offers the goods, here on earth. And if you can’t get your new widescreen TV set, latest model of a four-wheeler, an apartment in the green and leafy suburbs (how lazy can Kenyan editors be; where are the lawns and trees in Nairobi),…
BY PHILIP OCHIENG How would one define any political rivalry between Mzee Jomo Kenyatta and Mwalimu Julius Nyerere? First, they led two separate states and then, at the time that concerns us here (a few years after independence), the one and the other had already reached the summit of power as presidents of their respective countries. Between the twain, therefore, the question of rivalry could not yet arise.There was, of course, a third protagonist, namely, Milton Obote of Uganda, across the Great Lake. That reminds us that, by then, there had emerged a solid trophy to vie for – namely,…
BY TNLM AND IRIN The imam had taken barely two steps outside the mosque in Mombasa where he preached when masked gunmen on a motorbike opened fire. One of the bullets tore through Sheikh Salim Bakari Mwarangi’s hand as he tried in vain to defend himself. Two others hit his stomach, condemning the preacher to a slow and painful death. Police said that Mwarangi, 57, was a pro-government peace activist, an ideological moderate who was likely killed by extremists in the battle for Mombasa’s soul, The Times of London reported last month.More than 21 Islamic clerics have been gunned down…
BY TOM ODHIAMBO A common injunction for healthy living addicts is drink eight glasses of water every day. The explanations for having to drink all that water are often not convincing but it is a maxim by which many poor souls and bodies live. Today those eight glasses have become so many litres of bottled water. Indeed there are children – and many be some adults – who don’t know how tap water tastes. For tap water – still the best water all over the world and a major source of much bottled water – is nowadays spoken of by…
BY DAVID MATENDE Two months ago, the name Kapedo would not have signaled on the national radar. It was not until the tragic incident in which bandits killed 19 police officers that the small trading centre on the Turkana/Baringo border was thrust into the national limelight.The reason is simple: National media is simply never bothered with such “forlorn” and “far-flung” places, until something horrible happens there. It is not news from the “Wild North’” if it is not about banditry, cattle rustling, drought, hunger and lately attacks by Al Shabab.Media’s habit of reporting only the gloomy news from Kenya’s northern…
BY MAORE ITHULA Two weeks before an explosion on Nakuru-Eldoret highway burned five people to death and left eight others with burns when they recklessly scrambled to scoop fuel spilt by an overturned tanker, The Nairobi Law Monthly had held an interview with Dr Loise Kahoro, the head of Plastic Surgery and Burns Unit at Kenyatta National Hospital KNH. She talked about the odds in treating patients with more than 50 percent burns in public hospitals. It helps only so much if they seek treatment at Kenya’s only referral Burns Unit at KNH. This publication has established that the problem…
BY ROGER PIELKER JR On Wednesday, Nov. 12, 2014, FIFA released summary results of its internal investigation into the various allegations, and to the surprise of no one, found the 2018 and 2022 World Cup decisions to be “well-thought, robust, and, professional.” Despite uncovering a litany of dodgy episodes and running into investigatory obstacles, such as destroyed computers from the Russian delegation, FIFA concluded that “the various incidents which might have occurred are not suited to compromise the integrity of the FIFA World Cup 2018/2022 bidding process as a whole.” In other words, this is basically par for the course.…
