Leading consumer goods manufacturer,Unilever, has announced a partnership with the United Nations World Food Programme (UN-WFP), the world’s largest humanitarian agency, to fight hunger in Kenya. To mark the World Food Day held on October 16, 2014, the company’s Royco brand has donated 600,000 nutritious meals to school children in Kenya and is rallying well wishers to pledge their support for building a world with zero hunger. Other countries that have benefitted from the one-million school meals programme include Indonesia and Philippines through its leading food brands. The meals will be delivered through WFP’s ‘Home Grown School Meals Programme’ aimed…
Author: NLM writer
Once Kenya’s key artery, Kenya Railways Corporation sagged under deep corruption and mismanagement in the 1980s through the 1990s, but the rot didn’t stop with the concession to Rift Valley Railways. In fact, the transition merely hastened the pilferage of the debris of the train that once drove the regional economy. In September this year, railway operator Rift Valley Railways (RVR) announced that it had secured Sh2.2 billion shillings to fund the acquisition of new locomotives. Communication from the concessionaire said that with this money, RVR would buy 20 locomotives from American conglomerate General Electric as part of its strategy…
The national digital registry has three core objectives: Strengthening national security, reducing crime and improving safety; driving efficiency, effectiveness and accountability in service delivery; and providing citizen centric services that are easy to access, available and affordable. More fundamentally, the register will capture details of people, land, assets and establishments. These are important objectives but of fundamental importance to the financial sector is the provision of a digital identity for individuals and corporate entities. Identity is a prerequisite for the stable, efficient, safe and inclusive financial sector that is envisaged pursuant to Vision 2030. It is the process of identification…
In Kenya, once upon a time, you symbolised high culture and educational achievement whenever you were seen merely carrying the STANDARD newspaper. Set up in Mombasa in 1902, the STANDARD remained Kenya’s only English-language daily all the way till the end of the 1950s. When I first visited Nairobi in 1955, to be seen with a copy was to be “with it”. But that was time that was. Nearly 60 years later, a daily was born in Nairobi called NATION that has given the STANDARD no end of grief since then. By 1966 – the year in which I joined…
CAMPAIGNER Richard Leakey has returned to the Maasai Mara, and one of the first social calls he makes is to the local Maasai elders. He says it is traditional in African society that if a known elder – the Swahili word is mzee – travels into other elders’ territory, he should meet with them. “When I ran [the Kenyan Wildlife Service] I had a reputation for being on the side of the Maasai, so they know me well,” he says. “When we arrived this morning, word went out that I was here.” The Maasai elders are clearly delighted to see…
Mandela, the man didn’t die. He simply journeyed on to the ancestral world. At the least this is the message one gets on finishing reading Good Morning Mr Mandela (2014) by Zelda la Grange. Zelda was Mandela’s minder pretty much from 1994 when he became the president of a free South Africa till his death in December last year. Good Morning Mr Mandela is a kind of a memoir of Zelda’s rise from a conservative, apartheid supporting, and young Afrikaner woman to the public figure that remained at the side of Mandela into his last days. This is a gripping book that…
The period between October 7, 2014 and October 10 , 2014 must have been the most disappointing for attentive consumers of Kenyan media. During this period, media choose to abandon their leadership positions, and instead decided to act in a drama written, produced and directed by the ruling elite. Their decision to become marionettes on the strings of State House puppeteers saw them package melodramatic events and present them as “news”. As you may recall, the International Criminal Court (ICC) had summoned President Uhuru Kenyatta to appear before it for a status conference on October 8, 2014. After the summons…
Fifty-year-old Amina Abdi is terribly unwell. Two years ago, she was diagnosed with diabetes type II. Ever since this diagnosis, Amina has been on insulin, specially controlled diet intake, and on physical exercise to manage the disease. Then a year later, the least expected happened. Abdi Quno, her 55-year-old husband was also diagnosed with the same condition. And as if these parents of four children did not have their fair share of health problems, Hawo Abdi, their seven-year-old daughter tested positive of diabetes type I three months ago. Medical experts at Kenyatta National Hospital (KNH) where the infant is receiving…
Fifty-year-old Amina Abdi is terribly unwell. Two years ago, she was diagnosed with diabetes type II. Ever since this diagnosis, Amina has been on insulin, specially controlled diet intake, and on physical exercise to manage the disease. Then a year later, the least expected happened. Abdi Quno, her 55-year-old husband was also diagnosed with the same condition. And as if these parents of four children did not have their fair share of health problems, Hawo Abdi, their seven-year-old daughter tested positive of diabetes type I three months ago. Medical experts at Kenyatta National Hospital (KNH) where the infant is receiving…
When, in 2005, a school board in Pennsylvania’s Dover city democratically voted to rid itself of all Fundamentalists, Pat Robertson charged that the school had “…voted God out…” Said he: “I’d like to say to the good citizens of Dover, if there is a disaster in your area, don’t turn to God. You just ejected him from your city.”
