China banks on media to dispel BRI debt risks Beijing wants to deploy international media outlets to allay fears about its trillion-dollar global trade and infrastructure initiative. President Xi Jinping called on media outlets in the countries involved in the Belt and Road plan to fashion stories about the scheme in a way that boosts public support. Xi made the comments at the first council meeting of the Belt and Road News Network (BRNN), an association consisting of 182 media outlets from 86 countries which include China Daily newspaper, French daily La Provence, Russian news agency Tass and South Africa’s Independent Media. Gold smugglers…
Author: NLM Editor
By ANTONY MuTUNGA Sub-Saharan Africa has continued to produce among the fastest growing economies in the world in the last five years. Despite this achievement, the region has seen its overall economic growth take a hit, consistently recording below 3 percent since 2015. According to Africa’s Pulse report by the World Bank, sub-Saharan Africa has recorded economic growth of 3 percent, 1.6 percent and 2.7 percent between 2015 and 2017. The trend continued into 2018 when the region recorded a weighted growth of 2.3 percent. Not only was this a slowdown economically but it also trailed the region’s mean population…
As President Uhuru Kenyatta’s final term stutters towards an increasingly closer 2022 expiry, one of his flagship legacy projects, the much touted Universal Health Coverage (UHC) program chugs along, urged on by a hopeful public keen for relief from astronomical health care costs, and an overzealous bureaucracy eager to please an increasingly flustered master at the tail end of an eventful decade in power. UHC was launched to counter the runaway costs of healthcare that have been sending poor Kenyans with treatable ailments to an early grave, and consigning thousands of families to poverty every year. More precisely, the program…
By Philip Otieno According to NASA Earth Observatory, at least 70 percent of the earth’s surface is covered by water; 97 percent of water is made up by seas and oceans. Africa has a combined coastline of 38 countries covering some 17,000 square kilometres. Its continental shelf is well endowed with aquatic life, natural resources oil and gas, which render seas as one of the biggest unexploited industries in Africa. Seas do not have fences or Donald Trump’s much talked about wall with Mexico, and aquatic animals and minerals know no territorial borders; it is up to us to devise…
Concerns about an impending debt crisis in Africa are rising alongside the region’s growing debt levels. As of 2017, 19 African countries had exceeded the 60 percent debt-to-GDP threshold set by the African Monetary Co-operation Program (AMCP) for developing economies, while 24 countries had surpassed the 55 percent debt-to-GDP ratio suggested by the International Monetary Fund. Surpassing this threshold means that these countries are highly vulnerable to economic changes and their governments have a reduced ability to provide support to the economy in the event of a recession. While debt is a global issue, Africa’s past debt crises have been…
Since the bombing of the US embassy in Nairobi in 1998 by a then little-known Al-Qaeda affiliate group, Al-Shabaab, Kenya has been attacked countless times. But we did not invade Somalia for that reason, until the kidnappings of British tourists off the coast of Lamu in 2011. That invasion was deemed illegal as it lacked requisite UN ratification. UNOSOM I and II were the efforts applied by the UN to bring peace and stability to Somalia. When those failed, they packed and left in 1995, leaving Somalia at the mercy of Al-Shabaab – until recently. The first Somalia government set…
By Edwin Libasya & Victor Munene It must be olds news now that over 80 percent of documents in the country purporting to be policy documents – particularly public policy documents – are in reality contemptible, intellectually dishonest write ups. This could be simply picking from the proliferation of fake merchandise in Kenya – fake currency, gold, certificates, qualifications and many other commodities have become common place. The public sector has, in recent times, been hit by an unprecedented craze for policymaking. Every other department or section is doing a policy paper or document. This in essence is a very…
By Okwaro Oscar Plato African leaders have historically converged in Addis Ababa Ethiopia to take stock of their successes and celebrate their “unity” – a perennially elusive standard for nations since the death of Kwame Nkrumah, and only fleetingly enjoyed buy elites, rulers and dictators. African liberation, since the 1990s when African intellectuals began to describe it as a “wave of democratisation” sweeping across the continent, has rapidly dismantled the vestiges of authoritarianism, military rule and satellite states. A conference of the African Union’s predecessor, the Organisation of African Unity, for most of the 1970s and 1980s was dominated by…
By Fuad Abdirahman Regime overthrows do not always achieve ideal results – that is, an overhaul of systems. In rare instances they may cause a shift in policy, but often all they achieve is a change in leader(ship). More often than not, the coups themselves fail, making bad situations worse, as happened in Burundi. Besides military overthrows, as in Egypt and more recently Algeria and Sudan – which was properly a combination of civilian agitation and military response – very few countries have had proper popular uprisings, a case in point being Tunisia. Yet other countries have experienced regime change…
By Shadrack Muyesu Regulation 30 of the Food (Food crops) Regulations 2018 prohibits a grower from using human faecal matter and raw animal manure to produce food crops. It is a curious provision. The Ministry of Agriculture says that the Regulations are aimed at addressing various emergent challenges in the food crops industry, thereby boosting food security and enabling President Uhuru Kenyatta’s Big Four Agenda. An alternative view is that far from achieving this aim, the Regulations not only cripple the small farmer but also threaten food security in the long term. Besides, they come at a great cost to…