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21:52
Revamping Kenyan Coastal Tourism
» For Love and Money Revamping Kenyan Coastal Tourism
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19:24
Minister Number Three Please
» You Missed This Kimunya may have resigned before dieing but Kenya remains at the mercy of a cartel busy plotting on the next scandal. Two Finance ministers and three mega scams in five years. Let minister number three please join the queue for project four and five. We haven’t seen anything yet. The king is annoyed so much so that he has zipped his lips till the deals planned prior to last year’s polls are sealed.
So the flower girls thought that they are part of PNU? Sorry folks your have passed your sell by date after propping up scoundrels when it mattered most. The REAL PNU is busy caucusing on who is the right replacement for Amos. Besides being an MP the non Kimabu/Muranga/Thika/Nyeri members don’t qualify. You cannot be trusted with the keys and necessary shredding. May be an outside chance for a soul from Meru as a late payback to Mzee Mwiraria.
Kenya truly has her owners who are determined to drain her of the last blood. You see even before the King presided over the political funeral of the price, vultures singing in the first language are busy circling prey Kenya. Golfing buddies have a difficult task balancing business and recreational interests.
Lowering the bar
One Daniel Moi must be having the last laugh when the present rate of LOOTING makes his 24 years of ruin look like a preface to an intense national rape as perfected by experienced and schooled HE Kibaki. You see poor old Uncle Dan never benefited from neither Makerere nor London School of Economics. No wonder it had to take him a whole 24 years to bring us down to our knees. In retrospect, Emilio owes Toro immeasurable gratitude for conditioning us so that the national auctioning can continue flawlessly.
The 10th parliament may have made history in having a cabinet minister resign but their heroics amount to nothing if they don’t put the same energy in shepherding a new constitution. Our salvation is singular premised on a new constitution and all else is patch work that will only succeed in sustaining the present unparalleled impunity.
Poor Kenya is presently held hostage by one single office whose occupant is a silent rogue busy mauling and extermination his own subjects by his acts of DECEPTION and FRAUD. The cat remains unchained and the birds live at his mercy. Who will bell the wild cat?
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16:57
Books
» intricately me Jungfrau is this book i was reading... Its a compilation of short stories for the Caine prize for African writing and its one of the best books i have read in a while. I would suggest that anyone who is inspired by great writing should read it... I love African writing... from the days of 'Things fall apart' by Chinua Achebe and the ' The river between' by Ngugi wa Thiongo to things more recent such as 'Half of a Yellow Sun' by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie and 'The infidel' by Ayan Hirsi Ali which i have mentioned several times before, African writing inspires me. I remember when i was still in Kenya i liked talking about the intellectual societies in Africa [here is an instance] and i was always emphasizing on how well people spoke and wrote, of course back then i was very naive and i had no idea what i was talking about, but looking back its great works like these that made me think that an intellectual societies had to exist, after all with so many great minds in Africa there had to be some sort of outlet or channel through which they would get to express their ideas.
Now maybe its just me but doesn't it seem like the best writing or perhaps the most outstanding books come from every where but America? I have always wondered about that... is it perhaps that school systems in third world countries are more rigorous than school systems here? Is it because we read more? Is it because our native languages have more expression so that challenges us to string words together more fluidly? Im sure alot of people will not agree with me, but to me it seems to me like this is true... Look at books like 'Brother im dying' by Edwidge Danticat from Cuba or 'Kiffe Kiffe tomorrow' by Faiza Guene from France... all these are exemplary examples of contemporary, well written books from elsewhere [not America]...but then again i am biased when you stay here for long enough you start looking for anything that reminds you of Africa...
I am seriously considering writing a book but i have no idea where to start so if you guys have any ideas let me know... Otherwise feel free to show me Examples of good writing from America, i am talking about fiction here of course but along the lines of the books mentioned above...I beg you to challenge me! Of course, if you have any other great reads that you would like to share let me know, Im always a sucker for a good read...
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10:24
Unilever Bails
» bankelele Redux: Things I missed on Kutwa Tuesday
Business Daily: My favorite newspaper is cutting back on online content to charge subscribers $ 132 per year?
Unilever (UK) have applied to buy the under-valued shares from minority shareholders – and if they succeed they will de-list from the NSE. They are offering to buy shares at 62 shillings ($0.95) when they had previously traded at 45/=. Unilever owns 88.23% of the Kenyan subsidiary and need less than 2% to reach their target of 90% and are already within reach [shares from the NSSF or Jubilee and KCB pensions’ will tip them over]
Other exchange changeovers’ have taken places [Serena and CFC] but they companies have continued to trade at the NSE. The NSE / CMA are loath to lose companies, and with (now) 6 suspended companies, this will be interesting. Both Carbacid and BOC were knee-capped by the CMA and their shareholders missed out on the NSE bull run over the last three years [both shares have been suspended since December 2005!]
Streak over briefly: Safaricom has dominated the market since the day it was listed, but yesterday was the first day that another company’s’ shares were traded more than Safaricom since June 9th [KCB had 45.7 million rights traded at ~Kshs. 5 as the Government’s 51 million rights which it forfeited were snapped up by other investors]
Results of the Housing Finance rights issue were released showing that it was fully subscribed [raising Kshs. 2.37 billion], though not wildly over-subscribed (3%?). Either the offer, was not enticing, or people have gotten smart enough not to pay for more than they know they will get (80% of those who applied paid for only what they were allocated, 23% applied for more), those who over will get 74% of extras shares, while Equity and Britak will gets 100% of what they applied for [as the Government and NSSF did not take part]). The big winner are transaction advisers First Africa Capital who are set to bag about Kshs. 31 million [$476,000] from the rights issue
Interest rates have quietly crept up in 2008. The Barclays Bond which closed today had rates of 11.5% for investors as do standard chartered fixed deposits as new loans from Barclays and Equity have crossed upwards of the 20%.
Jobs
most from the daily papers this week
Akili Africa: entry level programmers, ERP implementation consultants, customer relationship manager. d/l is 21/7
Capital Markets Authority: ICT manager, assistant managers [research & product development, policy analysis & planning, procurement & logistics, finance, investigations, ICT, human resources] officers [senior compliance, investigations, senior investigations, customer service, senior policy analysis & planning, legal enforcement, legal framework, policy analysis & planning] analysts [senior financial, financial, stores] d/l is 25/7 by snail mail 74800-00200 to the Acting CEO
CEO of the Constituencies development fund : apply by 31/7 using snail mail
EABL: sales director apply to hr.recruitment@eabl.com
Pilots at Kenya Airways
Management trainees at KCB. D/l is 16/7
Nairobi Stock Exchange: surveillance officer (detect illegal behavior/trades) . apply to recruitment@nse.co.ke by 18/7
Sameer Africa: head of procurement, planning, logistics, ERP administrator, network & systems administrator hr@sameerafrica.com by 21/7
MY gOVErNment
a bit of wishful political - mini-reshuffle
Ministry of Roads: John Michuki
Ministry of Finance: Peter Kenneth
Ministry of Environment: Amos Kimunya
Assistant Minister Home Affairs: Chirau Mwakwere
Minister for Transport: Franklin Bett
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8:04
Africa’s Internet Exchange Points (Map)
» White African Last week I talked about Google’s Global Cache, and how they will be housing this new project at Internet Exchange Points (IXP). A quote from Wikipedia’s definition explains the importance of IXPs best.
“The primary purpose of an IXP is to allow networks to interconnect directly, via the exchange, rather than through one or more 3rd party networks. The advantages of the direct interconnection are numerous, but the primary reasons are cost, latency, and bandwidth. Traffic passing through an exchange is typically not billed by any party, whereas traffic to an ISP’s upstream provider is.”
There are 18 IXPs in Africa in 15 countries (I stated 17 last week). A map of those countries is below (click on it to be taken to the interactive version):
Most of these are found in the capital of the country, but not always. For instance, iBiX is located in Ibadan, Nigeria not Abuja and Tanzania has two IXPs, one in Arusha and one in Dar es Salaam.
In list form, they are:
- Angola: IXP-ang
- Botswana: BINX
- Cote D’Ivoire: CI-IXP
- Dem. Rep. of Congo: KINIX
- Egypt: CR-IX and GPX
- Ghana: GIX
- Kenya: KIXP
- Nigeria: iBiX
- Mozambique: Moz-ix
- Rwanda: RINEX
- South Africa: JINX and GINX
- Swaziland: SZIXP
- Tanzania: TIX and AIXP
- Uganda: UiXP
- Zimbabwe: ZINX
There seems to be a definite advantage to having an IXP located in your country. Why then do so many African countries not have one? From my understanding, it isn’t cost prohibitive to create an IXP or to maintain it. Why would so many African nations, who all have local ISPs, not have a local IXP?
[Update: Michuki Mwangi, one of the godfather's of Kenyan tech (I believe he's responsible for getting Kenya's TLD: yourdomain.co.ke), responded with the following answers to my question.]
“Most of the reasons that countries dont have IXPs are non-technical and are either policy or politics. For instance in Senegal, Sonatel the Senegalese Telco operates in a monopolistic environment. There are almost no ISPs that exist there and those that do just resell ADSL links for the telco. In such a case, they own no infrastructure or services outside what the telco provides. Therefore, there’s been no need/demand for such. A similar case exists in Ethiopia.
In other countries like Nigeria, its getting the players to agree and look beyond the mistrust and competitive advantages that others have to form one. That takes a while.
In other countries its purely a regulatory policy issue that does not permit the existence of an IXP - its as a way of protecting the incumbent telco’s.”
If you are interested in finding out more about Africa’s IXPs, here are some resources:
AfrISPA - African Internet Server Provider Association
AfNOG - African Network Operators Group
EP.net - Africa - List of African IXPs with links
Packet Clearing House (PCH) - for information, statistics and locations
AfriNIC - African Internet Numbers Registry IP Addresses (IPv6)
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7:57
Google launches Africa blog
» Kenyan Pundit Click here for details. SHARETHIS.addEntry({ title: "Google launches Africa blog", url: "http://www.kenyanpundit.com/2008/07/09/google-launches-africa-blog/" });
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6:46 Ralph Bunche, edited by Beverly Lindsay
» Marian's Blog When I think of Ralph Bunche I remember the first time I saw the small sculpted bust of him in the U.N. conference center in Geneva. I also remember meeting his beautiful daughter, Joan, twelve years ago during the dedication...
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10th Parliament Enters Annals Of History As Kimunya Bows To Pressure
» You Missed This OK... Amos “I would rather die” Kimunya resigned, but what next?“If there is one thing I will NOT Do….
“I will NOT resign…
“I would rather die than resign.”
Those were the emotional words of one Amos Kimunya barely 72 hours ago. But yesterday the same man, without dying or hanging himself as he had sworn to do on national television, called a press conference that did not last 2 minutes and announced that he had asked the President to allow him to step aside for investigations to be carried out on the Grand Regency sale saga.
That was yet another lie from the former Minister who more than anything else cut out a reputation for telling fibs. The truth is that State House had finally made a decision and that is the way President Kibaki prefers to fire his pet cabinet ministers. One important point to be noted by those who keep on saying that Kimunya has done nothing wrong is the fact that the former Finance Minister told lies to a parliamentary select committee and to the entire nation. And he did not do that once. He did it several times. Secondly he has broken at least two laws. So kindly avoid making comments from a position of ignorance, my dear fellow Kenyans.
Anyway Kimunya’s resignation came a few minutes to one pm lunch time yesterday. That timing was very significant as we will see a little later in this post.
In a packed house in the afternoon members eagerly waited for the Prime Minister’s statement on the Grand Regency issue. But before the PM got his opportunity in the session that was televised live on at least 3 major TV stations in Kenya, Kenyans got a glimpse of the new kind of parliament. It was clear that the 10th parliament’s appetite for felling cabinet ministers was far from being quenched. Assistant Ministers stepping in for their bosses in the Ministries of Finance, Internal Security, Education and Agriculture realized that the usual standard of answering members’ questions just won’t wash with this parliament. Kudos, 10th parliament.
But before we go too far it is important to understand that history was made yesterday. Never in the history of the nation has parliament on its’ own violation or initiative caused the resignation of a cabinet minister in defiance of the executive. That has just NEVER happened before. In the often quoted case of former Vice President and now deceased, Dr Josephat Karanja, the plot to censure him was hatched in State House as crafty former President Moi wanted to get rid of his VP without risking a fall out amongst the powerful Kikuyus whom Moi greatly feared throughout his reign. So he got some MP to move the motion in parliament and gave the necessary instructions through the house which was then a mere rubber stamp of the executive.
This was not the case this time. In fact if truth be told, the house was packed yesterday because members were expecting fireworks. Kimunya’s hurried resignation just before parliament’s first session of the week in the afternoon was no coincidence. The timing speaks volumes and tells me that State house is getting a little anxious. And the main reason has more to do with the naming of certain names that State House does not want to see named in connection to the Grand Regency (My latest raw notes has the full fascinating story. Sorry folks, it is way too sensitive to publish even here.)
But Kenyans need to be even more vigilant now. Will we get to the bottom of the Grand Regency saga? That should be the top priority that we must pursue now with all diligence.
To answer that question, there is an ominous sign to look out for. That sign is who gets appointed to replace Kimunya. By the way this is one appointment that needs to be done urgently to avoid bringing the nation to a halt because the budget needs to be passed by the house to quickly release funds from the treasury for the new financial year.
If the new Finance Minister is from the ODM arm of the Grand coalition government then Kenyans will need to head to the hills because that will be a “grand bribe” to “maliza hio maneno ya Grand Regency”. We can breathe a wee bit easier if Kimunya’s replacement is from PNU.
I am aware that there are two separate investigations going on at the moment in connection to the Grand Regency scam. One by the executive arm of government spear-headed by the Prime Minister and the other by a parliamentary committee. If there are any bets to be placed here, I would put my money on the latter investigation which the speaker ruled yesterday has to finish its’ work within two weeks starting yesterday. Readers of this site know who the main man behind the Grand Regency is, the question is whether that person and those close to him linked to the scam will ever be named.
In conclusion the Prime Minister’s statement provoked at least one MP to ask for his resignation. That MP was Cyrus Jirongo. But again in my latest raw notes I explain why the PM is in a very difficult situation on this one. The PM’s statement confirmed what Kenyans already knew—that there is a lot that does not quite add up with the hurried sale of the hotel. It also confirmed that Kimunya had lied again and again (very strange that he should say in his resignation statement that the truth will set him free).
It will be every interesting to see if the Grand Regency saga will have any more casualties and indeed what other achievements the 10th parliament will chalk up in the months to come.
I leave you with a question to mull over. Where does Kimunya’s resignation leave the increasingly tribal Uhuru Muigai Kenyatta who was the only cabinet colleague who came out in his defense?
P.S. As I have said in this blog before, the Finance Ministry is by far the most corrupt ministry of the entire Kenyan government because all funds have to be released from Treasury and the Finance docket has the power to with-hold funds if they are suspicious. Naturally that has never happened. Admittedly it is also true that the ministry has been reduced to mere messenger status by the executive but isn’t there a single person who emerged from the womb of a Kenyan mother who would have stood up and said NO to the corrupt presidents of the past and those powerful people close to them?
Interestingly the only Finance Minister in Kenyan history not to be linked to any scandal was the first Kenyan to hold the office, a man called James Gichuru who in the early days was an enthusiastic supporter and ally of Tom Mboya. The truth is that Gichuru was in fact involved in a scandal, but it had nothing to do with signing off billions from the treasury. You see the man loved his drink (the minister preferred undiluted whisky) and what irked State House even more was where he liked to have it. Usually it was in some seedy bar along River Road or Luthuli Avenue in Nairobi. The “scandal” was when as a full cabinet Minister in charge of the Finance docket, he went for a drink in one of these seedy bars and got so drunk that he forgot his briefcase full of highly sensitive documents there. It is not known whether the briefcase was ever recovered.