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21:20
Focus Is Key
» For Love and Money Focus Is Key
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20:55 NSSF: The National Stealing & Sorrows Fund
» Kenyanentrepreneur.com What is going on at the NSSF is very bad. A lot of people may not know this, but Nicholas Biwott stole a lot of money from the NSSF when he was in power and by doing that, he essentially left a lot of older people broke. Now, it appears that these wayward politicians are once [...] -
20:06
Born into Brothels
» Kenyanentrepreneur.com A documentary on the children of prostitutes growing up in Calcutta’s red light district of Sonagachi. This is one of the best documentaries I have ever watched. ** you can watch it in a full screen by clicking on the box with the arrows in it.
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11:11
Attempt to uproot railway line in Kibera
» Kenya Imagine -
Imagination and Hate
» Kenya Imagine Kenyans have done little important imaginative work since Independence. Kenyans who aren't poor hate those who are. That these two facts are interestingly connected is not obvious. It should be.
My little argument attempts to connect the two, via the Kenyan middle classes.
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8:27
For The Prime Minister
» tHiNkEr'S rOoM Willing hands have pitched in to address the Prime Minister’s complaint as to having nowhere to spray his napalm or drop his depth charges
© M for tHiNkEr'S rOoM, 2009. | Permalink | 10 comments | Add to del.icio.us
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5:31
NIC Soars
» bankelele The NIC bank AGM will be held of April 29. The company has 24,000 shareholders up from 20,000, and while the top 10 shareholders remain unchanged, they are in for the long haul in the bank which is diversifying its business strategy as a re-branded NIC that aims to be a regional giant.
- NIC is now into banc assurance – through NIC insurance agents which partners with two leading insurance companies and had a modest profit in 2008
- NIC acquired 58% of Solid Stockbrokers and has now upped its stake to 88.3% through new capital and buying out other shareholders. The cost so far is about Kshs. 423 million and it made a 2008 profit of Kshs. 5.2 million. The brokerage and investment firms are capitalized at 349 million and 219 million well above the 30 million and 50 million minimums set by the capital markets authority (CMA). Also, legal claims brought by customers of Solid and which NIC inherited in the deal are pegged at Kshs 84 million.
- NIC also plans to complete a deal to acquire 51% of a Tanzanian Bank - Savings & Finance Commercial Bank by 30 April 2009 at a cost of Kshs. 322 million. S&F has in 2007 the equivalent of of Kshs 2.37 billion in assets,with deposits of Kshs 2 billion and loans of Kshs 1.3 billion and pre-tax profit of Kshs. 77 million. -
TrackIt Overkill
» bankelele KTN have been carrying a sensational three part series on car robberies, with a focus on Track-It. This is a company that installs tracking devices in cars to trace their location if reported as stolen and enable the car to be be recovered by either the company or police
For heavily stolen cars, tracking devices are recommended for owners. Some banks and insurance companies may even insist that they are installed as part of financial contracts. Fleet owners also appreciate using the devices which can assist in fleet management and monitoring
It’s a well researches story, they even obtained a list of alleged track-it customers including three members of parliament, who volunteered for their cars to be ripped apart and checked for the devices, which were apparently not found (KTN reported they found devices in just 50% of the cars they checked)
The saga has played out in an even more sordid as the managing director of that company was recorded on camera offering to bribe the journalists with about $12,000 after admitting it was true that his company had not installed tracking devices in some cars, despite charging their owners 45,000 ~ $560. The devices are small electronic units that are hidden, so that even car thieves won’t know
KTN have led with the story three nights in a row, Nairobi, but is it overkill? urely there are more pressing matters that can be covered in the news. The car theft story has led ahead of political and other events of the day.
Car theft is not a new thing; car jacking have been covered, bus passengers are robbed or terrorized, chopped up cars are fund in agricultural fields and industrial sheds every other week. To spin this story out of three prime time nights is over kill.
Also over looked in the story, and a fact alluded to by the embattled Trackit owner is business competition in the story in the business competition. The owners of the standard/KTN may also be linked to a rival company, industry leader - Cartrack. It would be unsual to KTN to acknopwlede a corporate link, but if thers’s one it should be stated. Maybe it would have been better if another media house e.g. NTV had broken this story, but I doubt if they would have made it a three day special.
e.g. Intel recently posted a query on @twitter on which of the two companies to subscribe to. But after this story is completed and based on the behavior of the Track it boss, that company is finished.
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2:33
NCCK: Be the Voice of Reason
» What An African Woman Thinks So either it’s calmer now, or all the burying my head in the sand has paid off. Because there was a week back there, the post-Kilaguni-talks-fallout week, when I thought the politicos, who had long ago hit rock bottom, had finally received the heavy duty equipment they’d ordered (with tax payers money, of course,)and began to drill downward. And no, this is not a search for black gold.
(Eish. Please. Wharrr? And all of that other exclamatory jazz.)
But me I can’t rant about the politicos right now, imagine. I’ve been digging deep inside to find the rant but the rant is gone. There is no more rant.
But I can rant about the NCCK.( To the non-Kenyans, that would be the National Council of Churches of Kenya). And, I will.
What have THEY been smoking? So they stumbled and fumbled when the nation needed them most at the beginning of last year, so they’re desperate for atonement, so they are desperate to be relevant again in the national scheme of things, so they’re speaking up and speaking out.
Good for them.
Methinks, though, that they haven’t thought through their call for new elections and they’re just rushing into the melee spouting what words will come. Harsh indictment, I know.
But.
I put my ear to the ground to find out whether the churches, which have been the indisputable kings at the grassroots these many years, have instituted any new electorate education campaigns this past year or so. Nada.
I made enquiries about which new, different, possibly promising new candidates for parliamentary office are popping out of the woodwork. I heard a few names, but word is that these people are building/consolidating their base in readiness for 2012 and are far from ready right now.
On top of that, we do not yet have that new constitution and the Electoral Commission has yet to be overhauled and restructured to a reasonable level of effectiveness.
All of these factors give me to understand that elections held at the end of this year would only serve to wind us all up again, use up our scarce national budgetary resources and at the other end of the process, churn out the same old crop of people to jostle for position and ignore us all over again, and perhaps even result in some of the election ugliness that we’re still struggling to recover from.
What’s the use, I ask.
Things that the NCCK should be doing instead:
Educating voters nationally on their rights, creating spaces where people on the ground can discuss in detail how to hold their current leaders to account, what qualities they want in the leader who will represent them in parliament in 2013 and what specific deliverables they want out of their leaders. (Because God help us, come 2012, we have to grab this nation by its collar, drag it kicking and screaming if we must, and set it on the path to becoming the nation we know it has the potential to be).
Being the voice of reason, sticking their noses in the business of our political leaders, calling them on their missteps and excesses, reining them in as best it can, holding them to account and fearlessly speaking the truth at the pulpit and in the public space and doing best it can to live up to that truth, therefore reminding Kenyans who they are at their best.
Refraining from speaking when it has nothing of value to add.It's my window, but I don't own the view.
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