Published hereis a progress report on the process: the interviews of the finalists, and what next.
Published hereis a progress report on the process: the interviews of the finalists, and what next.

Corn Revolution
Malawi under the Presidency of Bingu Wa Mutharika has been able to transform itself from a country in dire need of food aid in 2003 to a country that is now feeding its neighbours Zimbabwe and Mozambique. It also gives food donations to the World Food Program which sends food aid to countries like Kenya.
This was possible because the President took full control of the Ministry of Agriculture as was therefore able to supervise and coordinate the food security program. They also got rid of corruption through getting rid of the hawkish middlemen and provided agricultural subsidies to the farmers at the local level. Drip irrigation was used to supplement rainfall.
Watch an interview with President Bingu Wa Mutharika
PART 1
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PART 2
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We’re never good enough when it comes to speed, stability or simplicity of our mobile and web applications. This is a three-part series where I unpack my experience building apps on each of these subjects. It’s not just for those of us working on Ushahidi, these are the three most crucial abilities of any web or mobile application.
Let me tell you a personal story:
Libera, March 2009I’m sitting, sweating in the sweltering heat of a Monrovia cyber cafe, I have my notebook out and my am watching the clock. My goal is to see how fast I can load up the Ushahidi home page for the Democratic Republic of the Congo, it has a map, timeline and list of recent events tracking the current level of unrest in the country.
It’s not looking good. As I look around, waiting for the page to load, I count 8 others in the room – 6 of which have fired up stuttering and unusable Yahoo and Skype video chat windows. Why this is the channel and usage of choice, when it so obviously doesn’t work, I cannot answer. But this is reality, and if we expect ordinary Africans to use our application, we had better make sure that it loads up relatively fast on the low-bandwidth, shared internet connections that proliferate across the continent.
Utter failure. After 20 minutes painfully watching the page load byte by byte, I give up. I quickly type out a message to our team, imploring everyone to streamline this “fat, squeeling pig of a page”. Peppering them with questions… Can I buy some caching please? What can we do with this map to make it not kill the load? Can we get rid of 75% of the images on the page? Do we need to redesign this from the ground up?
Granted, Liberia’s internet situation is worse than almost any other on the continent. Especially when it comes to the grinding halt you see in the cyber cafes during the daylight hours as the local population piles on at the same time, completely overwhelming the limited satellite connection. That’s no excuse though. Ushahidi is built on the idea that the lowest common denominator, whether it’s PC or mobile-phone based access, will work. The PC-side is clearly failing.
Worst of all, my patience is short, Liberia is pissing me off with the heat, humidity, lack of bandwidth and no electricity grid. Objectively, this is the perfect state to be in, I am now able to come up with a solution for normal users in Africa.
What other’s knowSpeed… if there’s only one thing that you do with your application, make it faster. No, it’s not fast enough.
This isn’t news to anyone, or it shouldn’t be. For years the major web sites around the world have known this and have been building for it. Mozilla, Amazon, Google and Facebook are all aware of just how critical speed is to their success. It boils down to attention threshold and what we, as users ourselves, are willing to put up with.
There is no area in which our team has felt more pain than in trying to speed up the page loads of our apps. Maps tend to be page killers by themselves. Once we add multiple calls to the database we start to get some truly agonizing speeds. It’s a constant pressure that sits on every one of our development cycles, and for which we dedicate a great deal of energy.
User experience research needed in AfricaOne area that hasn’t seen enough true user experience testing is Africa. We know that internet speeds are slower, sometimes by orders of magnitude. I’ve got a lot of questions, more than answers at this point. Should we cut out the maps and all images? What’s the true cost of a page load +/- 7 seconds? What is the real value of maps in Africa compared to the West – do they matter?
Jessica Colaco is a top-notch programmer who has shifted to doing research in Kenya. I hope that she, and others like Eric Osiakwan and his team from Internet Research in Ghana, will help us dig out these answers. More than that, I hope they will help us ask the right questions.
| NPCA LEAGUE SUMMARISED RESULTS - 50 OVERS - 2nd.Round | ||||
| 13th.September 2009 |
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| Super | Telca | Kanbis 'A' | Ngara | Telca Won by 14 |
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| 117 All Out | 103 All Out |
| Runs |
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| Nelson Odhiambo - 35* | Arvind Halai - 25 |
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| Alex Obanda - 31 | Thomas Odoyo - 3/18 |
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| Rohit V - 4/18 | Maurice Odumbe - 3/19 |
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| Dhirendra V -2/15 |
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| Super | Kanbis 'B' | Swamibapa 'A' | Eastleigh | Swamibapa 'A' |
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| 223 / 9 Wkts | 313 / 6 Wkts |
| Won by 90 Runs |
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| Super | SCLYL 'A' | Stray Lion 'A' | Pindolia | Stray Lion 'A' |
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| 120 All Out | 320/8 Wkts |
| Won by 200 Runs |
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| Steve Tikolo - 150 |
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| One | Swamibapa 'B' | Kongonis Dev | Nbi Club | Swamibapa 'B' |
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| 213 All Out | 177 All Out |
| Won by 36 Runs |
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| One | Ruaraka 'A' | Nbi.Gymkhana | Ruaraka | Ruaraka 'A' |
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| 276 / 8 Wkts | 230 / 9 Wkts |
| Won by 46 Runs |
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| Amit Shukla - 107 | Devesh Patel - 60 |
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| David Maina - 97 | Udip - 42 |
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| Dil Patel - 2/30 | Manoj Asani - 3/14 |
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| Vankatesh - 2/33 | Amit Shukla - 2/7 |
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| One | Nbi Nookers 'A' | Ngara | Parklands | Nbi Nookers 'A' |
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| 242 All Out | 162 All Out |
| Won by 80 Runs |
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| Kennedy Obuya - 80 | Sunil Joseph - 32 |
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| Amit J - 61 | Maulik Trivedi - 21 |
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| Jay Solanki - 7/48 | Moin - 3/28 |
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| Jagrat Patel - 2/42 | Rajesh Patel - 3/30 |
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| Two | Aga Khan | SCLYL 'B' | Jafferys | Aga Khan Won |
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| 218 All Out | 181 All Out |
| by 37 Runs |
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| Two | Stray Lions 'B' | Golden XI | Peponi | Stray Lions ' B |
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| 141 / 5 Wkts | 140 All Out |
| Won by 5 Wkts |
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| Chirag Sheth - 47 | Kamlesh - 36 |
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| Tanveer Shiekh - 41 | Mitesh - 22 |
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| Viral - 2/37 | Anand R - 3/41 |
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| Ankil - 1/20 | Suresh - 3/44 |
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| Two | Sir Ali 'B' | Goan Institute 'A' | Sir Ali | Sir Ali 'B' Won |
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| 270 / 9 Wkts | 269 All Out |
| by 1 Wkt |
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| Taufiq - 60 | Rahim - 102* |
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| Zeeshan - 59 | Khuzema - 46 |
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| Khuzema - 4/43 | Ali - 3/48 |
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| Rajesh - 2/32 | Jibran - 3/60 |
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| Three | Goan Institute 'B' | Women's XI | GI | Goan Institute 'B' |
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| 288 / 6 Wkts | 186 All Out |
| Won by 102 runs |
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| Savan Desai- 68 | Pearlyn Omamo- 55 |
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| Raja Sarkar- 64 | Salim Ramji- 2/32 |
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| Ruth- 2/29 | Gurvinder Singh- 2/33 |
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| Belinda- 2/37 |
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| Three | Aaryan | Nbi Nookers 'B' | Nbi Sch | Aaryans Won |
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| 251 All Out | 104 All Out |
| by 147 Runs |
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| Bernard Okuyo - 87 | Pramod - 21 |
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| Bhavya Kapoor - 30 | Bhavya - 4/22 |
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| Manoj - 4/41 | Joseph - 3/30 |
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| Ram - 2/38 |
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| Three | Oshwal XI | Parklands | Highridge | Parklands Won |
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| 112 All Out | 240 All Out |
| by 128 Runs |
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| Three | Ruaraka 'B' | Bye | Bye |
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Engen, South Africa’s leading refined petroleum products company, and KenolKobil , the largest indigenous African petroleum marketing company in the East and Central African Region, have signed a sale and purchase agreement to jointly acquire all the shares in Shell Zimbabwe and BP Zimbabwe.
The acquired entities were previously operated by BP on behalf of the joint venture which marketed under both the BP and Shell brands in Zimbabwe.
With this transaction, Engen and KenolKobil have acquired the best developed assets in the oil industry in Zimbabwe, consisting of more than 75 service stations spread across the country, as well as several depots, located in Harare, Bulawayo,Mutare, Gweru and other major towns in Zimbabwe.
This seems a good move especially if the coalition govt. in Zimbabwe can hold it together and emerge as a better run country which would only mean an upside for KenolKobil and with this move now KenolKobil has a footprint in East, Central and Southern Africa Regions.
The acquisition is in line with KenolKobil’s expansionary plans, as evidenced by the recent entry into Burundi where they acquired from Engen in Burundi; Oil Burundi Limited.
KenolKobil was suspended from the NSE today as this transaction takes place.
Post based on KenolKobil press release to be found here from KenolKobil and here the softcopy for download.
Kuw
ait based Zain which operates in 24 countries and has nearly 70M mobile subscribers has signed a $13.7Bn deal, transferring a 46 per cent ownership of the company (Zain Group) to an Indian/Malaysian telecoms consortium.
The buying consortium is led by India’s conglomerate Vavasi Group and Syed Mokhtar al-Bukhary, a Malaysian billionaire. This sounds like another name change is on the cards.
Its now not clear if the Zain Group is still interested in selling off its African assets as reported here.
Although separate reports indicated that the Zain Africa sale seems to be still on, but Morocco and Sudan businesses will not be up for sale in the Africa assets batch. Which after Vivendi walked out of a deal is now in talks with Reliance Communications of India.
But this will depend on whether these new shareholders are willing to let go those ‘valuable’ African assets, or prefer to reinvest in them and grow the businesses. More details here.
Goethe-Institut and Alliance Française come together again, in another joint initiative supported by the special fund for cultural projects, established by the French and Germany Ministries of Foreign Affairs created on the occasion of the 40th anniversary of the Elysée Treaty. Following the visual arts project, Contemporary Art in Kenya juried competition/exhibition in 2006, This partnership centers around a festival for literature as stage performance.
mbringish
-noun
in the African accent: m-breen-gish
who used this first? : Unknown
when was it first used?: Late 2000’s
definition in English: Girlfriend, or woman, or female, usually considered beautiful
synonyms: Chikita, Chimama, Chipela, Chipipi, Demu, Manzi, Mboga, Mresh, Mshee, Mshi, Msupa, Mude, Supuu, Supu, Veggies, Waifudhes
Usage examples:
Mbringish wangu anazusha.
My girlfriend is complaining.