Fero­cious polit­i­cal noise rips apart soci­eties and dri­ves away investors. This is what is hap­pen­ing in Kenya today. With elec­tions eleven months away, var­i­ous polit­i­cal lead­ers are hurl­ing insults and accu­sa­tions at each oth­er caus­ing pol­i­tics to over­shad­ow all else. What they don’t seem to real­ize is that their ardent sup­port­ers habit­u­al­ly fol­low suit and ulti­mate­ly split the Nation there­by upset­ting ser­vice deliv­ery in the Pub­lic and Pri­vate sec­tors. This is the exact oppo­site of the civ­i­lized pol­i­tics that the 2010 con­sti­tu­tion envisages.

I was recent­ly hav­ing a busi­ness lunch when a lady seat­ed near me said with exas­per­a­tion, ‘If I hear the name Covid one more time, I will scream!’

Recent­ly, I was hon­ored to pay a cour­tesy call to His Excel­len­cy Luke Williams, the Aus­tralian High Com­mis­sion­er to Kenya. We dis­cussed mat­ters of mutu­al inter­est includ­ing Green Growth and the vast oppor­tu­ni­ties that both coun­tries present to their peo­ple. Because wom­en’s eco­nom­ic empow­er­ment is a crit­i­cal part of the Green econ­o­my, I was elec­tri­fied to learn about Aus­trali­a’s pas­sion and record for advanc­ing wom­en’s eco­nom­ic empowerment.

We are liv­ing in dif­fi­cult eco­nom­ic times. In 2020, glob­al For­eign Direct Invest­ment (FDI) flows fell sharply by 35 per­cent. This was akin to los­ing just over one third of the water in your tank. If you were using that water for irri­ga­tion, at least a third of your crops would poten­tial­ly with­er and die. Decreased invest­ment and the accom­pa­ny­ing depressed econ­o­my have result­ed in a death of jobs across the country.

We are liv­ing in dif­fi­cult eco­nom­ic times. In 2020, glob­al For­eign Direct Invest­ment (FDI) flows fell sharply by 35 per­cent. This was akin to los­ing just over one third of the water in your tank. If you were using that water for irri­ga­tion, at least a third of your crops would poten­tial­ly with­er and die. Decreased invest­ment and the accom­pa­ny­ing depressed econ­o­my have result­ed in a death of jobs across the country.

In exact­ly one year’s time, Kenyans will be troop­ing to vot­ing booths across the coun­try to vote for hun­dreds of lead­ers of their choice. Amongst them will be near­ly six mil­lion first-time vot­ers — young peo­ple who were not of age in 2017 when we last vot­ed. They will com­prise a crit­i­cal swing-vote that can eas­i­ly decide the elec­tions. This youth deserve to be pre­sent­ed with a menu of far-sight­ed lead­ers whose par­ties must be known for their respec­tive ideologues.

A recent World Bank advi­so­ry on water man­age­ment in Kenya has stirred nec­es­sary debate on the way we man­age water in our coun­try. In the advi­so­ry, the World Bank called for new con­ser­va­tion levies and increased reg­u­la­to­ry charges for water com­pa­nies. The pro­posed con­ser­va­tion levies will go towards con­ser­va­tion of water resources. This how­ev­er means that water bills will increase a fact that is leav­ing a sour taste in the mouths of Kenyans who con­tin­ue to expe­ri­ence both water scarci­ty and water inequality.

South Sudan gained its inde­pen­dence ten years ago, on July 9th 2011. This makes it the youngest nation in the world. Unfor­tu­nate­ly, the vital­i­ty and promise of youth seem to be absent in the ten-year old nation. Lam­en­ta­bly, there isn’t much to cel­e­brate on this tenth anniver­sary to a point that Pres­i­dent Sal­va Kiir him­self has just referred to the last ten years as ‘a lost decade’.

This morn­ing I chose to make break­fast for my wife Susan and the fam­i­ly. So I sim­ply switched on the cook­er then pro­ceed­ed to cook. In less than twen­ty min­utes, break­fast was ready. The cook­ing was fast, clean, effi­cient and healthy because I used Liqui­fied Petro­le­um Gas (LPG).

This morn­ing I chose to make break­fast for my wife Susan and the fam­i­ly. So I sim­ply switched on the cook­er then pro­ceed­ed to cook. In less than twen­ty min­utes, break­fast was ready. The cook­ing was fast, clean, effi­cient and healthy because I used Liqui­fied Petro­le­um Gas (LPG).

Kenyans were recent­ly treat­ed to a rare and most unfor­tu­nate TV show when a mem­ber of par­lia­ment pub­licly accused her col­league of fraud­u­lent­ly claim­ing fuel allowances and even being part of what she called a par­lia­men­tary ‘mileage car­tel’. The show on Cit­i­zen TV was chaot­ic and had to go into an abrupt break. The fact that it is the Mem­bers of Par­lia­ment (MPs) them­selves who are let­ting the cat out of the bag that indeed some MPs may be manip­u­lat­ing the sys­tem to extract as much mon­ey as pos­si­ble, would it be wrong for Kenyans to assume that we were liv­ing in an eth­i­cal­ly col­lapsed soci­ety? Indeed, a few days before the alter­ca­tion on TV , the Audi­tor Gen­er­al had raised queries over sus­pect­ed irreg­u­lar pay­ment of mileage claims to MPs by the Par­lia­men­tary Ser­vice Commission(PSC).

My fam­i­ly and I were thrilled to the core while enjoy­ing every dra­mat­ic moment as our dri­ver recent­ly nav­i­gat­ed the gold­en dunes of Dubai’s Ara­bi­an Desert.