Articles Tagged Sunday Nation

If you walk into one of the many government-owned high-rise buildings in Nairobi, or one that houses government bodies, you will notice a strange phenomenon: the VIP Lift. This is, quite simply, an elevator reserved only for Very Important People; or, sometimes, only for one Very Important Person. Presidents, Prime Ministers and Vice-Presidents of course […]

What on earth happened to the world economy? Reading the opinions that are pouring forth from the learned and the experienced, it is clear that very few people have the slightest clue. The scale of the meltdown that is occurring seems barely possible. Could anyone see a situation in which Bear Stearns, Merrill Lynch, Lehman […]

So, the Kriegler Commission’s verdict is in. The upshot: nobody will ever know who won Kenya’s December 2007 presidential election, because the whole thing was organised and managed worse than a tea-party in the chimpanzee house at the zoo. This verdict is not to everyone’s taste. Some people were waiting avidly to be told who […]

Someone I know recently told me a story about a well-established restaurant in Nairobi’s Westlands. He was there with his family, and ordered a fish dish. Upon tasting it, he found that the fish tasted stale and unpleasant. He complained to a waiter, who immediately replaced the fish, no questions asked. So far, so good, […]

“Programs alone can’t replace parents; government can’t turn off the television and make a child do her homework; fathers must take more responsibility to provide love and guidance to their children.” Now THAT is why I like Barack Obama. Not because he’s Kenyan (he isn’t, in any sense that matters), but because he is asking […]

I was on holiday along my beloved Kenyan coastline recently, and discovered that not everyone at the resort where I was staying was in leisure mode. I observed one group of people sitting in a specified corner of the hotel every single day. They were not sunning themselves or going for a swim. None of […]

I imposed a two-week television news blackout on myself recently, and what a pleasure it was. We all need a ‘detox’ from time to time, and there is nothing more toxic than an unending stream of news about Kenyan politics. I am delighted to have been spared the sight of groups of parliamentarians calling facile […]

Do you want your child to become an ‘expert’? Who wouldn’t? Being an expert in something usually brings great rewards in life: recognition, money, and a sense of deep accomplishment. But what is an ‘expert’? Do we ask ourselves that question often enough? Are experts born or made? In other words, are the factors that […]

We are all deeply concerned about the state of our education system these days, so allow me to stay on the subject for a while. There can be little doubt: if we want to haul ourselves out of the murky waters of third-world status, education is the only known method. Educating our people properly is […]

As Kenya taxis on the runway preparing for take-off, it is important to get a sense of priority. We must all realise what’s hot, and what’s really not. Otherwise we are going to go round and round this airport and watch all those other planes zooming around in the sky. I have designed a special […]

For all my optimism about the future of this fair land, I am now deeply disturbed. What is a society to make of itself when its children start burning down their schools? That society should be very, very worried. We now have a spate of copycat arson attacks leaving a trail of burnt dormitories across […]

When at a certain stage in my life I finally managed to generate some surplus cash (it took a long time), I immediately decided to invest in some stockmarket shares (as many do). I started reading the financial press trying to seek out a real winner of a company to back. I noted that many […]

The amazing success of the Safaricom IPO confirms that we are on our way to becoming a shareholder democracy, does it not? Hundreds of thousands of new shareholders have been brought into the bosom of capitalism, and are basking in the promise of the new wealth that will follow – yes? Anyone who thinks we […]

If you want to go up Nairobi’s Museum Hill, you have to turn in from Uhuru Highway. There is usually a policeman stationed at the roundabout to make sure that only cars using the extreme right lane do this. Many a driver gets into trouble trying to turn in from the highway’s middle lane. The […]

The debate on whether parliamentarians should pay tax on their all income is rightly attracting the opprobrium of Kenyans. This is not a new issue, by the way, nor is it particularly Kenyan. Members of parliament and leading bigwigs in other countries have also, in the past, felt that their role is so special and […]

A minister reads out a written speech full of numbers, for more than 2 hours. A couple of hundred people, mostly elderly males, gather round him. Most are in varying degrees of somnolence. From time to time they wake up and clap – with their feet. And all of this is presided over by a […]

Safaricom CEO Michael Joseph is perplexed again. His company’s latest promotion has turned out disastrously. The offer of ‘free’ calls after 9.00 pm every day has clogged the network and proved a nightmare for people trying to make calls at night. Why? Because Kenyans keep piling in in droves to make their calls at precisely […]

I am writing this in the dark, afflicted by a power blackout. It seems a good time to pass the blame around. So let me start, obviously, by blaming our notorious power company, which has been a blight on this country for decades. Let me also pass some blame to my landlord, who seems incapable […]

Let’s talk football this Sunday. But only briefly, so the rest of you don’t run away… A few days ago the captain of Chelsea Football Club, John Terry, stepped up to take a Very Important Penalty in Moscow. His team was facing Manchester United in the final of the European Champions League, the world’s most […]

Does this happen to you often? You show up for a meeting, five minutes ahead of time. Fifteen minutes after the agreed time, some of the other participants start to filter in. It takes another fifteen minutes before you have a quorum. Hardly anyone is apologetic. Some invitees never show up at all, and never […]

Business leaders have been asking a question repeatedly since January 2008: “What am I going to do with my staff? After all the ethnic strife and bloodshed, some of them don’t want to sit with each other on the same table. There is mistrust and acrimony in the air, all over my company. All that […]

There is a lesson we must all learn: life is nothing if you don’t commit to it. In love, in business, in your career: you can’t ‘succeed big’ if you don’t ‘commit big’. If you want to be a winner, you have to decide what you want and how you’re going to get it. And […]

Our management deficit was in sharp focus again this week. Armed officers of the republic went on strike, and in the process threatened to endanger the fabric of the nation. The fact that they were prison officers, rather than policemen or soldiers, may have led many of us to trivialise the matter. That would be […]

In the interests of openness and transparency, I would like to admit to my readers that I am now a convicted felon. I’m not kidding. I was recently up before a magistrate at the High Court on a charge of dangerous driving. I pleaded guilty and was fined the sum of Sh. 11,000, with the […]

I have a lifelong love affair with Kenya’s coastline. Our great ocean exerts an irresistible romantic pull on me. No matter how many other great seas I visit, I invariably return to the warmest embrace of them all: the Indian Ocean. Much of the money I make in this life is spent sitting at the […]

Having given the matter sufficient thought, I now conclude that we need even more ministries than we think we do. That is my position and it will never change, not ever. It is clear from the justifications being bandied about for 40-odd ministries that whatever is important in Kenya must have a ministry in charge […]

It is utterly amazing that we were even discussing 44 cabinet positions. Not even a superpower needs that many ministers in government, let alone a tin-pot country like ours. What do all these ministries cost us to have? Quite a bit, by all accounts. There are around 16 ‘super-ministries’: those with huge staff complements; complex, […]

In 2005, I asked in this column whether the Kenyan National Examinations Council knew how to spell U-N-F-O-R-G-I-V-A-B-L-E. No-one took the hint. The Council was forgiven its sins, and it proceeded to keep on sinning. What happened in 2005? The students who were sitting the KCSE Mathematics paper that year were subjected to something unforgivable. […]