Articles Tagged Sunday Nation

Who would want to be poor in Kenya? We treat the poor no better than chewing-gum stuck to our shoes. If you are poor in Kenya, you must never fall seriously ill. If you do, your descent into hell will begin. Assuming you have a local clinic, you will in all likelihood be given the […]

I have no idea who the next president of Kenya will be, and neither do you. Given that our politicians are driven by the overwhelming need to take office rather than stick to principle, anything is possible. Anyone can yet team up with anyone else. Any number of permutations can emerge. I find all of […]

There is a story often told about work and productivity (The Economist carried a version of it recently). An economist is out for a stroll, and comes upon some workers digging beside a river to build a dam. The workers are all using spades, and the work is back-breaking and laborious and takes forever. Intrigued, […]

Do voters vote for the right things – and for the leaders who deliver the right things? Traditional thinking would suggest that the answer is yes: democracy is a good thing because voters do, by and large, all things considered, vote sensibly. In other words, they are rational beings who vote in their own self-interest. […]

If you head out to Nairobi’s Jomo Kenyatta International Airport, chances are you’ll come across a police roadblock on Mombasa Road. I did so recently, and counted fifteen policemen manning this checkpoint. Yes, fifteen. Perhaps two or three were actually checking cars; the other dozen or so appeared to be ‘supervising’. Or look at the […]

This column is happy to continue its annual tradition of deciphering the weighty and comprehensive Economic Survey – our main compendium of economic numbers – for readers’ benefit. So, if you don’t have the money (Sh. 900), the time (284 pages) or the interest (what’s on TV?) to read the whole thing yourselves, today’s piece […]

There is much hoo-ha about the epidemic of scams that has ‘suddenly’ afflicted Kenya. Everywhere you look there is a pyramid scheme collapsing, or a big company rushing to warn customers about SMS hoaxes being conducted in its name. Outrage fills the air. The papers are packed with calls for the government to do something […]

The Paul Wolfowitz saga ran painfully long, but finally came to an end last week. Wolfowitz resigned as President of the World Bank, after digging in his heels and repeatedly stating that he would not step down in the middle of the huge storm involving his girlfriend. Mr Wolfowitz is widely regarded as a ‘neo-conservative’, […]

The Nation recently carried a two-page spread on the traffic congestion that is bedevilling us all. The news is that 5,000 new cars are, on average, now being registered every month, while the road network is barely expanding. Too many cars, too few roads. And so we read the tales of the poor folks who […]

Language is important. Words matter. It was with these sentiments in mind that I began noticing how many of us say things that we just don’t mean. I’m not referring to the glib things we say which are economical with the truth; I’m more concerned about those expressions we routinely deploy that actually mean the […]

Sir Richard Branson was in town recently, and everywhere he went he was received like royalty. How come? Not too long ago, we would have viewed him as a neo-colonialist come to exploit us, to take our business away, to expropriate profits, to hurt our national carrier, to prevent us from developing our own skills […]

There is a public notice that seems peculiarly Kenyan, and it appears in our newspapers nearly every day. It’s so common-place as to be almost banal, and most of us can recite it from memory. “The person whose photograph appears below, ID number XYZ, is no longer employed by the ABC company. He/she is no […]

There is a highly charged debate taking place in Kenya today. It concerns one of our unique national assets: our wildlife. There is a strong and vocal lobby that is demanding we rescind our decades-long ban on hunting. An array of facts and figures is being marshalled, and it is finding frequent expression in the […]

We had great hopes for our new women leaders in 2003, did we not? For the first time we saw a fresh batch of women, some veterans of the multi-party struggle, others young and zestful, taking meaningful positions in parliament and government. We hoped for a better, more sensitive, more thoughtful type of leadership than […]

This year April 1st fell on a Sunday and, like many of you, I began perusing the newspapers trying to spot the spoof stories. I do this every year, and it is an exceedingly difficult task, because the line between reality and farce is so thin in modern Kenya. For one thing, April Fool’s Day […]

We now know that there might be as many as one million Kenyans abroad. And that they are sending a billion dollars back home every year. Our main sources of overseas funds used to be foreign aid and what we got from selling tea, flowers and wildlife; these days we think ‘remittances’. This column first […]

This is a year in which we’re going to select new leaders in Kenya. That’s why we should take lessons in what leadership really means; from wherever we can get them, and long before we go to the polls. John Adair was in town recently, at the invitation of the British Council. He is the […]

Why would anyone open a restaurant when: the renovations are not complete; the staff are not adequately trained; and the chef hasn’t quite got his act together? Happens all the time in Kenya. How often do you go to new establishments to encounter exposed wiring, waiters who have no clue what the dishes are, and […]

Here’s a quiz question: on which day of the year does the Daily Nation sell most copies? The answer is: the day after the KCSE results are released. That duly happened last week: parents, teachers and pupils all bust a gut to get their copy. Why? Because the entire future of thousands of children can […]

Allow me to share with you some excerpts from a recent speech made by a candidate for the presidency: “We all made this journey for a reason. It’s humbling, but in my heart I know you didn’t come here just for me, you came here because you believe in what this country can be…In the […]

“The last thing we need right now is a vision.” That was said by a CEO in 1993 – surprisingly, since most business leaders are known to have a penchant for lofty vision and mission statements. The CEO’s name was Lou Gerstner, and he had just taken the reins at the ailing computer giant, IBM. […]

You’re being taken for a ride, ladies. I last wrote about Valentine’s Day back in 2004. Every year since, I have resisted the temptation to rant again about this imbecilic celebration. This year, I’m unable to stop myself. You’re being taken for a ride, ladies. First, a reminder of why I was agitated three years […]

There are very few good books about business written in the world. Most seem to be exercises in futility: lots of seemingly well-educated people telling you the blindingly obvious and making it sound like a dramatic breakthrough in management thinking. The style of writing covers the full spectrum: from painfully dull to messianic. But most […]

The World Social Forum is done, and the throng is gone. Nairobi had the honour of hosting the first African WSF; the assembled delegates had the honour of looking African poverty in the eye. “Another world is possible” was the slogan. And another world – a fairer, braver, more equitable, more sustainable world – is […]

This week I want to pay tribute to John Sibi-Okumu. John is a man with many strings to his bow: he is a teacher, a dramatist, an actor, a TV personality, an editor and a columnist. And those are just the pursuits I know about. He inspires children and intimidates politicians in equal measure – […]

This column often tries to glean management wisdom from the world of sport. The cricket world has been shouting something in recent weeks, and the message is coming from the ‘Ashes’ series held between England and Australia. Cricket aficionados will know that in the just-concluded series, Australia thrashed England 5-0. That’s five test matches – […]

One of the more depressing news items to appear at the close of 2006 concerned the problems that have emerged in the consortium (headed by VTEL of Dubai) that won the Second National Operator (SNO) telecommunications licence earlier in the year. This was the operator we all hoped would go head-to-head with Telkom Kenya. It […]

Britain’s Serious Fraud Office (SFO) has been investigating allegations that the defence firm BAE Systems paid millions of pounds in bribes to Saudi Arabian officials to secure the Al-Yamamah deal – the country’s biggest-ever defence contract, worth 40 billion sterling pounds over the past 20 years. Just before Christmas last year, Britain’s Attorney General called […]