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Mike Tyson was once the world’s most feared boxer. In a remarkable period from 1985 to 1989, he annihilated all comers and was the undisputed heavyweight champion of the world. From 1990 onwards, unfortunately, Tyson began devoting himself to a life of excess. During one 33-month period in the 1990s, he is believed to have […]

There is a certain buzz in the air about economic growth in Kenya. After the government announced that the economy was growing at 4.3 per cent per annum recently, a new excitement began to swell. Yes, we all know that the 4.3 per cent has only been achieved after fiddling with the calculation formula and […]

If you are a Kenyan consumer, you have almost certainly gone through some (or all) of the following: Your telephone landline periodically goes dead, and stays dead for weeks (even months) even though you call the service operator every day to complain. When the line comes back, it has a nasty crackle in it. You […]

Can anyone of sound mind be against the idea of renewal? We see it in nature all around us, every day of our lives. The magnificent flower is in full bloom for a few days, and then its petals drop away and its beauty fades. The proud lion, monarch of the plains, is master of […]

Once upon a time, in a country far, far away, the leading businesses of the land made money in a certain way. First and foremost, they made friends with influential politicians. They cultivated them, wined and dined them, offered them shares, and gave them positions on their boards. Having obtained the necessary political backing, these […]

Nairobi was in chaos again last week. Activists marched to parliament. The police clobbered them. Tear gas and water cannon were used indiscriminately. Thugs and idlers took the opportunity to break into shops and help themselves to goodies. The capital city came to a standstill. Businesspeople counted their losses. Investors looked away. Some things never […]

Languages are lost for many reasons. Some go as people give up isolated lives and pastimes and aggregate into larger, more integrated communities. Others become extinct as the result of invasions: the widespread colonisations of the 18th and 19th centuries, for example, resulted in the loss of hundreds of indigenous tongues. Today, globalisation is leading […]

Many of us are busy picking through the litter of the recent G8 conference held in Scotland. What did the rich countries offer Africa? What does it mean? How much do we get? Can we “make poverty history” now? I’d prefer to put some distance between us and Scotland and take you to the other […]

The Live 8 concerts were held last week – 10 concerts staged simultaneously around the world, to put pressure on the leaders of the world’s 8 richest countries to tackle poverty in Africa. The event has been judged a wild success: over a million people attended the concerts in person; as many as two billion […]

Suppose, for a moment, that you are a leader of a certain organisation. This organisation has been in the grips of economic stagnation for decades. It is unable to pay its bills, and relies on foreign largesse to bail it out time and again. Six out of ten members of this organisation are hopelessly poor. […]

It took a long time to build what South Asians have in Kenya today. Dana April Seidelberg called us ‘mercantile adventurers’: for more than 2,000 years we have been arriving on African shores as traders, investors and artisans, part of the age-old Indian Ocean trading triangle with its corners in India, Arabia and East Africa. […]

As the government passes its half-way mark in office, we can all be sure of one thing: we’re in for two-and-a-half years of high-decibel campaigning and low-principle scheming. Money will undoubtedly start to flow now: roads, clinics and schools will begin to emerge as judgement day starts to loom on the horizon. Equally, the number […]

My young son arrived on the planet last year and brought with him a message of profound importance. As I have spent the past few months playing with him and observing him, I have become aware of an unnerving fact: he watches me very, very carefully; and then behaves as I do. He sees what […]

The Sunday Nation dispatched a senior editor to the offices of the Government Spin Doctor: Dr. Abunwasi bin Uwongo, the Secretary for Policy Interpretation of Government Actions (PIGA). Dr. Uwongo, a graduate of the London School of Truth Economics, granted a rare exclusive interview to the Sunday Nation. A wide range of topics was covered, […]

Have you heard about Mr. and Mrs. Arrowsmith of Hereford in the United Kingdom? They have been married for 80 years. Yes, eighty. Percy Arrowsmith, 105, and Florence Arrowsmith, 100, married on 1st June 1925 at their local church in western England. The Guinness Book of Records has reportedly confirmed that the couple holds the […]

The news that East African Breweries Limited became East Africa’s first billion-dollar company is indeed noteworthy. It is a milestone that reflects the company’s relentless march to levels of market capitalisation, turnover and profit not seen before in this part of the world. EABL is a path-breaker: it is a great engine in the economy, […]

Do you ever wake up in the morning and think you’ve arrived in a world gone completely mad? A place where the ridiculous is very real, and the idiotic is the norm? What is a “sane” person to make of some of the developments taking place in our modern world? China recently held the first […]

Chief Executive Officers of Kenya should read John Donne: “No business is an island entire of itself; every organisation is a piece of the economy, a part of the main; if a consumer be washed away by the sea of poverty, Kenya is the less, as well as if a company were, as well as […]

Chief Executive Officers of Kenya: please pay attention. Your country needs your services. We are going to hell in a mkokoteni cart, and all men and women of vision, authority and management expertise need to step in to avert disaster. Assume, for a moment, that Kenya Ltd is your company, and you have just taken […]

Oh, colonisation! We’re still paying a heavy price, after all these years. We seem unable to move on, leave our history behind us and just get on with things. New books like ‘Britain’s Gulag’ and ‘Histories of the Hanged’ have disturbed our old wounds, have rekindled the demands for reparations for ancient atrocities. But that […]

Is our Jua Kali (informal) sector a good thing? Opinion differs. The government clearly takes some pride in telling us that most of the 500,000 jobs “created” every year are in the informal sector. Like it or not, Jua Kali is a fact of life in modern Kenya. It is everywhere: on the streets of […]

Insecurity will be our undoing. If there is a single thing that stands in the way of economic growth and development, it is the fact that violent crime is out of control. If a populace does not feel safe then there is no future. It’s really as simple as that. It doesn’t really matter what […]

April 1st is the day that newspapers traditionally try to make fools of us. All sorts of spoof stories are planted in the paper to mislead, beguile and amuse us. This year was no different. I opened the Daily Nation with a keen eye to try to isolate the satires and the parodies from the […]

We are again engaged in endless debates in bustling bar rooms and virtual chat rooms about who our next leader should be. What qualities should he or she have? How do we ensure that we avoid the failures of the past (and present)? Which party really stands for the people? Here’s a thought: forget the […]

We are a strange species, we human beings. We alone have been granted higher consciousness; yet we use this to treat the planet as our exclusive domain. All other creatures and life forms must be regarded as ‘resources’: to be exploited and controlled for our economic gain and personal comforts. Or, to put it politely, […]

“If you want to go east”, a famous Indian sage used to say, “you mustn’t go west.” Underlying this deceptively simple aphorism is the realisation that we often profess to have certain goals, yet all our actions work in entirely the opposite direction. In a week when an international UN study has ranked us 11th […]

Are we a very poor country or a very rich one? I only ask because I find it very confusing most of the time. Read the statistics books and you will be left in no doubt: a country with one of the lowest per capita incomes in the world cannot be described as anything other […]

Once upon a time, we looked at the people around us and respected many things in them. We saw certain virtues and placed a high value on them. We had quite simple people as our role models, and we tried hard to emulate them and live up to the ideals we saw embodied in them. […]