Kenyan Pundit

So our Minister of Agriculture Kipruto Kirwa has remained intent on screwing up the local sugar industry (rumor has it that those 89,000 tonnes have financed this). Kirwa’s shenanigans aside, the local sugar industry would still have problems competing effectively due to high production costs etc. While other African players in the sugar industry including Southern Sudan have shown a keen interest in diversfying and adopting the highly successful Brazilian ethanol model, the current Kenya Sugar Act prohibits sugar companies from producing ethanol. SAY WHAT???

For some background on the feasibility of producing ethanol in Kenya click here. There is a group trying to change the current law, they are called the Sugar Campaign for Change (wish they’d make their resources available as pdfs and update the site).

Popularity: 2% [?]

- Kenyan courts to FINALLY have stenographic services. About freaking time.

- Chinese as a second language?

- For the geeks, Roofnet, experimental 802.11 mesh network that will be used in conjunction with the One Laptop per child project. The software is open source and they have a great wiki.

- Google Calendar. Still in private beta but looks pretty awesome.

Popularity: 3% [?]

Rumor has it: Bank involved in this story is Victoria Bank and this company “Among the accounts examined is one belonging to a company that had evaded Value Added Tax to the tune of Sh247 million while no opening forms were found for an individual’s account with a turnover of Sh2.186 billion” is Nakumatt. Sources suggest that this is definitely why Mullei went down…Kenyan politics dirty as ever.

Update: I thought the reason that Nation (and most people who know the details of the story) are being cautious is because of Harun Mwau’s role, but I guess that is no longer a concern. Hat tip Bankelele! Harun Mwau has a history of filing (and winning) huge defamation lawsuits and he is considered pretty much untouchable in the country because of his deep pockets/connections and because many, many, many, people have been on his gravy train for a while. According to the grapevine, Nakumatt has been laundering his money for ages.

AOB: What’s exciting Kenyans = this , what’s making us yawn = this, this, this, this, this etc. Who isn’t running for president? Can’t ODM just disband now? Besides I think Kibaki has demonstrated that the country can run on auto pilot.

Popularity: 10% [?]