Kenyan Pundit

Some tidbits I picked up during the few days I spent in Kenya…reminded me of how much I miss blogging from Nairobi…so many storos:

- Apparently Coke’s biggest competitor in Kenya is Safaricom - in the battle for disposable income Coke is losing - spend money on a soda or on buying credit? Guess who wins.

- The Libyans are all over Kenya, rumor has it they are buying real estate in chunks.

- More rumors - the Mungiki madness is really a proxy war about property and rent collection. Supposedly Mungiki had taken over collecting rents from slumlords who just happen to be very wealthy and connected folks and the slumlords are fighting back using their government connections. Sounded very spurious, but the source was well-placed to be in the know about these things. That’s quickly neutralized by the fact that he was blazed when giving us the story.

- Only a third of the kshs 210 million that was sent out to constituencies for youth groups has been paid out. Such a shame…wonder what the bottleneck is? The fund requirements are listed here (Youth Affairs Ministry is looking much better than the last time I checked it out). Some MPs are claiming that the requirements are too stringent. Apparently the banks can’t help being banks. On the brighter side, according to Makokha’s article a stunning 92% of the awardees have been women!

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This article cracked me up. I should have learned not to succumb to books that are way too popular after my underwhelming experience with the Da Vinci Code, but succumb to the Alchemist I did. After I finished reading the book, I couldn’t help but be upset that I’d wasted my limited casual reading time on it…did I miss something?

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IMG_Gabi_

Originally uploaded by ateka.

This was taken a little over a week ago. She’d spent the last few weeks insisting on sitting up, she seriously caused if you didn’t hold her sitting straight up…so I found a new use for the breastfeeding pillow a friend had given me and everyone was happy.

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My random musings….

- Euvin Naidoo: Good start…during his talk I was basically thinking -damn he has his speech memorized…I haven’t even finished my slides…I need to get my shit together. I’m also thinking all the stats he is citing about investing in Africa are great, but wouldn’t it be great to have a one-stop shop website or something where you can access stats and info about investing in individual African countries. I thought the Investment Climate Facility was supposed to be doing that, but it appears that they are focused on other things. Niche blog opportunity anyone?

- Andrew Mwenda: His talk ends of framing the debate at TED. Trade vs. aid (does it have to be versus?). Just as it’s easing to throw stones at Bono, it’s easy to throw stones at the aid proponents by pointing to the millions who will die without humanitarian aid. As others later argue, the debate is not that simple and Andrew makes the critical point that he is not opposed to all aid, just what Hash terms elsewhere “bad” aid. I think not enough of the analysis Andrew does exists - looking at the hard numbers and seeing just how aid props up non-performing governments. In my opinion, bad aid leads not just to the EMASCULATION of governments, but also of citizens. As long as bad aid is filling the gap, citizens do not feel compelled to press their governments (painful as the process may be) to implement better policies and be accountable. Governments also have no incentive to be creative and look for alternative revenue sources. It’s not rocket science really. What annoys me about the Bono/Sachs brigade is that they get so much airtime, whereas AFRICANS who are offering alternatives are not sitting (or even getting invited) at the table…isn’t it crazy, for example, that out of all the phenomenal African speakers at TED only Bono and Ngozi (by virtue of her previous position) have had the opportunity to speak for Africa at venues like the G8?

- Carol Pineau: Why did a non-African have to be the one to make this movie? I’m just saying… Hash, maybe we can have Afri-gadget the movie?

- Andrew Dosunmu: Wow! I had no habari about this guy. I just love his images…Africa like you rarely see it, people loving, living, enjoying, just being.

- Of course, it was followed by a presentation on how Google Earth is being used to highlight the crisis in Darfur. Important issue to be sure and I’m sure it wasn’t planned this way, I just thought it was so ironic that positive images were immediately neutralized by jarring images of Darfur.

More thoughts to come…

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I’ve blogged about it several times, now you can watch or listen to the African fellows at Poptech (includes my attack on the interviewer :-)).

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