Kenyan Pundit

- Competition is good , probably in response to Sambaza Now, Mama Mikes is running the following airtime campaign:

Airtime ordered before 5pm Kenyan time is topped up the same day
All phone numbers are verified before topped up (no making mistakes)
You can top up more than one phone in one order
Our service charge is now only $2.49

- LSK vows to find Media Law in court if the President assents. I’m curious as to how successful a challenge to the shortfall in quorum when the Bill was passed would be. And where were all those MPs who are now critiquing the Bill when the Bill was being passed? Kenyan politicians = useless.

- Ethan is incrementally building his ideas around incremental infrastructure. I’m wondering whether he’s too quick to extrapolate the mobile phone phenomenon to other areas – I’m especially thinking about big ticket items like roads and power generation/transmission that don’t have the same option of being subsidized by the consumer. Also the incremental and even moreso the “pico” approach does not address needs on a macro-level that most countries in Africa need to address, having power in the village is great but if factories / business can’t operate at an optimal level because of power shortages or costs there’s still a big conundrum that needs be address (and unfortunately the role of government can’t be wished away).

- Finally, this link
is worth a post on it’s on, but I’ve been sitting on it for a while with no post forthcoming so here it is. It has to be the ABSOLUTE worst piece of journalism on Africa by a Western writer that I’ve ever seen. I don’t know where to start as far as my issues with the piece. That this is considered journalism? That the Salon, no less, deemed it worthy of publication? That the author was a awarded a grant to prance around Africa and produce such rubbish? Me vex (can you tell?).