I spent Monday this week waiting for an email that

Kenyans are a skeptical lot (who can blame them, seeing

On 20 April 2023, Twitter’s new owner Elon Musk retired

The tragic happenings at Mukumu Girls and Butere Boys schools

Seven months after the 2022 general election, Kenyans are swimming

This is the same Nairobi in which public green spaces are grabbed, buildings collapse, residents can’t sleep on a weeknight because bars won’t let them and drainage can’t stand the rainy season. The story revolves around a property on Kilimani’s Kindaruma Road whose construction in April 2022 was not as far advanced as it is today.

My 20s were mostly employed on the political street beat

Did you know that Kenya’s Parliament exempted our first two

“The great marriages are partnerships. It can’t be a great

The Constitution of Kenya 2010 provides any Kenyan with the

We are living in strange times. Scrolling through the Twitter

So, assuming that Azimio la Umoja One Kenya can sustain either the Bomas of Kenya Talks or yet another wave of protests, what is the end game really? Kenya’s history shows that the prize is likely to be an elite compromise by which a power sharing arrangement of some form or shape may be struck. William Ruto has said he will never do it, and Raila Odinga has said he doesn’t want it, but this is what is going to happen. There is no other way for the two protagonists to walk away satisfied. The status quo ante bellum is such that their hands are tied; they are in the same boat.

Njonjo Mue takes us back to a magical time when he felt the first flutterings of tender teenage love.

Why does it seem like we have been here before?

I was only two days in, too early in the game for me to land a jab with any precision, let alone successfully block any attacks. Giving up this early would mean I didn’t really have to suffer the indignity of failure because I wouldn’t have given boxing any real chance. I could then tick it off my list as one more thing that’s “just not for me”. Like swimming. Or learning French. Or what sometimes I want to do with writing.

Stop being rude. Stop asking people invasive questions and giving

Maps have long been a staple of election reporting. The US Presidential election, for instance, is one of the most mapped anywhere. Be it the presidential election or the midterms, maps help voters everywhere to digest and understand results. Typically, results are reported from precinct to county, to state, and then nationally. Use of more granular maps produces data that better visualises local politics.

Kenya’s Transport Minister Kipchumba Murkomen posted two 2014 loan contracts between Kenya

“I need to retire from retirement.” Sandra Day O’Connor A

A permanent campaign mode; political parties that are used as

“I consider it completely unimportant who in the party will

I’ve been renting in Nairobi for nine years now, and

An interesting thing happened in February. An organisation called the

Kenya’s enforcement of traffic laws tends to be immobile and document-based, particularly around heavy commercial vehicles. The police who enforce traffic rules are stationary, mostly on the side of the road and drivers who pass through these checkpoints can always warn their oncoming colleagues. On the other hand, roaming police cars with cameras that scan number plates and onboard computers connected to insurance and police records would pinpoint offenders in real time and help police stop the right vehicles more often. Such police cars are commonly used in many countries.

Parliament, in particular, continues to hold back information from the public regarding its operations. Recently in the Senate, the Azimio La Umoja One Kenya coalition accused their Kenya Kwanza counterparts of being against devolution. Instead of KSh 407 billion as the Senate’s standing committee of budget and finance had recommended, the house approved KSh 385 billion in equitable share to the counties. Senators from Azimio staged a walkout to show their displeasure, but what they did next revealed how transparency in law-making is manipulated for political ends. 

Perhaps that is why we cat lovers fall over ourselves to please them, because we are so enchanted by these self-assured creatures that are so unlike us. They have none of our insecurities or uncertainties, they know they can never fail. Imagine moving through the world with the knowledge that you could never fail. Imagine the things you could do, the life you could live, the magic you could create.

As you watched the BBC Africa Eye documentary about the

Among the demands that the Azimio la Umoja One Kenya

Ever since Kenya was a republic, dominion, colony, or left

Soon after ringing in the new year, Kenya’s education ministry

It’s the new year and for most people that means

The limits of free speech and political propaganda have just been made clearer in the United States where Dominion, a vote machine manufacturer has just settled a defamation suit against Fox News for over 106 billion Kenya shillings. Since former American President Donald Trump’s electoral defeat in 2020 Fox News had become a redoubt from where his baseless and fraudulent claims were trumpeted. Signaling how weak its case, and Trump’s claims were, the staggering figure Fox News has agreed to pay is actually half of the damages claimed by Dominion. The case was settled on the first day of trial.

The year 2023 is monumental for the Pan-African movement and

I’m writing to you from a chilly Japan today. I

Raptors, the generic name for birds of prey, are hyper-carnivorous

One must-do if you ever travel to Japan is signing

The Malindi doomsday cult is global news and the Kenyan Government is keen to catch up. The Shakahola massacre was revealed not by police detective work but by media stringers and correspondents who doggedly tracked the weird goings-on at the Good News International Ministries ranch of Pastor Mackenzie Nthenge. This year, during a four month period of official oblivion, Mackenzie and some acolytes allegedly killed and secretly buried more than 145 of his church congregation. We are told by the Kenya Red Cross that over 500 other Mackenzie followers are reported missing and believed to lie undiscovered in more of the shallow graves that are scattered across the 800 acre ranch. 

A former British politician once told me “Decoys and distractions

In the Bible, Abraham is referred to as the father

I watched the outcome of the just-concluded Nigeria election in

In November 2022, Akinyi, a domestic worker from Kariobangi, was

There are national subjects that require assemblage of evidence and

“Authority assigned to a State officer is a public trust…” 

“It is important to expose yourself to ideas you don’t

When times are tough, governments declare they will slash spending and Kenyan ones are no different. Kenyans will remember when Uhuru Kenyatta, as Deputy Prime Minister and Minister of Finance…

Discovering a great book among the titles that have been

Growing up in a deeply patriarchal society does something to you. You come to expect violence, either the explicit physical kind that leaves women dead, or the more subtle emotional and psychological kind that takes a lifetime to undo. 

In 2016, a near-brawl broke-out in the Kenyan Senate. The respective combatants were Evans Kidero, the then Governor of Nairobi County, and Mike Mbuvi Sonko, his Senator. It is not clear who won the actual fight, but we now know that Nairobians lost because the Auditor General just told us so. You see, during the consecutive gubernatorial administrations of Evans Kidero and Mike Sonko, no-one could explain the whereabouts of KSh 18 billion of collected revenue. For those who think in hard currencies, that is a respectable $12.6 million missing. But Nairobi residents didn’t know this until seven years later when the press finally reported that according to the Auditor General, “billions of shillings collected in Kenya’s capital may have ended in private hands.”

The totem of private property was raised early after independence. Vast farms and ranches were transferred to our new elite, together with the large populations of wildlife upon them. Near where I live there are still a few multi-thousand-acre private wildlife sanctuary ranches. But development is winnowing the animal numbers at an alarming rate. One used to encounter zebra on my road every day. That’s a rumour today. 

This month marks 33 years since Nelson Mandela walked out

Instagram boutiques have me in a chokehold. I can’t help