Tag: Public Square

The President of the Kenya Editors’ Guild recently called a press conference to allege that they had received reports of an imminent phone and internet shutdown. Despite providing no evidence or substantiating detail, the allegation was hours later addressed by the President of Kenya, who assured us all that there is no possibility of such…

I’m writing to you from a chilly Japan today. I seem to have mistimed my first international vacation in four years, and now I’m stuck in my hotel room as it pours outside. The view is good though. From my 13th floor perch, I can see the Tokyo Tower with its flashing lights through the…

Discovering a great book among the titles that have been on your to-read list forever is a bitter-sweet feeling. That was my experience with Kintu by Jennifer Nansubuga Makumbi. But how do I even begin to explain the magnificence of this book? I recently saw a Twitter interaction where, in response to Sauti Sol’s Bien…

Ever since Kenya was a republic, dominion, colony, or left alone the way its people liked it, wildlife meant wealth. People made great fortunes by shooting and mounting the biggest trophies, poaching for skin, teeth and horn, and latterly by hosting those who wish to photograph live animals. Adventurers, hoteliers, photographers, artists, publishers, safari boot-makers,…

My name is Soila Kenya and I have a confession. All the jokes you’ve just thought up in your head right now? I’ve heard them before. Every. Single. One. I promise. I had a classmate in primary school, Class Seven I think, who used to call me a different country name each day. And he…

One of the ten demands made by the Azimio la Umoja One Kenya coalition leader Raila Odinga when he appointed a team to talk to President William Ruto’s Kenya Kwanza seeks to enforce a Turn-Coat Rule requiring rebel Members of Parliament who cross party lines after election to resign, and to allow parties to replace…

Among the demands that the Azimio la Umoja One Kenya Coalition Party (Azimio) made in its call for protests against government inaction, the one that was most likely to “set” the negotiating table was their call for a more broad-based process of selecting nominees to the Independent Electoral Boundaries Commission (IEBC). This is the issue…

I think it is quite disingenuous of opposition leader Raila Odinga and his supporters to lay the entire blame on President William Ruto for the high cost of living, considering that Kenyans have been choking under the yoke of rising inflation for at least a decade. While Ruto can take some of the blame for…

15 years ago, in January 2007, Nairobi hosted the World Social Forum at the Moi International Sports Centre Kasarani. Attending this alter-globalist, anti-capitalist convention was Julian Assange, an Australian ex-hacker then unknown outside a small geeky circle. At this time, only recently sacked by Transparency International Kenya, I was a few months into the establishment…

The end of the COVID-19 pandemic has, thankfully, seen tourism in Kenya’s coastal resorts pick up. Foreign and domestic tourists are once again flocking to coastal resorts like Mombasa, Diani and Malindi. The bad news is that some of these tourists are returning purely to engage in sex tourism.   On any given day, in the…