At his dairy farm in Kiambu County on the outskirts of the Kenyan capital Nairobi, Newton Mwangi anxiously takes off his boots and work suit after milking his cows. Mwangi is worried about the inability of the cows to hit the 80-litre target he needs to fulfil for his clients per day, due to a woeful fodder shortage in Kenya. Like other dairy farmers, Mwangi is struggling to get enough fodder to feed his animals in a bid to increase…

Lucy Wahome stumbles and struggles to maintain her balance and walk as a nurse rushes to lend her support, soon after she got admitted at the clinic.  Wahome, 30, initially sought medical treatment at her home clinic in Kiambu County, Kenya, which seemed well organised; but she later realised that constant power outages at the facility seriously compromised the quality of care at the clinic.  “I discovered that I had fibroids two years ago and decided to take some herbal…

“It is not uncommon for a country to create a railway, but it is uncommon for a railway to create a country,” Sir Charles Eliot, then commissioner of British East Africa, made the bold statement in 1903. Eliot, “who initiated the policy of white supremacy in the British East Africa Protectorate (now Kenya),” according to the Encyclopaedia Britannica website, was referring to the meter gauge railway built by British colonialists in East Africa between 1896 and 1901. The railway, emblematic…

Abdul Khalifa, 62, owns a large herd of camels in Kenya’s North Eastern Province.  Based in the rural outskirts of Garissa, a town located 367 km northeast of the nation’s capital Nairobi, a five-and-a-half-hour bus ride, Khalifa has been breeding camels for more years than he can remember.  Most of the land in the area is communal land, meaning it is wholly owned or shared by the community. Khalifa’s almost 600 camels make him one of the wealthiest herders in…

In August, the Swahili version of Xi Jinping: The Governance of China Volume I was launched in Nairobi, Kenya. This is the first time that the book is published in an African country in the local language. Xi Jinping: The Governance of China is the key for the international community to learn about contemporary China. Undoubtedly, the launch of the Swahili version of the important book will enable more African people to know more about China’s development philosophy.  So far,…

A PROBE into corruption in the procurement of mosquito nets and irregular release of 500 tons of imported sugar represent a major step in the fight against corruption by the new government in Kenya. The government of President William Ruto came into power last August on a campaign to rid East Africa’s biggest economy of graft. One of the probes is into the US$27 million tender for mosquito nets, which the Global Fund had commissioned the Kenya Medical Supplies Authority…