I love simple solutions to environmental problems because I believe ideas are only sustainable if they respect existing ecosystems. While surfing the web, I came across the idea of composting toilets, which are basically toilets that allow you to make manure out of human waste. The beauty of these toilets is that they are easy to set up and anyone can operate them. This is…
Read MorePlaying Cards in Cairo (High Miles) was written in 2008, three years before the Egyptian Revolution that saw the overthrow of the Hosni Mybarak Regime. It paints a grim picture of Cairo post Sadat and after decades of Mubarak. Interestingly enough, the author wonders what event would trigger a revolution in Egypt. This event ended up being “The Arab Spring”. Playing Cards in Cairo is…
Read MoreTransCentury Limited announced that its profit this year is expected to be more than 25% lower than last year’s profit. See the notice here. This post analyses the notice paragraph by paragraph in ordinary English. 🙂 As required by the Capital Markets Authority and the Nairobi Securities Exchange regulations, TransCentury Limited (“TransCentury” or “Group”) would like to announce that the projected profit for the Group…
Read MoreA few years back, I participated in a tech business competition, as a panelist, among venture capitalists. The purpose of the competition was to evaluate the businesses and pick the most viable/promising of the businesses, which would then win a cash prize. It was also an opportunity for the venture capitalists to evaluate the businesses and see if they could fund them. This was the…
Read MoreIt is useful to consider the difficult choices that may be made to ensure that there is meaningful job creation as an alternative merely throwing money at a problem despite good intentions. Two factors determine the employment picture in Kenya, and new policy approaches are required around these because the mere push of funds into the hands of youth and selected entrepreneurs will not work….
Read MoreA couple years into the business, the 46-year-old realised that aside from quality and pricing, the main challenges posed by imports was the discrepancy between the size of women in different parts of the world. “I am a large in Asia and in Kenya I am a small. So (by importing from Asia) we couldn’t cater to anything beyond a size 14 which is average…
Read MoreSo the Uwezo Youth Fund is here! I love the idea of funding youth (and women) for business, and building enterprise. Enabling entrepreneurship is a sure way of creating employment. According to the website, the Uwezo Fund is a youth and women’s fund which was launched by the president, who allocated the  Kshs. 6 billion that was meant for the presidential run-off to youth and…
Read MoreThis video was shared at a session I was in last week, I found it interesting and thought to share.
Read MoreIn this post, we explored ways the government could make it easier for us to do business in Kenya, and key was the licensing procedures and costs. Well, since then, not only has the number of licenses increased, the county government (Nairobi) also reviewed costs upwards. This morning I looked at the list of licenses one needs to operate a hotel in Nairobi, and I…
Read MoreThis morning, Ciiku tweeted about thin privilege (fat discrimination), and it got me smiling. See we have been talking about privilege A LOT on the Kenyan social media scene. The other day I was in a discussion that was about the value of “work hard platitudes” that most of us dispense when talking to young “under-privileged” people. I got the sense that since the system…
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