Western media coverage of the conflict in Kenya has been enormous, especially for a story coming out of Africa. The reportage has been a staple of the Economist and the New York Times since the beginning of the year, and even the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette has run the AP’s dispatches from Nairobi. Yet for all its breadth, the coverage has been dangerously lacking in depth. The media’s principal crime has been to recycle plot lines from past Afric...
There is a revolution in Kenya that parallels the banking system and the broadband revolution but is something entirely its own: the cellular revolution. There were only four million cellphone users three years ago in Kenya. In 2010, in a country of nearly 40 million people, there were over 25 million cellular subscribers. The effects of this revolution are being seen across the country. Contract laborers can now provide employers with a number...
Illustration by Louise McCune Consider the flying toilet. The term comes from the Kibera slum in Nairobi, Kenya. Within the slum, there is often less than one latrine per 50 shacks, with each 12-foot by 12-foot shack containing, on average, eight people. Kibera sits on government land that never fully transferred legally to its pre-independence residents, and, as such, the government treats residents as squatters with no right or entitlement to...
Last week, the Kenyan government officially declared an “offensive military agenda,” an action that many are calling Kenya’s first war. Interestingly, this war is not with another nation, but with Al-Shabaab – an extremist militia splinter group of Al-Qaeda that has controlled large parts of Somalia for years. Accompanying this novelty of war was a familiar national holiday: Mashujaa Day. Every October 20, Mashujaa Day, or Heroes Day, cele...
...n yellow vests attempted to clean up the mess, a man, not in uniform or working gear, called out to me and demanded to know what I was doing there. After showing my document declaring that I was an official researcher for the Kenyan government, this man demanded that I delete from my camera all the pictures that I had taken of the wreckage. Much quarreling ensued before I ultimately said to him, “You don’t own this land – I can take picture...
This past week, I attended the annual Nairobi International Trade Fair, which is sponsored by the Agricultural Society of Kenya. Similar to a 4-H County Fair in the United States, which features children’s activities alongside agricultural displays, the fair’s marketed purpose is to educate the public on programs, companies, and organizations that work with Kenya’s agricultural and environmental sectors. Despite these good intentions, the Nairob...
...slum, you are most likely to be tossed in a heap onto the side of the road to be burned. Yet, if you are an average water bottle, your life will certainly last much longer than your slum counterparts. All trash collection in Kenya is private, meaning that residents will pay to have companies haul trash out of Nairobi to the dump, situated in the suburb of Dandora. While dumps such as Dandora do not have advanced waste management technologies to...
...r being real bastards among slum dwellers, but this is not why Hajy has a big name. He is a boxer. However, it’s not just his boxing which gives him such prestige, it is what he represents in a complex system. Now you see, in Kenya the most seemingly innocuous organizations, teams, or associations usually have a much darker underbelly than you would expect. Not that boxing is the most harmless sport, but it is certainly no exception. In addition,...
...the draining off of talent from the most needy of populations, the current system of international student education in America perpetuates educational and economic stagnation in developing countries. In another example from Kenya, the nation has developed its secondary education to the point where an exceptional number of its youths are graduating with the credentials to pursue a college education. The nation has only developed enough higher ed...
...environmental organization have won the Nobel Peace Prize. Wangari Maathai won in 2004 “for her contribution to sustainable development, democracy, and peace” with the creation of the Greenbelt Movement in her home country of Kenya. In 2007, Al Gore and the IPCC shared the prize, “for their efforts to build up and disseminate greater knowledge about man-made climate change, and to lay the foundations for the measures that are needed to counteract...
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