Monthly Archives: October 2013

PayPal in Kenya

At long last, PayPal is now officially available  in Kenya for usage without the worry of getting deactivated . Paypal, which has 137 million users, in 193 countries, has been in Africa for three years in a partnership with FNB (SA), and Kenya’s Equity Bank becomes their second partner in Africa. The service is already active in Kenya for local merchants such as freelance contractors and tourism sites to use on their websites to accept secure global payments.


At the launch, the Equity Bank CEO said that there were possibly 100,000 users in Kenya with PayPal accounts, but who could not withdraw their money, until now. One needs to have a debit or credit card that allows online transactions to use and to withdraw cash from PayPal which will be done through a customer’s account at Equity Bank – and this may take a few days, and attracts a 1.5% fee on top of PayPal’s charges. For now, one can’t move money from a bank account to PayPal, but only use cards to send money.  

Reactivating Nation Hela

The last few days have been spent trying to reconnect a Nation Hela card, that has been not much used since the launch just over a year ago.  The card was active, but the registration documents were never uploaded, rendering it inactive after a short period of usage. 
The issuance of cards, back office, registration, and payments are handled by Diamond Trust bank and their branches are the easiest way to obtain the cards, as well as load cash onto the prepaid card. For some reason, top ups with M-pesa don’t reflect for a few days.
The menu is also on one’s phone and can be accessed by checking *348#  and each use of the card is confirmed by an SMS to one’s phone. 

Idea Exchange: Malkiat Singh, Blog Payouts, Biko, MAVC

Malkiat Singh: For more than 30 years, school children in Kenya have learned using books produced by an author who seemed to have an endless list of titles under his name that was super- human in breadth  – that many wondered if the man actually existed. 

This week Malkiat Singh, surfaced to sign a deal in which he transferred the rights to 43 titles of his ‘Improve Series’ for Kshs 83 million (~$955,000) to Longhorn Publishers. 

At the event, he spoke of his journey from when he published his first book in 1970 and went on became a full-time author in 1975 and then to set up his own publishing outfit – Dhillon Publishers in 1993 that has produced over 100 titles.

Biko Zulu: At the recent Story Moja Hay Festival in Nairobi, popular lifestyle writer and blogger, Biko Zulu gave an interesting master class on creative writing with ideas for writers on how to be unique, grab attention, and tell a good story.  He also spoke of his plans for the future, including a revamp of his blog which has some very popular posts like this Letter to Kenyans Abroad!

Currently available writing, and other opportunities include: 

ALAcademy: African Leadership Academy seeks to enroll the most outstanding young people with the potential to lead and impact the world through their courage, initiative and innovation. The Academy receives 4,000 applications from most African countries each year, and the deadline for the first round this time is November 30. 

Afrinolly is a short film contest with BuniTv. Upload your short movie or documentary by November 30 to be eligible for 3 prizes of $25,000, $15,000 and $5,000.

The Commonwealth Writers Prize is a short story prize from the Commonwealth Foundation awarded to established and new writers across the Commonwealth. Just write your story of 2,000-5000 words story on whatever topic and you could win UK pounds 2,500  or 5,000 UK pounds. More here and the deadline is 30 November.

The Google Cloud Developer Challenge runs from October 22 to November 21with prizes that include Android devices and up to $20,000. Details here.

EDIT: Google also has an Africa Connected challenge in which content creators can win $25,000. Deadline is October 31.

Green Card The annual US Diversity Immigrant Visa 2015 program a.k.a green card lottery is now open making available 55,000 diversity visas to a randomly selected group of applicants. Deadline is 2 November. 

Innovation Prize for Africa (IPA)invites African entrepreneurs and innovators to propose projects that unlock new African potential in (i) Agriculture & agribusiness, (ii) Environment, energy & water (iii)  Health & well-being, (iv) ICT applications (v) Manufacturing &  service industries. The winning submission will be awarded a prize of $100,000 with two additional $25,000 ones for the runners-up as measured by business potential and social impact. Deadline is  31 October.

Making All Voices Count is a $55 million global initiative that supports innovation, scaling-up, and research to deepen existing innovations and harness technologies to enable citizen engagement and government responsiveness. Some prizes will be in the area of innovation (40 grants a year of $15,000 – 60,000), Scaling (16 grants per year of $60,000 – 160,000), Research (open and granted research) and Global Action.

It is open to applicants from 12 countries in Africa (Kenya, Uganda, Tanzania, South Africa, Liberia, Nigeria, Ghana, and Mozambique) and others in South East Asia – and ideal proposals should touch on gender, grassroots, and government, and must be submitted through the website by November 8, 2013.

EDIT: TRAC is the Trademark East Africa Challenge Fund that offers grant funds of between $250,000 – $350,000 to private companies in support of innovative projects that can boost trade in both East Africa, and the region’s trade with the world. Details here and the deadline is 18 November 2013.

Young Achievers Awards is an annual event where young successful Ugandans are recognized and awarded for their excellence and initiative in the areas of business, science and technology, agriculture and outstanding talent and leadership. Deadline is 30 October and details are here.

 Share other available opportunities here.

Election Finance in Kenya 2013

The March 2013 elections are now officially done, with the final election petitions being dispensed with this month. This election was said to be one of the most expensive  with  the voting process costing alone costing taxpayers $286 million. For the candidates and political parties, they had their own spending through helicopters, and vehicles convoys,  crisscrossing the  country every day, endless political rallies, and (for some) television placement and full-page newspaper advertisements several times a week – though media company Scangroup attributed a 9% drop in it’s 1H 2013 revenue to clients putting  off advertising spend before and after the elections.

The parties are now accounting for their year to June 2013 with published accounts as part of their compliance with the law and to ensure they are eligible to get funding from the taxpayer through the Political Parties Fund. How did the main parties do, compared to the last political finance review in 2010? (Kshs 87=$1)

Jubilee Coalition

A county assembly candidate inspired by Sonko?

 

The National Alliance – (TNA) party of President Uhuru Kenyatta received 59M( million) from members and Kshs. 20M from party officials. It made 114M from election fees, and but got 151M ($1.73M) from well-wishers, but since it was not in existence a year ago, did not receive any money from the political parties fund. Its total income was Kshs 345M ($4 million) and it spent 364M including 279M on operations and 60M on staff.

United Republican Party: The URP) party of Deputy President William Ruto got all it’s Kshs 76M income from members, and spent 11M on operating expenses, 19M on an ‘alternative voting system’, 10M on a campaign secretariat, 8M each on campaign materials and meetings, 3.8M on county election committees, and 3M on ballot papers, among other expenses.

CORD Coalition

Orange Democratic Movement: Raila Odinga’s ODM has Kshs 244 million ($2.8M) of income mainly from 149M in election nomination fees, and 73M ($0.84M) from the political parties fund. It reports spending Kshs 129M ($1.5M) on campaigns, 54M on regional conferences, 39M on administrative expenses, and 14M on branch coordination among other expenses.

Wiper Democratic Movement-Kenya 

Forum For Restoration of Democracy-Kenya: FORD Kenya’s 19.6M income was largely from members of 17.4 and the party spent 11.2M on campaigns, 7.4M on admin expenses and 2.1M on recruitment

Amani Coalition

United Democratic Forum Party: UDF of Musalia Mudavadi who was a distant third in the presidential election, got 8M from the PPF towards a total income of 14M and spent 3M on campaigns, 2M on delegates, and what seems like a low figure (considering the party’s campaign  visibility)  of 1M each on travel and on advertisements.

Others

Others that have complied so far include Narc Kenya, of Presidential Candidate Martha Karua (25.1M income, spent 14.4M on campaigns),  Alliance Party (the Bus) which made 6.4M from elections fees, but spent 0.93M on campaigns, and the Democratic Party of Kenya (8.7M from PPF, spent 7.3M on campaigns). 

The parties all show signs of ballooning funding that it fully expensed during the campaigns, with most having virtually empty bank accounts at the end of the reporting period. UDF is even owed 12M from nomination fees, and life membership fees (MP’s who pocketed, but didn’t pay for nomination fees). 

Pattni did not win a seat

Also, some figures are rather low, like UDF’s the results capture figures that don’t assume leakage/theft/diversion of campaign funds, a common and unavoidable problem parties face, given how much of the campaign involves officials handing out small money bills to thousands of voters at venues. This practice is illegal but has rarely been punished until last week when Ford-K’s Moses Wetangula was stripped of his senate seat by a Court following an election petition.