Monthly Archives: October 2012

Kenya’s Money in the Past IV: Lamu

This is a book about the people and history of what was Kenya’s largest town in the 1940’s but which, despite a boost in World War II, was ultimately in a state of economic decline with the end of slavery, the impact of the great depression, and emigration of many of it’s leading people south to Mombasa in search of better opportunities.

The rare book also dwells on many aspects of the economy, rule and people of Lamu; how the lack of slave labour, disruption by ex-slaves, land tenure, mortgages & inheritance affected the mix of residents in Lamu that comprised Arabs, ex-slaves, Indians, homosexuals, and later German, South African, and Nigerian soldiers (in the two world wars), and Mau Mau prisoners etc. who all interacted and engaged in varying trade and agricultural patterns that were based on retaining links with Zanzibar until after WWII. 

This was overseen by the British Colonial government that tried to collect all manner of taxes from the residents to support the government, but with varying degrees of success (some locals even played the race card to avoid taxation). 

The British suffered a high turnover of local administrators as it seems they were seduced by the breezy town – but managed to introduce medical care, formal schooling and collect data on the island with some startling finds –  like the high ratio of women to men in the 1930’s and 40’s (women outnumbered men by 3 to 1) and also the (high) marriage to divorce ratio in Lamu.

The book is just 310 pages long, but 80 of those comprise the appendix, notes, bibliography and index and that is and a rarity as many books now published in Kenya don’t properly attribute their reference sources.

Political Moment: MP Salaries Performance & Debates

On Tuesday, after a day of street protests

@iGaddo cartoon in the Nation

and online petitions by Kenyans, upset over yet another initiative by members of Kenya’s parliamentarians (MP’s or MPigs – as they were called in the street) to raise their salaries, President Mwai Kibaki announced that he would not sign a bill into law and thus appearing to halt their greedy March.@Mzalendowatch has the hansard (transcript) of the debate on the fateful night that the salary increase was discussed, and while there was a lively debate with lots of MP’s contributing on matters like hides & skins, capital gains tax on land & shares, reopening Charterhouse Bank mining rights,  and capping bank interest rates –  on the subject of their salaries, no questions were asked on the complex motion which seems to imply that it had been agreed on to pass without much fanfare.

Kenyan leaders are overpaid

 

Turnover: These are interesting times in politics, and with Kenya’s 10thparliament  in its’ last few months, there appears to be in a grab & go mentality, given that many won’t be back in parliament. In the last election in 2007, about 70% of MP’s lost their seats, and with next year having the first election under a new constitution, many current MP’s are gunning for other newly created seats such as senators and governors.

Despite their high salaries, many MP’s have a track record of not managing their salaries well hence the push for a bonus send-off.

Performance Review: How can we judge how MP’s have performed over the last few years? There’s Mzalendo who have tracked key issues in parliament (publishing bills & hansards) and also rate all the current MP’s as either bad, average, or good for their online constituents to judge. 

Also, the Data Science blog came up with a performance with a scorecard using recently available constituency data to determine how much value some MP’s who led the controversial have actually performed for their constituents.

Debate Season: The BBC are in Nairobi shooting a month-long series of shows in Kenya including Hardtalk with leading Kenyan politicians and pieces on mobile communications and Lamu.

BBC Hardtalk anchor gets grilled in Nairobi

And yesterday, Kenya’s media owners announced that they would jointly produce and broadcast a series of U.S style presidential debates in the coming months.

 So how will the presidential candidates perform in a debate? The APSEA blog analyzed the communication styles of three of the likely contenders  – Musalia Mudavadi, Uhuru Kenyatta and Kalonzo Musyoka (who’s the current Vice President) and who are all likely to be on the debate stage in from November with some interesting findings.

Possible Economic Bubble In Ethiopia?

A guest post by @Kahenya

Ethiopia has a very positive economic outlook and yes, it has a lot of development going on, but is this sustainable, now that the linchpin (Meles Zenawi) is gone? The one thing that is universal about the entire continent is that the poverty line seems to grow every year, sometimes it shrinks, but only for a moment. The cliché remains, that the rich are getting richer and the poor are getting poorer and there is no true middle class –  and if there is, it’s only based on people who don’t want to imagine that they are less than middle-class.
Africa is the kingdom of billion {insert any local currency here} projects. Ethiopia also finds itself in the same quagmire, except for one thing. They are actually making it work for their benefit. In Ethiopia, construction and infrastructure development are at an all-time high. It was necessary for this to happen until Meles Zenawi and his beloved Ethiopian People’s Revolutionary Democratic Front (EPRDF) went their separate ways, much to the disadvantage of EPRDF. Zenawi’s rule transited between dictatorship and benevolence and it was working for him and Ethiopia. Love him or hate him, from being out in the rebel trenches to donning a suit, Meles was every bit a tactical genius. He grew Ethiopia from a war-torn country to one of Africa’s fastest-growing economies. Only Meles could conjure up infinite possibilities – sometimes by sheer cunning and sometimes by sheer fear.
Hotel cautions on using skype
EPRDF needed Meles to live long enough to get to his end game which would have allowed EPRDF to focus on less ambitious but more people-driven development. That did not happen. With him gone, and an open democracy on the horizon (since every linchpin’s death or retirement is followed by internal crisis and eventual dissolution, with less political tolerance by the citizens), with a lot of projects still incomplete, and with Ethiopia still facing many financial challenges, the positive economic outlook has quickly shifted from “going to happen” to “may happen”.
EPRDF has moved from the strong offensive to a sullen offensive-defensive. Push-Pull. Addis, like Luanda, Angola, defies Economic Science. If you buy a vehicle in Ethiopia, when you sell it, even years later, the value generally appreciates. Rents and property rates are astronomically high, coming close to rivaling Luanda – a huge developmental Achilles heel.
Lunch at the  Sheraton in Addis
The key driver of such high rates is the presence of diplomats and NGOs who have an unending well of money – and this is where the very living ghost of Isaias Afewerki (President of neighbouring Eritrea) comes to haunt Ethiopia. Eritrea, despite being poor, is not dependent on Foreign Aid or NGOs. They have that to pride. For Eritrea, there are no illusions. Poor is poor so the only way is to go upwards – on their own. Ethiopia lacks that. Instead, they have to endure a very faint cushion, one that is rarely successful except in dire times. Unless Ethiopia starts equal distribution of development in the small business sector and begins to really crack the whip on poverty alleviation and shakes off its dependency on NGOs, EPRDF could find itself in a lot of trouble – just like the ANC is, despite them trying to conjure all sorts of ghosts, from Jacob Zuma’s incarnation of Umshini Wami to the very living ghost of Nelson Mandela. Nonetheless, Ethiopia’s economy is about to get a very shocking reality check.