By David Wanjala Cyber crime is one of the most dangerous criminal threats in the world presently. In this digital era, where everything is or has moved online, there is need for diligent care when on the Internet. Criminals have now graduated to hacking, which enables them to be able to steal a person’s information or money through computers. Our country has not employed the best of measures to tackle cyber crime, which has enabled the (frequent) hacking of different institutions, especially financial ones. An example would be the hacking of the Kenya Revenue Authority (KRA) that resulted in a…
Author: Editor
BY DAVID ONJILI When seasoned Kenyan football journalist, Collins Okinyo updated on his Facebook timeline that Kenyan Premier League players work so hard and that he would like to also see them drive to and from training grounds and not just their club chairmen driving fuel guzzlers and adding more wives and concubines while the players suffered, it stoked fires. The scribe, however, was merely, but candidly explaining what a non-visionary lot of Kenyan club chairmen are. The debate has raged on, on the backdrop of local betting firm Sportpesa unveiling a multibillion-shilling five-year sponsorship of Barclays Premier League side…
BY TOM ODHIAMBO Not many Kenyans today would remember Aasif Karim. Not many would know who his father, Yusuf Karim was. I am not sure that even cricket enthusiasts today know Aasif’s son, Irfan Karim. But these three men are part of a cricketing dynasty in Kenya. They have played cricket in Kenya and represented the country in different periods, formats of cricket, under different circumstance. These three – and their extended members of the Karim family – are the subject of the book, The Karims: A Sporting Dynasty (Alpha Sports Limited, 2017[The book is accompanied with a DVD of…
BY LANJI OUKO It’s an early morning at Java right by Upperhill Medical Centre, 7:00am to be exact, but there’s not a single free table. What strikes me, is none of them seems to be here for breakfast, no; young, handsome men in three-piece suits and brown leather brogue oxford shoes. When I say young, I mean approximately under 30 years of age. These men look tired and agitated but they mask it quite well under gentle smiles. A bevy of young loud ladies walks in ten minutes later, armed with notebooks and laptops as they scramble for a seemingly…
Thirty-five percent of Africa’s population is between the ages of 15 and 35 years[1]. They are growing up in a more connected world—with mobile phones, access to the internet, and engaged in social media. As these connections become more commonplace, GeoPoll polled more than 4,000 youth to understand their perceptions on social media, Internet regulation, and free speech. The first two segments of the analysis digs into the youth’s perception of their rights and the role of government with regard to free speech and social media. Surveying youth in Ghana, Kenya, Nigeria, South Africa, and Uganda, 85% of respondents stated…
BY PETER WANYONYI The more things change, it seems, the more they resemble the past. This is true in politics, in life, and nowhere more than in technology. Step back 30 years from now, and you had large centralised computer systems – minicomputers and mainframe computers – to which were attached a number of “dump” terminals equipped with data entry peripherals like keyboards. Users had no processing at their” workstations”, which were just display terminals. The actual processing happened at the central computer, with the results of the processing displayed for the user to view and interact with. Somewhere in…
Starting out as an entrepreneur on September 12, 2016, 10:00am with a capital of Sh100, 000, his is a dream come true story. Ian Arunga is now making it easy for those who are keen on online shopping. With a professional background to boot; he is a full time art director at Foote, Cone and Belding EA, a blogger at mydeardoris.com, a children’s books author and an overall cool guy. Arunga runs Dapper Monkey, an online store that caters exclusively for men’s clothing. Demand is up there so much that he has kept pumping capital into the business to grow…
By Kosta Kioleoglou From the onset of the 1st quarter, 2015, it was obvious that the real estate sector was facing serious challenges. The amazing outperformance of the property market seemed to be unsustainable. The opinion mostly is that Kenya’s real estate sector is different and you cannot go wrong with land or property. Well, I have learned one thing in life; numbers do not lie. The latest house price index released by the Kenya Bankers’ Association (KBA) revealed the lack of strength in the sector. The marginal increase of 1.1% during the first quarter of 2017 sounds the alarm…
In its drive to widen the scope of available capital markets products in the Kenyan market in line with the 10-year Capital Market Master Plan, the Capital Markets Authority (CMA) has published a Policy Guidance Note (PGN) to facilitate the issuance of Asset-Backed Securities (ABS). The PGN, which was approved by the CMA Board in April 2017, has undergone extensive stakeholder consultation and engagement to ensure that the final product has the input of industry stakeholders, including a 30-day public exposure period in August to September 2016. Asset-backed securities are securities backed by future cash flow generating assets such as…
Weak oil and commodity prices over the past two years have led to foreign-currency shortages in numerous Sub-Saharan African countries. Oil-exporting nations have been particularly hit, since government foreign-exchange reserves have been severely depleted. In response, countries such as Angola (B1 negative) and Nigeria (B1 stable) have rationed supplies of foreign currency to their economies, causing shortfalls for banks and businesses. Dollar scarcity has also weakened local currencies. A stabilisation in oil and commodity prices over recent months will help to defuse the pressure. We forecast oil prices will remain between $40-$60 a barrel through 2018, compared to lows of…