Kenya hosted major conferences including TICAD and UNCTAD last year. Given the strategic and geographical location of the country; giving it an edge to host more international conferences, investors mainly hoteliers, have shown business interests mainly aiming at offering visitors an opportunity to enjoy. Things were rosy until politics set in. With the elections in the backdrop this year, the economy has been growing at a slow pace. Despite the setbacks, tourism has been upbeat as international bookings have been steady at 70%, according to Bobby Kamani, MD of Diani Reef. He spoke to Victor Adar on fourth quarter performance…
Author: NBM CORRESPONDENT
BY VICTOR ADAR HMD global Oy, the licence holder for the Nokia brand, seems to be giving Nokia 3310 a fresh run-around. New version of this mid-range phone that stole many peoples’ hearts some 17 years ago is still remarkable. Back in the days, the few features the model was synonymous with was not only a torch and a ringtone composer, but also heritage of quality, simplicity and reliability. And if you were lucky to own one, you know you could stay connected regardless of how remote your village was. Those devices did not come with issues of “no” network.…
BY DAVID ONJILI Company Shop, Britain’s largest re-distributor of surplus food and goods partnered with Community Shop to help manufacturers and retailers deal with the headache of surplus sustainably around the year 2013. This was to mark the beginning of a successful journey of community shops, an idea for shoppers on the verge of food poverty to get the opportunity to buy food and drink for up to 70% less than the normal high-street prices. The aim is to stop the large stores from dumping. A community shop is simply a social enterprise that is empowering individuals and building stronger…
Michael Kamau, former PS for Transport and Infrastructure ones said, “You can shut down railway transport and the Kenyan economy will just continue without feeling the pinch.” Mr Kamau was interviewing for the position of Cabinet Secretary for the same ministry before a parliamentary select committee. He also noted in the same interview that cargo transport at the time, May 2013, had declined from 15% to 3% and directly blamed it for the heavy traffic congestion along the busy Nairobi Mombasa Highway. Since the Rift Valley Railways (RVR) won the concession to run the approximately 2,352 Km Kenya – Uganda…
Rebecca Miano may be the latest lady to take up a top job. She is the new acting managing director and chief executive of Kenya Electricity Generating Company (KenGen) after its previous head, Albert Mugo, who had held the office for the last four years, retired. Becoming the first woman to hold the office since its establishment in 1998, Ms Miano has been part of the company for the last 9 years where she held the dual post of company secretary and legal affairs director. As the legal affairs director, she was responsible for driving the corporate governance agenda in…
African Organization for Families has decried the effects of contraceptives, saying it has resulted in massive population control, Eugenics, Abortions and free sex culture. Instead of teaching chastity before and after marriage, the organization said, the society has resorted to contraceptives to control births and “space children” adding that this has created a permissive sexual culture where anyone can have sex anywhere with whoever and at any time, most of which is fornication and adultery. Contraceptives are artificial agents that were invented in the 1960’s to help in population control. The world celebrates contraception every September 26 and African Organisation…
Youtap has launched Youtap Cloud; a payment-processing platform delivered as a cloud service for mobile money and payment providers in developing markets. Youtap Cloud enables real-time transaction processing for contactless mobile money and bank wallet payments. It supports QR code payments, as well as NFC technology, including low-cost micro point-of-sale (POS) devices, companion cards and ‘tap and pay’ using tags or wearables. The solution is a white-label service with minimal upfront costs, allowing the provider to focus on go-to-market initiatives and merchant acquisition. Youtap Cloud connects to banking and traditional payment networks through a range of interfaces and to blockchain…
BY ISAAC SWILA In the last six years, heart-wrenching stories of domestic servants, mostly house helps, abusing children under their care have been awash in the media so much so that it is no longer treated as “hot news”. Put differently, the number of rogue house-helps either bullying, beating up, kidnapping or even killing children of their masters have been full throttle that it’s no longer shocking news in this part of the world. And as the vice continues unabated, its mind boggling that to date, even some of the most educated middle class couples still dare the devil by failing…
Leading financial services provider, Zamara has proposed a radical repositioning of Kenya’s current pensions system to enable it to include savings for wider priorities, such as financing the purchase of a home and education of children in addition to retirement saving. Speaking at the Zamara Annual Retirement Conference, Zamara CEO Sundeep Raichura said that enabling retirement fund members leverage their long term pension savings to address their immediate needs as well as retirement income would encourage Kenyans to set long term pension savings goals and in turn result in a higher level of savings in the country. “Based on surveys…
Hitachi Limited (TSE:6501, “Hitachi”) has launched Hitachi Vantara, a new business entity to leverage the broad portfolio of innovation, development and experience from across Hitachi Group of companies to deliver data-driven solutions for commercial and industrial enterprises. The new company will unify the operations of Hitachi Data Systems, Hitachi Insight Group, and Pentaho into a single integrated business as Hitachi Vantara to capitalise on Hitachi’s social innovation capability in both operational technologies (OT) and information technologies (IT). Hitachi has been a leader in OT for industries such as finance, government, manufacturing, power/energy and transportation for over 100 years, providing solutions…