IN “AFRICA REVOLUTION SERIES part 2: Tribe, Religion, And The Petty Middle Class”, (http://nakedchiefs.com/2013/06/12/africa-revolution-series-part-2-tribe-religion-and-the-petty-middle-class-dictator/), we held that the African middle class will not be the source of any revolutionary (or better still radical) change of politics on the continent in the near future. That leaves two possible sources where a new enlightened politics and a moral […]
AFRICA REVOLUTION SERIES part 2: Tribe, Religion, And The Petty Middle Class Dictator
BY NOW we have all heard enough stories about “Africa Rising”, and how more and more Africans are growing rich and being pulled out of poverty, although the number of very poor is still sinfully too high. And in “AFRICA REVOLUTION SERIES part 1: What Bricks, Mortar, Yams And Cellphones Have To Do With It”, […]
LETTER FROM A FRIEND: Tanzania And The Fine Art Of Picking A Dance Partner
IT IS TIME again for Letter From A Friend. Good Mr EM read the article in The East African “Why Dar Is Hot, And The Rest Of Us Are Not” (http://www.theeastafrican.co.ke/OpEd/comment/Why-Dar-is-hot–and-the-rest-of-us-are-not-/-/434750/1875642/-/jc2xrtz/-/index.html), and was particularly tickled by the reference to Tanzania “right now is that girl on the dance floor that every boy wants to dance with.” […]
GOLDEN OLDIE: Don’t Blame The Cow
By Michael Fairbanks and Stace Lindsday IN PERU we once gave a presentation to several hundred business and government leaders in a grand hall, darkened except for the raised stage on which we were speaking. After glumly reporting to the audience on the difficult state of the Peruvian economy, we told the business people they […]
Our ‘Rich’ People Are So Few They Can’t Fill A Big Football Stadium; And That’s A Very Good Thing
ACCORDING to the latest Kenya Statistical Abstract, in 2012 the number of Kenyans earning more than KSh100,000 (equivalent to $1,250) a month was 50,224. To put that in some context, Mr Kwame Owino, who heads the Institute of Econonomic Affairs (IEA) in Nairobi, said you could fit all those Kenyans in Manchester United’s Old Trafford […]
Green Rookie: Why A Million Frogs, And 3 Years of Heartbreaks Have Sent Me Over The Moon
I OWE you an update. In December 2011 I wrote two blogs on my baby steps on the journey to becoming a dirty-your-hands environmentalist. In “Christmas Thoughts: One Hole Could Save My Village – And 7 Billion Africans Too” (http://nakedchiefs.wordpress.com/wp-admin/post.php?post=54&action=edit), I told of how I was fumbling with constructing a small dam in my ancestral […]
Of Democracy Virgins And Razor Thin Election Victory Margins; Behold The Kicks Of A ‘New’ Africa
AFTER an article in Daily Nation (Kenya) last week, “Kisumu, Where Some Folks Are Eating Well, While Others Are Going Hungry” (http://www.nation.co.ke/blogs/-/445642/1859926/-/51arxlz/-/index.html), I had a discussion with a worthy reader about how President Uhuru Kenyatta’s electoral victory in the March elections could be “razor thin”, given that it was by over 800,000 votes. An interesting issue, […]
