Dennis Kioko

If every time you measure something, a problem is revealed you can solve that problem by stopping the measuring, like a Kenyan The Kenya Certificate of Primary Education results are out. For the first time in the history of KCPE, we will not rank schools. It demeans children and forever scars them when we make them compete against each other, or so we think. The purpose of an education is to impart knowledge, rather than rank small children. As usual, we are missing the point, or as I happened to be taught, missing the forest for the trees. Why? Well, I'll agree with you that perhaps we should not rank children, as this may not serve a lot of purpose, besides that of blowing horns, or as some people said, tossing our children around like potatoes. It should not escape us though, that even with no outright ranking, KCPE candidates will still be ranked, like Kenyan coffee. The top performers will go to the good schools, the national and provincial schools. At the bottom, ...

Laws to stop Kenyans from being exploited have instead entrenched the exploitation in law. Image -  oilnewskenya.com Kenyans love laws. The unmistakable belief that a law will make certain undesirable habits change because of the consequences of breaking such laws is common here. It is however lost on these Kenyans that even they themselves break many laws, with abandon. Therefore, new laws will not make people change their habits for the better, but will instead make people adopt their behaviour to account for the law, hence creating some other unintended consequence most of the time. A law meant to make oil cheaper for Kenyans made it more expensive   Take, for example, the laws that regulate the price of oil - petrol and diesel - in Kenya. A few years ago, at some point, politicians felt that the price of oil in Kenya was too high on fumes, and that the citizen was being "exploited" by oil companies. The politicians even went ahead and decided that it was no...

Dr. Anita Borg (1949-2003) devoted her adult life to revolutionizing the way we think about technology by dismantling barriers that keep women and minorities from entering computing and technology fields. In honor of her vision, Google is proud to announce the Google EMEA Anita Borg Memorial scholarship, which awards a group of female students a € 7,000 scholarship for the 2015-2016 academic year. All recipients will also be invited to attend a networking retreat. Deadline to apply: February 2, 2015 To be eligible to apply, applicants must: • Be a female student enrolled in a Bachelor's, Master's or PhD program for the 2015/2016 academic year • Be enrolled at a university in Europe, the Middle East or Africa • Be studying Computer Science, Computer Engineering, Informatics or a closely related technical field For full details, please visit us at: www.google.com/anitaborg/emea/ P.S Students can find tools online to allow them to convert their scores to GRE....

The Imara Daima station, where train passengers spent an hour on Thursday Morning The foul smell in my house is a lingering reminder. See, I did not take out the garbage for the second time in a row. No, I'm not in some feat to break a record. The first time I overslept, or rather, slept through most of the day. Yesterday, I only remembered to take the garbage when I was out of the gate. I would have gone back to do it, but time waits for no man. We were two men, son and farther, and the train we were going to catch runs on scheduled time, which again as I just mentioned, waits for no man, or even men. My dad was excited, see, the previous night he had sat through Mombasa Road traffic, which takes hours for those who ply the road and days for those who aren't accustomed. There was an accident, a friendly motorist had hit another one's rear bumper, spinning the vehicle such that it faced oncoming traffic. It's hard to understand why its is a national hobby in K...

Christine Lagarde at Mindspeak (image:  @bobcollymore ) On Monday, 6th of January, 2014, I attended my first Mindspeak at the Intercontinental. Like everyone else walking out of the packed room, I had a smirk on my face, and no, this was not due to the croissants that people were going to have for tea. They wanna know, Who's that girl? (La, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la) Christine Lagarde had done an awesome job there, I was impressed. I'm quite surprised that Lagarde is not a diplomat, for she is quite good at the art of wooing people and making them look forward to the idiomatic trip to hell. But then again, that's her job, and I it looks like she really does earn her salary. See, being in the same room as the International Monetary Fund and what are respected economists in this country, I expected that we would ask the hard questions, that Lagarde would break a sweat. That never happened. I don't know what the issue was, we did not do our hom...

Part of Kigali See part 1 of why Kenyans Love Kigali , which this articl is a continuation. Rwandair should be cheaper if going to Kigali via air from Nairobi In my previous post on why Kenyans love Kigali, or Rwanda for that matter, I had mentioned on the security of the city. The post however widely dealt with the feel and appearance of the city, and a little bit of the country. Both of my visits to Kigali have been through the airport, though you may opt for a more adventurous journey by road. Getting to Kigali then required a Kenyan passport, but no visa. Now, all you need to go through both Uganda and Rwandan borders are a National Identity Card. For travel by air, Rwandair is a cheaper option for Kenyans as compared to our national flag carrier, Kenya Airways. Ironically, most other Africans get to Kigali via Kenya Airways, thought most Kenyans will opt for the cheaper Rwandair. The flights are comfortable and the service on board the 1 hour 15 minutes flight is gr...