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Showing posts from October, 2015

2015 Tanzania Elections Infographic

The above infographic is made from information collected from official Facebook and Twitter pages of the 2 presidential candidates. Additionally, information from Google Trends which represents relative  interest in terms of Google Searches has been added, based on 30 day and 7 day interest in the 2 candidates. Google Trends does not show the total number of searches. Google explains "The numbers that appear show total searches for a term relative to the total number of searches done on Google over time." Thus a decrease in numbers for the 2 candidates means popularity is decreasing compared to other searches ie, people are making more searches for other terms, not necessarily that fewer people are searching for the two.

Beers in Kenya: A sober opinion

Note: This is a dated post and has since been mostly passed by events. SAB Miller beers including Castle and Peroni are no longer widely available in Kenya after their exist. Sirville Brewery was bought out by Brew Bistro before being permanently shut in a tax dispute. Kenya is a land of milk, honey, beaches and taxes. I have penned, or is typed, a newer post here .  Peroni - One of the best beers in Kenya. Did a taste of canned and bottled Italian, and bottled Tanzanian I like the tangy flavour and body in Tanzanian Peroni. The can is close. Heineken drinkers will like the Italian one.  I have had a short beer swigging stint in my life. It has however been long enough for me to share my opinion of Kenyan beer. Interestingly, over the course of sharing such opinions with other drunkards connoisseurs,  I have found that we all have different views as to what beer is the best, which one makes you too drunk, or which one gives one free, extra hangover for every hangover you get

To ensure emergency hospital admissions for all, Kenya needs to pay hospitals

An accident scene on Mombasa Road. Many emergency hospital admissions are usually from such scenes, with the patient barely conscious and neither in a state to settle out formalities of  payment before admission.  Last week, we were confronted with t he story of a patient who spent 18 hours in an ambulance , waiting for medical care. The road accident victim,  who needed Intensive Care Unit admission, found our national referral hospital - Kenyatta National Hospital, did not have any vacant ICU slot. It is said other private hospitals refused to admit the patient, though only one hospital got mentioned in the incident. Though one may be forgiven to think that this was just a single occurrence - the feeling is that the situation occurs quite often, and that the case here only happened to stand out by making it to the newspapers. Kenyans are outraged. They feel that hospitals, especially private ones, that refuse to admit patients before a payment deposit is made, are being

Slut shaming: We all need to stop punishing women's sexuality

Do your parents know you have sex? Do your friends know you have sex? For most of us, the first answer would be no. Coming to the second question, the answer will likely vary, depending on your gender. For a man, having sex is a source of pride and esteem. In fact, to our friends, the more people we have sex with, irrespective of how good or bad it is, it is something to toot your horn about. When it comes to ladies - the situation is a little different. For some, your friends are okay with you having sex with a regular boyfriend, but will probably judge you for having sex with partners that aren’t your boyfriend. To some ladies, sex outside marriage remains unthinkable to their parents, who consider such a thing taboo. The same parents, however, tend to be okay with their sons having sex, or even having a string of girlfriends. Such behaviour in male children is likely to be viewed as virile, but their female siblings are expected to remain "chaste". The ir

How Kenya imports its IT innovation

Whenever people mention Kenya as being an innovate country,  or Africa’s most innovative country,  they will often go ahead to list examples. M-Pesa and Ushahidi. One would be mistaken to think that all these years,  nothing much has happened in Kenya,  besides the two. That,  however is the challenge of cliche presentations,  which pick up punchlines from other presentations on the Internet. Until those who first listed M-Pesa and Ushahidi as Kenyan innovations add a few others to their lists - we may have to settle for these two being descriptive enough. Now, I was here to talk about innovation in Kenya. I’ll be talking about much more than M-Pesa and Ushahidi. I happened to be hanging out with a few hardened and debugged developers yesterday, as Ushahidi launched what has been the result of 3 years of effort,  a revamped,  much more robust platform. I got into a discussion with these developers. M-Pesa was founded in Kenya by researchers from the United Kingdom. The prod