Startup Kenya

Working as a consultant for Strathmore University's faculty of information technology I was tasked with examining diploma students' programming projects. We had a pretty standard marking scheme; check whether the program can interact with a database - add, update, and delete records from the database; check if the program validates user input - does it allow you to enter text in a field which should only have numbers; etc. For a student to pass, technically all they required to do was ensure they met these criteria. Despite this many students were marked down for petty errors which had little to do with the functionality of the program . Some of my fellow examiners took a perverse pleasure in 'crashing' the examinees software and reducing them into tears , even when these examinees were their students who they had been in charge of for over three months. "This is not working, that is not running, it doesn't function" . They complained and complained, cras...

What? A national holiday to celebrate the election of a US president ? Am I the only one who sees this for the asinine decision it is? So what if Barack Obama's father is from Kenya? Is it justification to lose KSh. 3.8 Billion (on an economy of KSh. 1.4 trillion)? You don't see the US making tomorrow a holiday, even though the election of Barack Obama is much more historic and relevant to them. This Kibaki government is a bunch of lazy, work-phobic, selfish, politics-first fellas who are totally unsuited to meet the challenges of Kenya's economic growth. That's what you get when you elect a bunch of doddering old men! Disgusting.

It saddens me that my absence from blogging has not been broken by innovation or entrepreneurship - those things that I love so much to write about. But today I am forced to I write about something I love even more, and that is my country Kenya. On December 26th 2007 I broke my vacation upcountry and drove two hundred kilometres in order to get to my polling station early the next morning to cast my vote. My enthusiasm to exercise my civic duty ensured that by 7:30 am on voting day I was done and was only to wait for the results. Confident that my subscription to SMS election updates would keep me adequately informed of the results and with my phone on roaming I accepted an invitation to spend one week abroad at a friend's house. My vacation has since turned into an unplanned exile from my country as I watch in disbelief as Kenya disintegrates at an alarming pace. I cannot stand by and watch as my beautiful Kenya is destroyed by the pride of two men. Kenya is bigger than both actor...