Kenyas

Credit: CC0 Public Domain In early 2024 most parts of Kenya, including Nairobi, experienced unusually high temperatures. The World Meteorological Organization described the hot weather as a global phenomenon: record high temperatures were recorded in 2023. January 2024 has been recorded as the hottest month on record so far worldwide. Gilbert Ouma, the coordinator of the University of Nairobi's Institute for Climate Change and…

Ilara Health, a Kenya-based health-tech enabling private clinics to access diagnostic devices and pharmaceutical products, has secured $4.2 million debt-equity in a pre-Series A round. The funds will be used to scale operations in the East African country, and to deepen health care access to the masses through the rollout of a B2B health and occupational service that will enable uninsured workers access care at its network of partner clinics for a fixed monthly fee. The $2.5 million equity round was led by DOB…

Credit: Pixabay/CC0 Public Domain A world without the police is inconceivable to many people. The police are viewed as part of modern society's foundation, ensuring democracy and keeping people safe. In practice, however, police around the world sometimes repress social movements, stifle democracy, and exacerbate social and racial…

Credit: Pixabay/CC0 Public Domain The Hilton Hotel was Nairobi's first skyscraper. The iconic cylindrical tower was opened in 1969 by President Jomo Kenyatta, six years after Kenya's independence from Britain. The recent closure of the hotel after more than 50 years of operation comes at a time of vertical transformation in the…

Kenya is in the middle of its worst drought in 40 years. In the parched north of the country, rivers are running dry and millions of livestock have perished due to lack of food. Around 4.4 million Kenyans don’t have enough to eat, and the situation will worsen if the coming rainy season fails like the previous five. “I’ve never seen it so bad. There’s nothing in the farms, the drought is too harsh,” says Daniel Magondo, a cotton and maize farmer in central Kenya.The record-breaking drought is forcing Kenya to confront a…

Credit: Pixabay/CC0 Public Domain The start of the 2023 school year in Kenya marks an important occasion: the first cohort of pupils to adopt a new curriculum in 2017 are entering junior secondary school. The competence-based curriculum, as it is known, was launched in 2017 to replace the 8-4-4 system that had been in place for 32…

Access Holdings will proceed no further with the bid to acquire a controlling stake in Sidian Bank Limited, headquartered in Kenya, Nigeria’s biggest lender said on Thursday, pulling the plug on a deal first announced barely half a year ago. The corporation set out to purchase an interest of 83.4 per cent in the East African bank when, in early June, it said that it would actualise the plan through its commercial banking unit, Access Bank. Centum Investment Company Plc, from which the stake was to be bought, is…

Credit: Unsplash/CC0 Public Domain Kenya's education curriculum was reformed in 2017 to improve its quality—but now many Kenyans are calling for change again. Public disillusionment with the competency-based curriculum has forced a government review. Frustrations with the curriculum center around the complexity of learning activities…

HotelOnline, a Kenyan-based Yanolja-backed travel technology scale-up that fashions itself as an e-commerce and digital marketing enabler in the hospitality industry, has acquired HotelPlus, a software provider with clients in 22 countries. The full terms of the transcation were not disclosed but Eric Muliro, who founded HotelPlus in Kenya 13 years ago is getting a payout and $1.9 million in shares in HotelOnline, which was valued at $24 million before the deal. Muliro has also been appointed as…

In June, Global Witness and Foxglove found that Meta continued to approve ads in Amharic targeting Ethiopian users that included hate speech and calls for violence. Facebook has been implicated in spreading hate speech and stoking ethnic violence in Ethiopia’s ongoing conflict.Crider argues that Facebook needs to invest more in its moderation practices and protections for democracy. She worries that even the threat of a ban allows the company to deflect accountability for the problems it has left unaddressed.“I think…