Tottenham Hotspur fans call him ‘The Beast’. In Swahili, Wanyama means animals; to the Luhya tribe to which he belongs, the appellation is more impressively specific – he is ‘the one born when an animal was slaughtered in celebration’. Spurs fans have indeed had much to be thankful for since the Kenyan midfielder’s arrival from Southampton in June 2016.
So far this season, Victor Wanyama has started all of Tottenham’s Premier League fixtures, and is arguably their most dependable asset. A silent enforcer who allows the club’s most creative players to pivot and rotate around him, Wanyama also has a dusting of the artist’s flair so beloved at White Hart Lane. His passing choices are deceptively simple and considered, and he recently demonstrated a hidden depth of slick versatility in Spurs’ January draw at the Etihad, dropping back to center-half when required against a predatory Manchester City side that were ready to profit had he been less assured in his understanding of football’s fluid geometry.
<div id="attachment_4729" style="width: 248px" class="wp-caption alignleft"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" aria-describedby="caption-attachment-4729" class="size-medium wp-image-4729" src="/wp-content/uploads/2017/05/GettyImages-655297348-238x300.jpg" alt="" width="238" height="300" />LONDON, ENGLAND &#8211; MARCH 19: Victor Wanyama of Tottenham Hotspur during the Premier League match between Tottenham Hotspur and Southampton at White Hart Lane on March 19, 2017 in London, England. (Photo by Catherine Ivill &#8211; AMA/Getty Images)</div>
Wanyama’s destiny as his country’s most valuable football export was forged in the dusty streets of Nairobi, Kenya’s electric, bustling, intoxicating capital. He attended St Peter’s Claver Primary, in the infamous Landhies Road area in the old center of the city, where matatu drivers, market traders and teeth and skin-whitening peddlers jostle for custom in a chaotic miasma of klaxons and exhaust fumes. His class teacher, Penina Ogony, remembers him as quiet and respectful.
“He didn’t have much to say,” she laughs. “But he was a good boy, and he did well in his final exams. And he was huge for his age, as big as his teacher at the time.”
A few hundred yards up the road nestles Wanyama’s old secondary school, cowering behind the ubiquitous Nairobi construction sites with their laborers’ bellows and Hadean clang of metal on hot metal. Kamukunji is a nursery for the best football talent in the city; gifted young players from the school train a few blocks away at a local estate at dawn before class, with the most promising earmarked early by local Kenyan Premier League teams and allowed by the school to link up with their clubs during class time, provided academic targets are met.
A framed photograph of Wanyama from 2015 – he is addressing beaming Kamukunji students in the school courtyard – is the proud centerpiece on a table of jostling football trophies in the office of the school’s current principal, Patrick Gakung’u.
“Wanyama was very consistent,” he says. “He was able to successfully blend football and classes. That’s difficult, and it’s something we encourage here. And these young players prefer this school because we have that element.”
It’s a delicate balance that can be hard to sustain. The thin line dividing full-blooded enthusiasm and reckless indiscipline is easily crossed, as Kamukunji discovered in 2016 when their goalkeeper’s violent overreaction to a refereeing decision resulted in a two-year ban from all secondary school competitions. Gakung’u is appealing the ban, and argues that a cadre of talented and disciplined youngsters should not have to endure an injurious collective penance. He assembles the players in the school courtyard for a team photograph; they smile shyly in the sunshine as their coach, ‘Leopard’ Ngari, reminisces about a young, unassuming, “very hardworking” Wanyama.
“Although he was talented, he was very humble; you never saw him say no to others,” he says. “When he came back to address the students, he repeated one thing: you have to be focused. We are very proud of him.”
Gakung’u gently encourages current team captain Tom Atieno and attacking midfielder Fiston Nchungu to break from the group for a moment to talk about their aspirations.
“Victor inspired me to play like him,” says Nchungu. “To be disciplined. To play in England, because there is so much competition there.”
His captain favors Arsenal; what odds on these two young men facing off in a future North London derby?
The road to professional success to date has been a narrow and precarious one for a young Kenyan player; relatively few have made it the hallowed ground of a club in a top league overseas. Only eight of the current national team squad currently play outside Africa, and the UK’s strict and unsentimental points system for evaluating a non-EU national’s eligibility for a work permit is punishing on countries with a low FIFA ranking. That climate is evolving fast, however. Kenya has climbed almost 30 places, to 87th, in two years thanks to the appointment of former Glasgow Rangers striker Bobby Williamson as manager in 2014, and the dynamic new approach of the youthful current head coach Stanley Okumbi. In late February, local betting giants SportPesa, sponsors of the Kenyan Premier League and English top-flight club Hull City, sent a squad of 18 of the best young Kenyan players in the country to the UK for a training camp and friendly match against the Premier League side. Wanyama is unlikely to remain the sole Kenyan in the Premier League for long (and many Kenyan fans argue that Liverpool striker Divock Origi, a Belgian international with a Kenyan father, is also flying their flag in the world’s toughest league).
Wanyama’s recent success is even more remarkable, given the scarcity of such opportunities in Kenya a decade ago. His break came when he was scouted by former AFC Leopards coach Edward Manoah while playing in a high school tournament for Kamukunji (Wanyama’s disciplinarian father Noah had been a successful and adored left winger at the club, and ties between the Leopards and the Wanyamas endure).
“He was a striker then, tall for his age,” says Manoah.  “He was strong in the air and could hold the ball up well. He came on in the second half on his Leopards debut – and scored the winner.”
Wanyama’s development was rapid. He earned his first cap for Kenya at 15 years old, and quickly emulated the progress of his older brother McDonald Mariga, another of the Kamukunji ‘golden boys’. Mariga’s talent had been spotted by Swedish lower division side Enköpings SK, and he took quickly to European football, moving to Helsingborgs IF before joining Serie A club Parma, and later Inter Milan, where he became the first Kenyan player to appear in the Champions League.
After short stints at Nairobi City Stars and JMJ Academy, Wanyama at last followed his brother to Helsingborgs. A robust three-year stint at Belgian side Beerschot caught the attention of Celtic, where he became the first Kenyan to score in the Champions League in an emotional win against Barcelona. Mauricio Pochettino, then manager of Southampton, brought him to St Mary’s in 2013, recognizing the qualities of diligence, athleticism and humility that are the hallmarks of the Argentine’s team ethic; the move to Pochettino’s Tottenham in 2016 seems, in retrospect, an inevitability.
It’s January 2017, and a hot, bright morning at Marist University in the leafy Nairobi suburb of Karen, about half an hour outside the city. The AFC Leopards first-team squad is playing a gritty, breathless seven-a-side game on a difficult dusty surface as new head coach Stewart Hall, a seasoned former Birmingham City academy director, observes from the touchline. On an adjacent pitch, the Leopards youth team runs through passing drills as the club’s CEO, Ronald Namai, outlines a positive but realistic future for the next would-be Kenyan superstars.
“This year we have actually promoted four of the youth team, so we are focused on bringing young players through to the senior squad,” he says. “We have constant feedback from schools; if we identify a promising player, we will pay their school fees and they will train with us over the holidays. What we insist is during school days, you must be in school. Otherwise we are not going to allow you to train. You see we have promoted 17 year-old. But when you are 28, 29, you are on your way out. So what are you going to do after that? You need an education.”
For Namai, there is still room in his grounded realism for the promise of some modest success; one of the three Leopards players in the squad traveling to Hull, he insists, will be a Premier League player by 2018.
Hall jogs over while the first team takes a break. He points out Ibrahim Mao, one of the four recent graduates from the youth team. A slender, evasive winger with an intelligent first touch, Mao jumps a tackle and hits a fierce shot hard and early while we watch.
“There’s some real talent in Kenya,” says Hall. “I’m saying to all my players, now listen, there’s a Kenyan playing in England, but also Belgium, Russia, Bulgaria, Sweden, Norway, Denmark. There’s a Kenyan in the MLS in the States. And because of this, the scouts are moving out here and taking kids from here younger and younger.”
He says that fostering the right attitude in these players, a Wanyama-like focus, is now a priority.
“Before, it’s been a case of wanting to be the best in the village, not the best in the country. That’s been a problem.”
His exhausted squad breaks for lunch. There’ll be a second session in the afternoon to hone fitness; the announcement of the league’s opening fixtures is believed to be just days away.
“I’ve said to this lot, if you don’t want to be a serious footballer, I don’t want you at the club. And I’ll chase you away,” he says. “We’ve put in a recruitment strategy that says we want to be the youngest team in the league. And now there’s a hunger here. Everybody here should want to be Wanyama.”

We’ll Follow  The Beast To Hull And Back

The respected Kenyan scholar Ali Al’amin Mazrui would have had interesting things to say about Africa’s current dalliance with Asia, especially the rise of Chinese business interests and influence across the continent.
Increasingly, companies from Japan, Singapore, Malaysia and South Korea have also been boosting their national GDPs with Africa-based projects. According to Linklaters, a commercial law firm, Asian-sponsored project finance funds in Africa grew by over 160% during the last decade, with Nigeria, South Africa, Mozambique, Egypt and the Democratic Republic of Congo the leading destinations for these commitments, which were in excess of $12 billion.
Mazrui would have advanced a quaint thesis for re-balancing Africa’s trade, cultural and diplomatic ties with Asia’s power blocs. He would have been especially aggrieved by the current state of inertia in the political economy of Africa’s most populous nation. A pan-Africanist and student of Nigerian affairs (his wife Pauline Uti, mother of two of his five sons, is Nigerian), the late professor is credited with stating way back in the 1970s that, “Africa produces what it does not consume and consumes what it does not produce.” And those were the early days of continental profligacy.
Nigeria could be Africa’s biggest culprit in this regard. The country is consequently experiencing its first recession in 30 years. Tired of waiting for the promised hope of a better nation, Nigerians now, rightly or not, accuse their current leader of bringing Africa’s largest economy by GDP to its knees.
President Muhammadu Buhari has been blamed for not ‘radicalizing governance’ fast enough, which was one of the reasons Nigerians voted for his All Progressives Congress (APC) party in 2015. Nigeria is engulfed in a torrent of crises never before seen in the history of the nation.
Clearing the cobwebs of the past is proving to be a delicate dilemma for the taciturn president and his team. Grappling with sluggish growth, dwindling external revenues, double-digit inflation and a prolonged currency constipation, he is leading the ethical campaign to wrestle with the seen and unseen forces of corruption and ineptitude. His seeming preference for advisers from his northern base is also being openly examined by civil society.
For Nigeria’s sake, Buhari needs to win the war against graft and impunity. His victory will begin to recreate a new nation, sealing his place in history and in the soft spot of a large-hearted nation.
But, can he do what is required to transform the ethos of governance, business and society? Will “the Nigerian system” allow him?
Will confirmed and well connected crooks go to jail? Will reportedly recovered looted funds be reinjected into the treasury? Will massive recovery of this commonwealth mean less recourse to external loans? Will the judiciary invoke its constitutional principles on its own stables? Will the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC) ever successfully convict any person of influence?
Will federal and state legislatures reduce their allowances and salaries in tandem with the austere times? Do we need a referendum on their astronomical salaries? Will the Nigerian state significantly increase investment in education, healthcare and the police, using advanced technology tools and techniques to revamp these ecosystems? And when will politics with principles become the order of the day?
These are the sort of questions Nigerians are asking themselves. But they also realize their quest for jobs, stability and development is hobbled by a subculture of guile and graft.
Teaching at Uganda’s Makerere University between 1963 and 1973, the late Mazrui was known for poking fun at the megalomania of Africa’s fat-cat leaders and speaking truth to power. Naturally, Idi Amin disliked him a lot. He was also not able to get a job in any Kenyan university during the regimes of Jomo Kenyatta and Daniel Arap Moi. Were Mazrui alive today, he would have also queried the absence of truth and the dearth of altruism in the politics of modern Nigeria.
Mazrui would have encouraged Nigeria’s business, political and military intelligentsia to openly discourse their festering sores. He would have prayed for peace, unity of purpose and nation-wide reflection. He would have said hope should never be allowed to get into a cul-de-sac.
So will 2017 be the year Nigeria begins to recalibrate its moral compass? Nigeria desperately needs to lead Africa out of the nadir of homegrown frustrations.

Quest For A New Nation

The night we go to press with this issue is when Lupita Nyong’o jets in from Kampala to Johannesburg for the premiere of her new film, Disney’s Queen of Katwe, releasing in South Africa mid-October.
Getting a phone interview – even two exclusive email quotes – from this African A-lister, despite relentlessly pursuing her PR machinery for months, has proven painfully difficult.
But this is Lupita, the African who brought home the best supporting actress Oscar for her turn as Patsey in Steve McQueen’s 12 Years a Slave in 2014. Her Cinderella-esque pose with the Oscar statue in the billowing blue – a color she famously said reminded her of Nairobi – Prada dress is still fresh in social media memory.
This spring, she was seen in Eclipsed, which made its Broadway debut and was written by another famous African daughter, Danai Gurira, the playwright more popular as the actress in The Walking Dead.
Eclipsed, a story about hope and activism starring a cast of all-African women, saw Lupita scoop the best Broadway debut performance award at the 2016 Theatre World Awards. The play explores the journey of four women drawn together due to the turmoil in their home country, Liberia.
Referring to her portrayal in Eclipsed, The New York Times said: “The superb Lupita Nyong’o is one of the most radiant young actors to be seen on Broadway in recent seasons.”
The Mexican-born Lupita, who was raised in Kenya, plays a part closer to home in Queen of Katwe, as Harriet, the strong-willed mother of Ugandan child chess prodigy, Phiona Mutesi.
The coming-of-age film, which is a true story, set in Katwe and Kibuli in Uganda, is directed by Mira Nair, who has straddled world cinema with such memorable films as Salaam Bombay!, Mississippi Masala, Monsoon Wedding, The Namesake and The Reluctant Fundamentalist. Nair has had a home in Kampala for the past 27 years and is the founder of Maisha Film Lab, a film school for East Africans.
In a press statement, Nair says the role of Harriet was written for Lupita, who she has known for years.
“I thought of Harriet as a young Mother Courage, and that is the strength and beauty that is in Lupita,” says Nair.
Lupita was an intern at Nair’s production company Mirabai Films in New York before she shot to fame with 12 Years a Slave. The actress had reportedly broken down and cried after reading just 10 pages of the script of Queen of Katwe.
“It was the first time in a while that I’d been so enlivened, inspired and challenged by a role I was considering,” says Nyong’o.
In its review of the film, The New York Times, said: “The sight of well-fed, well-dressed schoolboys beaten by a girl — a poor girl, at that — would be satisfying even if Queen of Katwe were a less vivid and engaging movie.”
In the interim leading up to the film, Lupita had also essayed roles in Non-Stop with Liam Neeson, The Jungle Book and played the voice of 1,000-year-old space pirate Maz Kanata in Star Wars: A Force Awakens, which released winter 2015.
And there have been other ‘appearances’. Lupita recently posted a video on her Instagram account showing off her freestyle-rapping skills, much to the mirth of her 3.1 million followers.
Lupita is also the Global Elephant Ambassador for WildAid, a wildlife conservation group focusing on protecting animals from being poached.
While Kenya banned the ivory trade over 20 years ago, WildAid says close to 33,000 elephants are killed annually in Africa for ivory. Lupita joined WildAid, for the campaign ‘Poaching Steals from Us All’, in July 2015, to advocate the protection and survival of elephants. It’s a role she takes seriously.
WildAid CEO Peter Knights says it has been amazing working with the star.
“Lupita is such a powerful presence on-screen, and this power has translated so beautifully to this campaign. She is truly passionate and committed to saving Africa’s elephants,” says Knights to FORBES WOMAN AFRICA.
Lupita had recently also gone back to her roots in Kenya for the October cover of Vogue. Needless to say, the 33-year-old Yale School of Drama graduate is leaving a trail as the beacon of hope for other young women in her country.
Moses Wafula, the principal of St. Mary’s School Nairobi, where Lupita was a student, calls her the school’s “heroine”.
“St. Mary’s School is very proud of Lupita. It’s a joy even to us who have ridden in the fame she has brought to the institution. Her success is a brand to our school and thence, many students have joined this institution since her Oscars’ triumph,” he says.
Attests Vivian Onano, an activist and youth ambassador for UN Women, who hails from Kisumu county in Kenya where Lupita is also from: “Lupita is a great role model and an inspiration for many young African women, me included. Despite her success, she has maintained her authenticity and stayed grounded. She has boldly showed us that you don’t have to conform to Hollywood’s definition of beauty to be successful in the global space. She acknowledges her roots and has used her platform to create opportunities for other young ladies who aspire to be like her.”
Kenyan photographer Lyndsey McIntyre, who knew Lupita before she became famous, was invited by the actress to a film she had produced on albinism, a subject McIntyre says Lupita is passionate about.
“The documentary was incredible… She always had that star quality about her even years ago but was humble, intelligent and very charming. I have no doubt Lupita is still humble and charming, she is just one of those types of people I think will manage to keep her feet on the ground,” she says.
“Like most people who acquire that level of recognition, she is exceptional, a one in a million. She has many gifts — her beauty, her intellect, her tremendous talent and her lovely personality but she was also privileged in her upbringing and studied her craft in the US when she was signed by obviously an excellent agent. She was not plucked out of a village in rural Kenya or even out of Nairobi,” says McIntyre.
In Kenya, Lupita’s parents have a reputation of their own. Her father, Peter Anyang’ Nyong’o, is a professor of political science and senator of Kisumu county. Onano, who knows Lupita’s mother Dorothy (see interview on previous page), calls her: “A quiet lady though a great force and a doer; a very beautiful woman full of grace and a big heart.”
It’s the same grace and creative zest Lupita brings. Her hairstylist Vernon François, who created the brown and blue head wrap for her interview on American talk show Jimmy Kimmel Live in September, tells FORBES WOMAN AFRICA working with Lupita is a fantastic creative process.
“We have a very productive relationship because we are both always full of ideas and collaborate well. Selecting the material for every head wrap that I design for her, is always a team effort between Lupita, her stylist and myself,” he says.
Fans can now look forward to Lupita playing Nakia in Marvel’s Black Panther, which will cast her with The Walking Dead’s Gurira; the film’s expected to be released in 2018.
She is also in the upcoming much-awaited film adaptation of Nigerian author Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie’s book Americanah.
Africa is watching.
&nbsp;
<h2>‘She Will Continue To Break Through Ceilings For People of Color’</h2>
<div id="attachment_32006" style="width: 1034px" class="wp-caption alignnone"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" aria-describedby="caption-attachment-32006" class="wp-image-32006 size-large" src="http://www.forbesafrica.com/app/uploads/2017/05/GettyImages-476081543-1024x871.jpg" alt="" width="1024" height="871" srcset="https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/05/GettyImages-476081543-1024x871.jpg 1024w, https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/05/GettyImages-476081543-300x255.jpg 300w, https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/05/GettyImages-476081543-600x511.jpg 600w, https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/05/GettyImages-476081543-768x653.jpg 768w, https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/05/GettyImages-476081543.jpg 2048w" sizes="auto, (max-width: 1024px) 100vw, 1024px" />SANTA MONICA, CA- MARCH 01: Actress Lupita Nyong&#8217;o (R) and mother Dorothy Nyong&#8217;o attend the 2014 Film Independent Spirit Awards at Santa Monica Beach on March 1, 2014 in Santa Monica, California.(Photo by Jeffrey Mayer/WireImage)</div>
<h4>Lupita’s mother, Dorothy Nyong’o, is an advocate for women and girls and whose work with the Africa Cancer Foundation speaks for itself. Known in Kenya for her commitment to cancer patients and cancer research, she also owns a public relations firm, 7th Sense Communications:</h4>
<pre></pre>
<h4>Do you travel often with Lupita?</h4>
I occasionally travel to meet Lupita at work. She takes her work very seriously. She has a very high work ethic and does whatever is necessary to give it her very best. At the same time, she likes to enjoy her work. She is playful and builds in enjoyment of the process and of the moment. She has always done so.
<h4>How do think Kenyans have responded to Lupita’s success?</h4>
Kenyans generally own Lupita’s success. They have personal pride in her achievements and feel she belongs to them. They are inspired by her and have a lot of goodwill towards her. She is a good role model for many. People often ask me, ‘how is our daughter?’
<h4>What do you think the future entails for her in Africa?</h4>
Lupita is already a role model in Africa and worldwide. She is an influencer and a leader in her craft. She will continue to break through real and imaginary ceilings for people of color and for women all over the world. She will continue to create opportunities for Africans and people of color, worldwide.
&nbsp;
&nbsp;

shutterstock_432782164-Ovidiu-Hrubaru-Shutterstock.com-

Queen Bee!

Kenyan actress Lupita Nyong’o, 33, grew up in Nairobi before studying film and theater at Hampshire College, Massachusetts. Her father, Peter, is a politician who has spoken of being harassed and tortured for his beliefs. In 2014, Nyong’o won the Oscar for best supporting actress for her role as Patsey in 12 Years a Slave. She currently lives in Brooklyn. Here, she talks fame, and how childhood readied her for it:
Being uncomfortable with sudden fame is nothing to be ashamed of. It can be trying and confusing. Being cast in 12 Years a Slave completely altered the architecture of my life. I had come straight out of school and everything seemed to change overnight. Suddenly there was all this recognition. It still surprises me when people know who I am.
If I look calm, it’s probably because I’m terrified. Human beings have three reactions to stress – fight, flight or freeze – and my default is to freeze. If that comes across as calmness, I’m lucky.
I have a lot to thank television for. As a child in Kenya, it presented me with a window to the world. I was exposed to different cultures through shows from England, Australia, Brazil, Mexico. TV taught me what it means to be human.
In my family, looking good is a sign of respect. You should take time to present yourself well for an occasion. I grew up with so much grooming that, after a while, I got sick of it and cut off all my hair.
My tempestuous nature has served me well. As an actor, I can play the storm as well as the eye of the storm. It is very damaging to have only one notion of beauty. My teenage years were plagued by the idea that light skin was better skin. There were adverts on TV about a woman trying to get a job and she only got it when she applied skin-lightening cream. I felt that I was not considered beautiful because of my complexion. My self-worth was deeply compromised in those years.
What you wear has to stand the test of time. You need clean lines and maybe a bit of humor, too.
My childhood prepared me for this life in more ways than I could have imagined. I witnessed my father navigating life as a public figure and also just being my dad. He was on the cover of the newspaper and everyone was talking about him in an abstract manner in my presence. Then I would go home to a very real man who was tired and needed a back rub. I grew up meeting world leaders and, as such, I have always known that incredible people are also very normal people.
Throw a seed over your shoulder and it will grow. At least, in East Africa it will. I miss eating the seeds from the baobab trees.
The most important thing to instil in a child is curiosity. Going to college was never a question. I was born expected to achieve. But I found school to be a very narrow experience, having to cram in all this theoretical and literary information. I learn through story and experience. If it weren’t for my parents, who were very liberal, I think I would have given up on myself.
Stand up for what you believe in. I’ve witnessed my father stand in the line of fire for his causes. He has sacrificed a lot for his beliefs and my family has had to stand by him and support his calling.
Don’t get me started on self-righteousness. The idea that how you see the world is the only way the world can be is so annoying. Eat deep-fried food. In Kenya, we deep-fry anything. There’s a snack called chevdo, which is a mix of deep-fried potatoes, peas, raisins and cashews. There’s a fruit that’s really good for you – higher in calcium than milk – but we fry it up with red spice before we eat it. It’s heavenly.

Celebrities Visit SiriusXM – September 26, 2016

Lupita Nyong’o:  What I’ve Learned

There is a Swahili saying that goes; ‘a good day is known in the morning’. Is 2015 a good year for the Kenyan investment environment? All indications suggest it is.
The World Bank has reviewed its prediction about Kenya, predicting GDP growth at 6%. While I am happy that the New York-based economists think so highly of the country, I highly doubt if this will be the case.
The World Bank has missed its growth predictions for Kenya for three consecutive years, being forced to adjust mid-year from 2012. Beyond that, the country’s economy is still not out of the woods and growth will remain slow.
For this year, I would trust their adjusted statement given in June 2014, stating that the economy would grow at around 4.7% both in 2014 and 2015. I would place the figure at between 4.9% and 5.2%, two to four percentage points above Mckinsey’s growth figures for Africa.
To make accurate predictions, you need to look at the past.
The Nairobi Securities Exchange (NSE) performed averagely in 2014. The NSE 20 Share Index delivered price gains of 4.9% compared to 19.2% the previous year. On the flipside, the NSE All Share Index (NSEASI) delivered a price gain value of 19.9% compared to 44.1% in the previous year.
It’s worth noting that the NSEASI is driven by speculative trading on the smaller counters, mostly in the agricultural sector. The large caps in the NSE 20 are mostly attractive to large investors who prefer long term to short term benefits, hence minimal price gains.
While the price gains were average, most of the companies registered the anticipated major profits. Safaricom reported a net profit of $256 million, a 31% increase, while Equity Bank reported a profit of $211 million for the year ended December 31, 2013. Better news arrived when the bank announced its third quarter results in October to stand at 124 million, a 26% rise from the previous year.
It was not all rosy though. Kenya Airways reported a loss of $87.9 million, which coincided with the rising insecurity in the country, the Ebola pandemic in West Africa and poor tourism numbers driven by travel advisories in the west. The other companies that reported losses were Mumias Sugar, suffering the after effects of dishonest management, and Transcentury which posted a half year loss of $17.8 million.
The country’s economy grew 2.7% in the first quarter, 5.8% in the second and 5.5% in the third. While better performance is expected for the fourth, I believe Kenya’s growth figure for 2014 is still within the region of 4.7%.
With this information, one can authoritatively talk of a better performance in 2015.
I expect continued activity from the traditional movers like Safaricom, Equity Bank, KCB, EABL and Kenol Kobil. I also expect Mumias Sugar to make a comeback after shedding off 33% last year. There will also be significant activity from the growth counters; Centum Investment, Britam, and Car and General.
In essence, the sectors to watch will be agriculture, insurance, banking and oil which will benefit from the lower crude prices. We may even see a breach of the 6,000 mark for the NSE 20 Share Index, with the risks being poor implementation of the capital gains tax and insecurity.
The decision by the ICC to drop charges against President Uhuru Kenyatta is good news for the country, but terror attacks are derailing progress in Kenya, having eroded the robust tourist industry last year. While there is confidence in the government efforts to curtail the attacks, the risk still lingers in 2015 and might affect business significantly.
I expect government economists to take a conservative approach in setting both the fiscal and monetary policy. The Vision 2030 flagship projects will offer liquidity to the economy and spur growth, thus there will be no need to induce additional government spending in the next budget. In addition, the spending will send interest rates downward and the Monetary Policy Committee is likely to lower the Central Bank Rate when the economy has responded positively to the aggressive fiscal spending.
With this in mind, I can say it’s a good year to invest.

Expect Better Things

So goes Kenyan writer Binyavanga Wainaina’s searing satirical piece, entitled ‘How to Write About Africa’, which appeared in Granta magazine in 2005 and subsequently went viral.
The article offered comic relief to many Africans who had bottled up resentment to the centuries-old narratives about the ‘Dark Continent’, which were more often than not shaped by non-Africans.
In recent years, many more Africans have joined Wainaina’s ranks – evangelists trampling these stereotypes and spreading the gospel of ‘Africa rising’.
As part of this new narrative, the news media constantly reminds us that Africa is home to six of the world’s 10 fastest-growing economies. This year, The Economist declared Africa “the world’s fastest-growing continent”, while Time noted Africa is “the world’s next economic powerhouse”. A few years back, a McKinsey &amp; Co report described our economies as “lions on the move”.
Indeed these lions have newfound assertiveness, thanks to a period of relative political stability, a decade-long economic surge, changing geo-political relations on the back of China’s growth, and access to social media platforms.
In this mission to redefine the long-battered image of Africa, Kenya offers an interesting case study. Much of the country’s confidence comes from its status as a regional economic hub, political heavyweight and technology leader.
Kenya is also, arguably, leading the African pushback against Western media’s tendency to cover mostly coups, wars, famine, hunger and diseases on the continent.
“These are the images that we must aggressively seek to banish from the global media space and sphere about Africa. Not because they do not exist, rather, that they will belong to a past, an inglorious past, that we seek forever to consign to the annals of history,” Kenyan leader Uhuru Kenyatta declared on World Press Freedom Day earlier this year.
With Kenyans at the forefront of Africa’s tech movement, it’s no surprise that the younger generation is using social media to challenge stereotypical images. In the lead-up to the March general elections, KoTs (Kenyans on Twitter) were increasingly vocal about which stories Western media chose to cover.
KoTs used #someonetellCNN to force the broadcast giant to apologize. An international correspondent had allegedly stage-managed  a report showing some Rift Valley residents planning retribution attacks for the 2007/8 post-election violence.
Not only are Kenyans challenging Western narratives, they are also producing their own. For many Kenyans, one of the lasting images of the media coverage of the election is that of NTV anchor Larry Madowo’s ‘helicopter journalism’. On election day, Madowo started off with a live report from a polling station in Nairobi. A short while later, he was reporting from Garissa Town, then Lamu, then Tana River County.
Another example came after the poll. Kenyan student Waringa Kamau, who is studying at the Washington and Lee University in the United States, wanted to find out if KoTs’ concerns that Western media deliberately portrays Africa in a negative light extended beyond her fellow Kenyans. Her documentary, Africa in Western Media, shows that the students she interviewed agreed with KoTs.
With the growing optimism, there is also an increasing concern that the news media is under pressure to downplay any negative accounts. Kenyan media has been criticized by Kenyans themselves for trivializing some of the violence and irregularities that occurred during the run-up to the elections.
Even the broader ‘Africa rising’ narrative has been condemned. It is accused of implicitly concealing the fragility of Africa’s economic growth and the various challenges that could hold the continent back from genuine, inclusive development. Some of these are ongoing aid dependence, governance issues and the fact that the economic surge is largely driven by the extractive industry, as Rick Rowden points out in his Foreign Policy article, ‘The Myth of Africa’s Rise’.
So, while a shift from the ‘hopeless Africa’ narrative is long overdue, Kenyans and their African sisters and sisters may need to move into a new paradigm, where happenings on the ground are examined more closely.
We need to find the balance when telling our own stories, otherwise the image of Africa rising will not hold and the journey to inclusive development may be stalled before it starts.

A new story about

Amolo Ng’weno always wanted to be a doctor. But when she went to college, it all changed. At Harvard University in the Unites States, Ng’weno, a then 20-something ambitious Kenyan girl, became fascinated with computers and everything they could do—especially transmitting information. Overnight, she fell for the new, wide world of technology.
“My first experience with computers was at a US trade exhibition when I was in high school, but I didn’t actually get to use a computer until I got to college,” she says.
<div id="attachment_304" style="width: 310px" class="wp-caption alignleft"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" aria-describedby="caption-attachment-304" class="size-medium wp-image-304" src="/wp-content/uploads/2017/04/Amollo-028-300x200.jpg" alt="" width="300" height="200" />Amolo Ng&#8217;weno</div>
Luckily, Harvard had a course for every student to learn the rudiments of computers.
“This experience totally changed my perspective on the tools for getting any kind of work done and has shaped my career ever since.”
Ng’weno studied psychology and social relations at Harvard, but the computer bug had bitten and not even a master’s in economics and public affairs at Princeton University, or working for the World Bank would get in the way.
Fate took a hand through the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) in the east coast town of Cambridge. Here, two fellow Kenyans—Ayisi Makatiani and Karanja Gakio—had developed a similar obsession. So, when the three met one evening, breaking bread and sipping black coffee at a small café in Cambridge, the idea of an online news service was mooted. It began on an internet community, hosted at MIT, called KenyaNet. In 1994 it became Africa Online, the internet giant that lives to this day.
“We saw the utility of local news to the African diaspora and we thought the opposite would also be true; people in Kenya would want to communicate with the world and know what was going on internationally,” recalls Ng’weno, who quit as an economist with the World Bank in Washington to help set up Africa Online.
“It was the very early days of the internet in the US and although we were ambitious for our company, we didn’t dream it would change all our lives the way it has.”
As the internet boom kicked off, Africa Online shifted focus from providing news to connecting Africans to the internet. In 1995, it was bought by Boston-headquartered International Wireless, which became Prodigy. That year, Ng’weno was sent to launch the Kenyan operation, becoming the first internet service provider (ISP) in East Africa’s largest economy. A year later, perhaps after proving herself as start-up honcho, she was moved to Côte d’Ivoire to set up a subsidiary.
Africa Online was on a roll. It expanded to Ghana, Tanzania, Uganda, Zambia, Zimbabwe and Swaziland, with the three coffee drinkers from Cambridge in charge. It acquired several ISPs, such as Pipex Internet Solution (Swaziland), Net2000 (Kenya), UUNET (Namibia) and Swift Global (Uganda).
In 1998, Prodigy sold the company to African Lakes Corporation, a British investment firm that was diversifying from agriculture and mining. For a while, the company traded on the London Stock Exchange, enjoying favor from investors, then listed on the Nairobi Stock Exchange in 2001.
As the new century turned, the internet (dotcom) bubble burst, wiping out many companies around the world and leaving erstwhile eager investors in the red.
“The company needed additional cash for growth which could only be supplied by international investors,” says Ng’weno, who won’t reveal what stake she held in the company, in a country where too much wealth is frowned upon.
“At the same time, the internet bust and investor jitters about Africa had really hammered the share price of our UK parent company, The African Lakes Corporation, forcing its management to de-list from the London and Kenyan stock exchanges.”
In 2001 the three founders exited, with the company firmly in eight countries and the largest ISP in sub-Saharan Africa outside South Africa.
<div id="attachment_303" style="width: 310px" class="wp-caption alignleft"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" aria-describedby="caption-attachment-303" class="size-medium wp-image-303" src="/wp-content/uploads/2017/04/Amollo-035-300x200.jpg" alt="" width="300" height="200" />Surveying the scene: Amolo Ng&#8217;weno looks over Nairobi&#8217;s bustling city</div>
Six years later, in 2007, South African fixed-line telecommunications company Telkom SA bought Africa Online Limited from African Lakes Corporation for £10.32 million ($15.8 million). The ISP, which had been running at a loss, had just started to make some profit, but it was not enough to raise the necessary capital to take full advantage of the opportunities in Africa’s fast-growing telecoms industry.
Ng’weno left to work for a number of organizations, including the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation.
Now, aged 46, Ng’weno is trying to make a comeback in the industry where she made her name, at a time when many would be slowing down.
In April 2011 she launched a business process outsourcing (BPO) company in Kenya, just a month after leaving Bill and Melinda Gates. Digital Divide Data (DDD) Kenya blends a for-profit technology business with social welfare.
“We’re a social enterprise,” she said recently in an interview at her office on the seventh floor of Paramount Plaza in Nairobi.
“Which means, while we’re a for-profit company in Kenya, we also have a social mission which is to give young people from disadvantaged backgrounds a path out of poverty.”
Most of DDD Kenya shares are owned by the US NGO, also called Digital Divide Data (DDD), which received a grant of $895,000 from the Rockefeller Foundation to bring its social enterprise model to Kenya. DDD has invested in an information technology services business that targets to train and employ 300 youths from slum areas in Nairobi.
The grant is part of the Rockefeller Foundation’s Poverty Reduction through Information and Digital Employment (PRIDE) program. PRIDE is working in Africa to foster and scale up a new arm of the outsourcing industry called “impact sourcing” by supporting projects aimed at creating jobs for the poor.
Ng’weno, who is managing director at DDD, says the organization hires young people from Nairobi’s vast slums to deliver high-quality BPO services. There’s also a team of deaf people working as digital management operators.
“Our staff works with us half day and go to tertiary education the other half day,” she says. “It’s a model that has worked well for DDD in Asia, where our staff typically graduate from their university education, and from the company, after four to five years.  When they graduate, they are on a path to careers in IT and other fields that would have been difficult for them to access without our support.”
From 35 workers at inception, DDD Kenya has grown to more than 100.
“We don’t think profit is incompatible with achieving a social mission. We actually believe the profit motive is an important one—and the only way that we can grow our business sustainably so that we can fulfill our goal of providing employment and career development to young people from disadvantaged backgrounds. If we don’t make a profit, we can’t deliver on our mission,” says Ng’weno.
It is this social enterprise that has anchored Ng’weno’s second coming on the internet platform, albeit at a more advanced level. The company is championing digital marketing by helping organizations use the internet to grow their brands and markets. Recently, the company became the first in the region to be certified by Google to offer advisory and technical services for the search engine giant’s AdWords advertising service. Ng’weno says DDD Kenya has a growing number of clients in Kenya drawn from various sectors including tourism, real estate and financial services as well as big clients across Africa and overseas.
Digital marketing covers a broad range of channels marketers can use to communicate with their customers. It could be anything from email, desktop text and banner ads, social media marketing or mobile and text ads.
But it is the banner ads placed on websites that have been attracting the attention of marketers and brand managers lately. With more than 25% of the 44 million people in Kenya online, according to the Communication Commission of Kenya (CCK), advertisers are increasingly realizing that they need to fish where the fish are.
“The internet has become an integral part of everyday life in Kenya and Africa and it’s changing the way people work, shop, look for information, communicate and meet people,” says Olga Arara-Kimani, Google Kenya’s country manager.
“This, coupled with the fact that advertisers are increasingly looking for mediums that deliver high, measurable returns on their investment, has led to higher proportions of ad spend going to online channels.”
A number of big businesses in Kenya are advertising online. Kenya has one of the highest internet penetration rates in Africa and emerging markets, currently at 25% and growing at 17% annually. About $8 trillion exchanges hands each year through e-commerce, but only a tiny fraction of that is in Africa. DDD Kenya hopes to increase this figure.
“Because it’s so targeted, this kind of online marketing is cost-effective. Many people want to get into digital marketing because it’s possible to know exactly who you are targeting.”
DDD Kenya recently diversified into electronic books. It is already digitizing reading materials for the government-run Kenya National Library Services, with a number of other projects in the pipeline. It’s betting on e-books and hopes publishers will buy into the idea.
“The Kenyan education system seems to give us a great pool of candidates, despite having gone to schools that are not seen as being high achievers. Our staff speak, read and write good English, which is important for all our international and many local clients.”
Harking back to the days when they set up Africa Online, Ng’weno says technology has come a long way on the continent. The infrastructure has improved dramatically, especially with the arrival of undersea cables.
“However, it’s still not clear to me why the entire internet slows down in the late afternoon (especially on Fridays),” she says.
For Ng’weno, training at Harvard, the world most prestigious business school that has produced some of the world’s biggest entrepreneurs played a part in shaping her into a shrewd entrepreneur. “Harvard is a great place to be challenged and to grow intellectually,” she says. “I’m sure it has contributed to my life in many different ways, which is the purpose of a good university education.”
Tenacity appears to run in the family. Her father, Hillary Ng’weno, was the owner and editor of the Weekly Review, Kenya’s first independent news magazine. He was a ground-breaker in lively and objective journalism. Ng’weno had a degree in mathematics and nuclear physics from Harvard. Fleur, her mother, is a naturalist and expert on bird life. She ran the Rainbow Magazine for children in the 1970s and 1980s.
So what does it take to be a great entrepreneur? Amolo Ng’weno says it is simply taking advantage of an opportunity when it presents itself and surviving disasters, so you are still there to fight another day.
In a patriarchal society like Africa, where men dominate business and leadership, success stories like Ng’weno’s are rare. You may wonder if being a woman has worked against her in business.
“People usually think it would be a disadvantage. But I’d say I was raised to see the potential in each individual, regardless of their sex or social background. And I think that’s what I’ve also found in my dealings with others.”
Tall and endowed with an African female figure, Ng’weno does not cut the image of a tech nerd. She’s easy in her attire and conservative in her use of jargon. Unlike the noisy tech types Ng’weno, who loves horses, talks as if it is not her job to be audible, yours to listen carefully.
On a warm Wednesday in Nairobi, she paces in her hi-tech office to oversee the Kenya National Library Services e-books project is completed on time. She is undeterred by road construction noises outside, which includes a huge trench outside her office building. It means she has to park her car 300 meters away and walk through the mess of rubble, earth, man and machine.
“Right now I’m too busy for hobbies,” she says when asked if she finds time for leisure. “Given the Nairobi traffic situation, maybe I will say, sitting in traffic listening to radio while doing email on my laptop computer. Our car was imported from Japan and can only get two stations so I listen to Ghetto Radio (a Nairobi radio station that broadcasts in local slang known as sheng) a lot.”
To succeed in business, she has learnt to turn what is perceived as her weaknesses on their heads. It all depends on how you look at strengths and weaknesses, she says.
“I am frequently told I’m impatient but I regard this more of a strength than a weakness. Similarly I can be detail-oriented and meticulous, which my staff complain about, but I think I’ve found a line of work in which that is, again, a strength rather than a weakness. Overall, I think most attributes can be strengths in some circumstances and weaknesses in others and the trick is to find the right combination.”
With a meticulous eye for detail backed with zeal for results, it is surprising that a team with Ng’weno on its side could go wrong. Yet, while running Africa Online, she realized that even IT wizards can make terrible miscalculations.
“We had acquired a company in Zimbabwe but we failed to take into account that our corporate cultures were very different,” she recalls. “Their IT people could not get on with our customer service people. Within a month most of their staff had resigned, taking with them most of their customers.”
Africa Online ended up paying money in Zimbabwe but getting next to nothing in return. “This,” Ng’weno says with a shy smile, “was a big lesson in thinking about corporate culture issues.”
Many more big lessons surely await the comeback kid in Kenya’s tough and competitive digital world.
&nbsp;

Tag: Kenyan

FORBES AFRICA SOCIAL MEDIA

We’ll Follow The Beast To Hull And Back

Quest For A New Nation

Queen Bee!

Lupita Nyong’o: What I’ve Learned

Expect Better Things

A new story about

The Queen of the Internet Reboots