Kenya is perhaps one of the quieter domains of the global Covid-19 pandemic. However, as its hold intensifies across the country, Kenyans, from all walks of life, have found themselves not only preparing for the worst but also taking stock of the impact it has already had on their lives. 



By his own admission, Musa Esevwe, a 49-year-old sculptor and entrepreneur, had never, in his life, experienced trouble with his sleep. That is until Covid-19 arrived in his hometown, Nairobi, in mid-March.



Within the space of a week, a national curfew was announced via Presidential address. Not long after, as confirmed cases jumped to 91, a partial lockdown was imposed around the Nairobi Metropolitan Area, restricting the movement of people in to, and out of, the city.



Travel was tightly regulated and international flights temporarily suspended. The few who do manage to make it to the country, by road or sea, must endure a mandatory two-week quarantine, at the border, before they can obtain official approval to proceed to their final destination.



Meanwhile, inside Kenya’s borders, lives changed overnight. Intensive lockdown measures severely hampered trading for both informal vendors and businesses, causing upheaval in some areas. In April, small business owners clashed with police over the forced closure of their establishments, in Nyeri, a busy provincial hub in Central Kenya.



Schools have been shut since March and, while official numbers are yet to be published, thousands have lost their jobs and livelihoods. Those, still fortunate to be in employment, have had to transform their homes into offices.



“It is like a very bad dream that we are living in now. The happiness and security we once had has gone&#8230; we are no longer dreaming, even for those who can still sleep,” says Esevwe whose own business, which was heavily dependent on the disposable income of the middle class and occasional tourists, has been destroyed by the pandemic.



Along with Esevwe, among the hardest hit are the nation’s families, who, for months now, have been confined to their houses.



The lockdown period has been particularly difficult for Kamweti wa Mutu, an international development professional and amateur nature photographer, living in Nairobi. Currently out of work, and with his wife, now the family’s sole breadwinner, stationed in Tanzania, he’s had to play multiple roles to keep his household afloat.



“The quarantine order [on March 13] was sudden, but commendably prompt, meaning it was a somewhat tough transition getting our two children; Charlie, 11, and Adia, 8, settled into home-schooling routines. After a week, we [had to] put our house-help on leave, with some pay, so as not to place [any] undue risk on either her or us,” he says.



Prior to the pandemic, Mutu was actively looking for work. However, the economic turmoil set off by the virus is now a cause for concern.



“I have struggled to find full-time employment for a while [now] but my family has been very supportive with understanding and prayers. The kids have a good grasp of this, in light of the pandemic, but it’s not [yet] getting them anxious. As a household currently on one income, this aspect is a grave one. Most worrisome is my wife losing her post [because of the pandemic], or worse, one of our family members falling ill,” he continues.



Perhaps the most traumatic impact of Covid-19 on the family is their separation. With travel into Kenya currently restricted, Mutu’s wife won’t be able to return until her consultancy with an environmental organization in Tanzania concludes.



When she does, it will probably have to be by road as international flights are suspended. After crossing the border, she’ll have to spend 14 days at a quarantine center, receiving a special permit to enter Nairobi only once she tests negative for the virus.



While this has added an extra layer of anxiety to their situation, the family is choosing to focus on the bigger picture, insists Mutu.



“We have talked a bit about this, and what it would mean for a normal life, even beyond the current situation. However, we have not delved deeply into worst-case scenarios other than how Covid-19 is devastating other families and societies. We have stocked up on enough essentials including non-perishable foodstuffs, water, face-masks, and power to last us a while.”



Elsewhere in the city, Sophie O, who asked that we change her name for this report, is also finding life under lockdown a challenge. The 30-year-old Marketing Manager works for a major multinational in Nairobi and is doing her best to adapt to the ‘new normal’ of being based from home.



“It&#8217;s been quite difficult especially because I have three children; a nine-month old, a two-year-old and a six-year-old. It’s been hard for the two-year-old to understand that I am ‘at work’, he keeps barging into [work] calls and expecting us to play. Now, I have to keep my camera off during conference calls although ideally, as a standard, it would have to be on,” she says.



With schools now closed, and most students across the country taking classes virtually, many parents, especially those with younger children, are burdened with the added responsibility of home-schooling. In this, Ms O admits that she is struggling.



“Personally, I’ve really done my best just keeping track with all the lessons they have to do. I think probably if I didn’t have to be ‘at work’, I could have done a better job in terms of being there for my daughter but it’s quite a challenge. You have to work because work pays the bills and work also pays the school fees,” she says.



Factors, firmly out of her control, are also impacting her productivity.



“The practicalities of working from home, like having a workstation, I have had to figure out. But with the internet&#8230; some days it’s good, some days it’s bad, and some days you have a blackout and there’s nothing you can do!” she laments.



The experience of both these families hints at the wider setbacks being faced by businesses and the Kenyan economy, as a whole. From Nairobi, Edwin Macharia, Global Managing Partner at multinational advisory firm, Dalberg Advisors, has been leading a fortnightly webinar series advising African leaders and policymakers on how best to respond to the ongoing crisis. He insists that they must appreciate the severity of the pandemic’s impact and act accordingly.



“Our job [on the webinar] is to make sure that [leaders] are sufficiently shaken and begin acting appropriately. China bought the world a couple of weeks to prepare and get ‘ahead of the curve’ in terms of intervention but, unfortunately, that jolt wasn’t hard enough in some places. This is very quickly moving from being a health concern to actually being an economic concern,” Macharia warned attendees in early April.



At the time, despite relatively low levels of confirmed cases, African economies were already feeling the pinch with stock markets plummeting and currencies devalued. A few weeks later, as the threat escalated, the UN Economic Commission for Africa (UNECA) declared that a funding gap of $100 billion needed to be filled in order for governments to battle the pandemic, and its consequences, across the continent.



“The long-term economic effects will become more apparent in the coming months. Inputs not available locally will be inaccessible due to tighter border controls, while markets, for producers serving several industries, will be diminished, leaving many households without a sustainable income,” predicts Macharia.



If they are to have any hope of success, Macharia emphasizes that responses to Covid-19 in Africa will have to be a collaborative effort.



<figure class="wp-block-gallery columns-1 is-cropped wp-block-gallery-1 is-layout-flex wp-block-gallery-is-layout-flex"><ul class="blocks-gallery-grid"><li class="blocks-gallery-item"><figure><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" width="1024" height="890" src="https://www.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/06/Edwin-Macharia-Global-Managing-Partner-at-Dalberg-Advisors-1024x890.jpg" alt="" data-id="46114" data-full-url="https://www.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/06/Edwin-Macharia-Global-Managing-Partner-at-Dalberg-Advisors-scaled.jpg" data-link="https://www.forbesafrica.com/?attachment_id=46114" class="wp-image-46114" srcset="https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/06/Edwin-Macharia-Global-Managing-Partner-at-Dalberg-Advisors-1024x890.jpg 1024w, https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/06/Edwin-Macharia-Global-Managing-Partner-at-Dalberg-Advisors-scaled-300x261.jpg 300w, https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/06/Edwin-Macharia-Global-Managing-Partner-at-Dalberg-Advisors-scaled-600x522.jpg 600w, https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/06/Edwin-Macharia-Global-Managing-Partner-at-Dalberg-Advisors-768x668.jpg 768w, https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/06/Edwin-Macharia-Global-Managing-Partner-at-Dalberg-Advisors-1536x1335.jpg 1536w, https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/06/Edwin-Macharia-Global-Managing-Partner-at-Dalberg-Advisors-2048x1781.jpg 2048w" sizes="auto, (max-width: 1024px) 100vw, 1024px" /><figcaption class="blocks-gallery-item__caption">Edwin Macharia, Global Managing Partner at Dalberg Advisors</figcaption></figure></li></ul></figure>



“Flattening the curve demands that governments, institutions, and business leaders are intentional in how they implement their response strategies. Organizations will need to go beyond [their] usual business continuity planning while the public sector needs to re-model institutions in order to slow down the current trajectory of infections while ensuring long-term resilience.”



An example of these wider response strategies are already at work in a number of Kenyan hospitals. Dr Michael Mwachiro, Secretary-General at the Surgical Society of Kenya, is currently stationed at Tenwek Hospital, a faith-based teaching and referral hospital in Bomet County, 230 kilometers west of Nairobi. On May 13, the county recorded its first Covid-19 fatality, at Longisa Hospital, the only public referral hospital in the area.



<figure class="wp-block-gallery columns-1 is-cropped wp-block-gallery-2 is-layout-flex wp-block-gallery-is-layout-flex"><ul class="blocks-gallery-grid"><li class="blocks-gallery-item"><figure><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" width="335" height="502" src="https://www.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/06/thumbnail_PHOTO-2020-06-16-13-12-13.jpg" alt="" data-id="46121" data-full-url="https://www.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/06/thumbnail_PHOTO-2020-06-16-13-12-13.jpg" data-link="https://www.forbesafrica.com/life/2020/06/15/covid-19-in-kenya-we-are-no-longer-dreaming/attachment/thumbnail_photo-2020-06-16-13-12-13/" class="wp-image-46121" srcset="https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/06/thumbnail_PHOTO-2020-06-16-13-12-13.jpg 335w, https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/06/thumbnail_PHOTO-2020-06-16-13-12-13-300x450.jpg 300w, https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/06/thumbnail_PHOTO-2020-06-16-13-12-13-200x300.jpg 200w" sizes="auto, (max-width: 335px) 100vw, 335px" /><figcaption class="blocks-gallery-item__caption">Dr Michael Mwachiro, Secretary-General at the Surgical Society of Kenya</figcaption></figure></li></ul></figure>



“We’re now seeing more community-transferred cases in Kenya. I think the advantage that we may have had [compared to] other parts of the world is that we were watching as things were unfolding and, because of that, we had a bit more time to prepare [as a country], and put some measures in place. But if you read the news, or listen to the radio, you’ll hear people complaining that we should have intervened earlier but that’s a difficult thing [to do] if you look at how many stakeholders are involved along with the nature of our economy and public health system,” he says.



Part of these preparations, Mwachiro says, included immediately training the country’s health workers on Covid-19 procedures along with introducing measures preventing the movement of people from hotspots in major cities into rural Kenya, where a bulk of the population lives.



“Nairobi and Mombasa already have containment measures in place. The bigger concern is that, if Covid-19 moves out of the cities to other parts of the country, the effects would be much scarier. These [rural] areas are where the older people are, who are much more vulnerable.”



In addition to the supplementary training for medical personnel, some elective procedures and non-essential surgeries have been put on hold so that all available resources can be committed to fighting the virus at hospitals. However, besides preparedness, maintaining the morale of doctors and nurses will continue to be an ongoing concern throughout the crisis.



“We’ll have to deal with the levels of anxiety and motivation experienced by healthcare workers and first responders taking care of these patients. Doctors and nurses are human, too, and they are experiencing the same emotions as everyone else. You can imagine that, in as much as [their] families are worried about them, they, too, are also worried about their families, and themselves, as well,” he says.



Some medical professionals responding to the crisis, in parts of the country, have had to make the difficult decision to live apart from their families as they work to contain the virus. But the taxing nature of their work, coupled with extended periods of isolation, means that counseling and support services will need to be made available to them as the cases continue to rise.



<blockquote class="wp-block-quote is-layout-flow wp-block-quote-is-layout-flow">&#8220;We’ll have to deal with the levels of anxiety and motivation experienced by healthcare workers and first responders taking care of these patients. Doctors and nurses are human, too, and they are experiencing the same emotions as everyone else. You can imagine that, in as much as [their] families are worried about them, they, too, are also worried about their families, and themselves, as well.&#8221;</blockquote>



As it stands, Kenya, like most of the continent, has not been as badly hit when compared to epicenters in Europe or North America. However, this may be due to the fact that the worst is still on its way. In May, the World Health Organization estimated that up to 190,000 Africans may be killed by the pandemic, at its peak.



With Covid-19 due to exert immense pressure on our public health systems, it does offer some important lessons for the future, explains Mwachiro.



“What this outbreak has brought about, for us in Africa, is [the fact] that we need to invest more in our healthcare systems. This has been said so many times&#8230; there have even been a number of strikes [in Kenya] by various stakeholders, all of them trying to highlight these issues. This is a good wake up call. I honestly believe that, if we had spent more on health [before the crisis], it would have gone a long way in helping us to be better prepared. Hopefully, once this [pandemic] resolves, we can keep the momentum going and we can continue looking inwardly for solutions.”



Naturally, Covid-19, with its grim predictions and disruption of lives, has many Kenyans worried about the future. Nevertheless, the challenges of the moment are being met in stride. Families have quickly adjusted to new ways of living while their leaders seek sage advice on how best to address the crisis, and doctors continue to make sacrifices, day in and day out, as they brace for the worst.



Perhaps, most important of all is that, in the pandemic’s wake, hope has become an obstinate presence in all quarters of Kenyan society.



– Marie Shabaya

Kamweti wa Mutu with his two children; Charlie, 11, and Adia, 8, with their Golden Retriever, Nalia, pictured at their home in Nairobi

Covid-19 In Kenya: ‘We Are No Longer Dreaming’

Katungulu Mwendwa has deconstructed fashion and has a positive, defiant and edgy take on the environmental crises compounded by the global clothing industry.



A sleek saffron kaftan over Pollock-spattered silk trousers; the obsidian fins of a night-black evening dress; a sashed, punky, persimmon hoody from the future streets of Nairobi. These are the irresistible stories in Kenyan designer Katungulu Mwendwa’s startling KATUSH fashion brand label.



The child of a psychologist and an architect, Mwendwa grew up in a nurturing creative environment that introduced her to an eclectic skillset of creative tools.



<figure class="wp-block-image size-large"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" width="1024" height="1024" src="https://www.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/05/RED-SKIRT-1-1024x1024.jpg" alt="" class="wp-image-44952" srcset="https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/05/RED-SKIRT-1-1024x1024.jpg 1024w, https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/05/RED-SKIRT-1-scaled-300x300.jpg 300w, https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/05/RED-SKIRT-1-scaled-100x100.jpg 100w, https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/05/RED-SKIRT-1-scaled-600x600.jpg 600w, https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/05/RED-SKIRT-1-150x150.jpg 150w, https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/05/RED-SKIRT-1-768x768.jpg 768w, https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/05/RED-SKIRT-1-1536x1536.jpg 1536w, https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/05/RED-SKIRT-1-2048x2048.jpg 2048w, https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/05/RED-SKIRT-1-80x80.jpg 80w" sizes="auto, (max-width: 1024px) 100vw, 1024px" /></figure>



“My dad used to take us to work with him,” she says. “We would actually draft a lot, as an experiment. In fashion, you have to create the pattern, the master bloc, and it requires a level of geometry to develop. With the human form, you have to remove suppression at different angles, to create volumes and shapes. So working with my dad definitely made me more confident in that. He did want me to be an architect. So now I’m like, ‘look! I’m an architect for clothing!’”



Emboldened by her triumph in the reality TV contest Catwalk Kenya in 2007, Mwendwa pursued her bachelor’s degree at the University for the Creative Arts in Rochester, United Kingdom.&nbsp;



“By the time I graduated, I had a better understanding of who and what the key players and roles were,” she says. “I was determined to come back to Kenya to create a business that I could then offer not just to the local consumer, but to a global market.”



Her second major break came with an invitation to present at Gen Art’s ‘Fresh Faces in Fashion’ show at New York Fashion Week in 2012. She arrived “by myself with two suitcases, running around New York lost and confused,” after two sleepless months of frantic sewing.



<figure class="wp-block-image size-large"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" width="768" height="1024" src="https://www.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/05/work-in-progress-2-by-Osborne-Macharia-768x1024.jpg" alt="" class="wp-image-44953" srcset="https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/05/work-in-progress-2-by-Osborne-Macharia-768x1024.jpg 768w, https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/05/work-in-progress-2-by-Osborne-Macharia-scaled-300x400.jpg 300w, https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/05/work-in-progress-2-by-Osborne-Macharia-scaled-600x800.jpg 600w, https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/05/work-in-progress-2-by-Osborne-Macharia-225x300.jpg 225w, https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/05/work-in-progress-2-by-Osborne-Macharia-1152x1536.jpg 1152w, https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/05/work-in-progress-2-by-Osborne-Macharia-1536x2048.jpg 1536w, https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/05/work-in-progress-2-by-Osborne-Macharia-scaled.jpg 1920w" sizes="auto, (max-width: 768px) 100vw, 768px" /></figure>



“It was exciting, but extremely nerve-wracking,” she says. “I remember some people saying, ‘but your stuff doesn’t really look African…’ They were waiting for something with more color, with more prints, and I had this post-apocalyptic, nomadic thing going on! And I struggled with that at the beginning – the whole concept of being told I’m not African enough – and I used to wonder what that meant. These days, I’m like, no, that’s not my battle. And now I’m designing what I like to make.”



She cites the essential impact of opportunities such as the HEVA investment fund, which supports entrepreneurship in the East African creative sector.



“I was very grateful to them,” she says, “for at least being patient and interested in those of us who would not necessarily get financial support, because we are considered such a high-risk business.” She now involves local artisanal groups, such as brass and aluminium casters, in her creative projects, and is sensitive to the challenges facing cottage industries whose traditional skills often lie outside the purview of a ruthless, churning, unpredictable industry.



“I’m curious about the evolution of culture, and practices and aesthetics relevant to our day-to-day lives,” she says (see her ‘Dinka Translation’ collection, which transfuses an ancient South Sudanese iconography into the clipped geometric lines of the boardroom or the cocktail party). “Retaining specific cultural practices, as opposed to copying and pasting, is critical in understanding how to manoeuvre through some of the challenges we face.”



She says that much more can and should be done to bring these local industries into the fold. “These artisans don’t have access to markets, and because they can be so detached from their direct consumer here in Nairobi, it becomes easier for someone to exploit them,” she says.



<figure class="wp-block-image size-large"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" width="1024" height="1024" src="https://www.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/05/STRIPPED-SILK-1024x1024.jpg" alt="" class="wp-image-44954" srcset="https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/05/STRIPPED-SILK-1024x1024.jpg 1024w, https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/05/STRIPPED-SILK-scaled-300x300.jpg 300w, https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/05/STRIPPED-SILK-scaled-100x100.jpg 100w, https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/05/STRIPPED-SILK-scaled-600x600.jpg 600w, https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/05/STRIPPED-SILK-150x150.jpg 150w, https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/05/STRIPPED-SILK-768x768.jpg 768w, https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/05/STRIPPED-SILK-1536x1536.jpg 1536w, https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/05/STRIPPED-SILK-2048x2048.jpg 2048w, https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/05/STRIPPED-SILK-80x80.jpg 80w" sizes="auto, (max-width: 1024px) 100vw, 1024px" /></figure>



“I’ve always felt it’s the role of designers in the region to work closely with them, and then by extension, the market will create further demand.”



The edgy Afro-futurism of her work feels like a positive, defiant repost to the environmental crises compounded by the global clothing industry, a bloated leviathan which dumps almost two hundred tonnes of mitumba (second hand clothing) into East African markets every year. The Kenyan mitumba sector is a complex, controversial beast in its own right, creating millions of jobs while simultaneously suffocating regional productivity.



“Brands like myself cannot compete with clothing that is here for free,” Mwendwa says.



“There are a few designers creating upcycled clothing, which to me is extremely admirable. But I don’t know how good it is for us as a people, because it limits our ability to compete on an equal level. It has killed our textile sector, our own industry, and therefore we aren’t even able to source locally.”



She is optimistic, but cautious, about the future; light on her feet about the direction she may pursue.



“I’m going to tell more stories. I want to better understand how to communicate with a consumer that feels the way I feel,” she says.&nbsp; “I know it’s probably a niche consumer, but I also know they exist, in different pockets of the globe. I think we’re all everyday superheroes: that person that brings you a cup of coffee in the morning, might just say hi, might just be a stranger who stopped and waited for you to cross the road. That’s what informs my collection. And I want to share that with people.”



By Alastair Hagger

Katungulu Mwendwa

The Architect In Clothing Who Wants To Tell More Stories

The South African actor immerses herself in all things Kenyan, from the natural wonders to cultural experiences, and has an awakening.&nbsp;&nbsp; 



It’s a Wednesday afternoon in Sandton, South Africa, and the
sun is a couple of hours away from its daily disappearance down the horizon.
FORBES AFRICA makes a phone call. A voice at the other end says a deep “hello”.
It is award-winning South African actor and entrepreneur Nomzamo Mbatha, who is
in New York City and has just woken up. 



From the Big Apple, her mind travels to Africa.



<div class="wp-block-image"><figure class="aligncenter"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" width="924" height="619" src="https://www.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/06/Nomzamo1.png.png" alt="" class="wp-image-40770" srcset="https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/06/Nomzamo1.png.png 924w, https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/06/Nomzamo1.png-300x201.png 300w, https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/06/Nomzamo1.png-600x402.png 600w, https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/06/Nomzamo1.png-768x514.png 768w" sizes="auto, (max-width: 924px) 100vw, 924px" /><figcaption> Nomzamo Mbatha describes Kenya as the warmest place in Africa. Picture: Supplied</figcaption></figure></div>



When she’s not scorching television screens, in the award-winning South African drama-series, Isibaya, Mbatha spends a lot of time traveling. 



She has been to 13 countries, but as an African, none has
made her feel at home quite like Kenya. 



She describes it as the warmest place in Africa and speaks
of her endearing memories of the East African country. 



“Kenya makes you feel like you should live there. Kenya
makes you feel like you’re at home&#8230;” says Mbatha.



She traveled there for the first time when she was 16,
handpicked by Save the Children, a non-governmental organization promoting
children’s rights, as one of three South African children representing the
country at a conference hosted by Kenya.



Mbatha recounts her first impressions. 



<div class="wp-block-image"><figure class="aligncenter"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" width="928" height="615" src="https://www.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/06/Nomzamo2.png.png" alt="" class="wp-image-40771" srcset="https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/06/Nomzamo2.png.png 928w, https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/06/Nomzamo2.png-300x199.png 300w, https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/06/Nomzamo2.png-600x398.png 600w, https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/06/Nomzamo2.png-768x509.png 768w" sizes="auto, (max-width: 928px) 100vw, 928px" /><figcaption>Nomzamo Mbatha traveled to Kakuma on a United Nations mission in 2018. Picture: Supplied</figcaption></figure></div>



“I remember seeing furniture doors just piled up on the side
of the road and thought ‘whoa! I’ve never seen this’ and then I just remember
Kenya having lots and lots of bananas. 



“Because we were always on a bus, we didn’t get to see it
(Kenya). My misconception of it, as a child, was that there’s not much to do as
a tourist.”



In 2018, Mbatha was in Kenya again, flying first class on
Kenya Airways with a carry-on and two big bags. “I don’t know how to travel
light,” she confesses. 



She recalls there were times in the earlier years as a
traveler when she would pack everything, leave the house and get to the airport
only to realize she wasn’t carrying her passport. 



“So passport… that’s like your golden item! The number two [must-have item] I’d say is sneakers. It’s always great to have comfortable
sneakers so you’re able to walk around the city, around the towns and just be
comfortable. So always carry sneakers no matter what! 





<div class="wp-block-image"><figure class="aligncenter"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" width="638" height="475" src="https://www.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/06/Nomzamo5.png.png" alt="" class="wp-image-40774" srcset="https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/06/Nomzamo5.png.png 638w, https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/06/Nomzamo5.png-300x223.png 300w, https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/06/Nomzamo5.png-600x447.png 600w" sizes="auto, (max-width: 638px) 100vw, 638px" /><figcaption>Nomzamo Mbatha in Kenya. Picture: Supplied</figcaption></figure></div>



“Number three – I always have a nice little bag of small
decanted toiletries. I have like 20 different things that I use. 



“So when you’re traveling, especially long-haul flights, you
want to be able to have your [face] cream because you don’t want to end up
using what the airline gives you&#8230; 



“When I’m traveling and connecting flights, I always make
sure I go to the bathroom and use my products and keep my skin hydrated and
clean. 



“And, of course, the fourth must-have, is a book; it’s
always a great travel mate.” 



On her last trip to Kenya, Mbatha traveled with her manager
and they were scheduled to fly out to Kakuma on a United Nations mission,
however, she requested three days to be in Nairobi before the trip. 



“I really just wanted to experience it and see more of it.
Also, I was in a space where I hadn’t traveled in a while. 



<div class="wp-block-image"><figure class="aligncenter"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" width="927" height="615" src="https://www.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/06/Nomzamo3.png.png" alt="" class="wp-image-40772" srcset="https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/06/Nomzamo3.png.png 927w, https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/06/Nomzamo3.png-300x199.png 300w, https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/06/Nomzamo3.png-600x398.png 600w, https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/06/Nomzamo3.png-768x510.png 768w" sizes="auto, (max-width: 927px) 100vw, 927px" /><figcaption>Nomzamo Mbatha visited the K1 Flea Market in Kenya. Picture: Supplied</figcaption></figure></div>



&nbsp;“It completely
changed me. I went to the K1 Flea Market which is so amazing. Everybody has a
smile. Everybody is so welcoming. 



“I got to go to the Maasai Market which is absolutely
fantastic. And there is so much art and craft you can find there&#8230; And then
the fanciest restaurants; five-star restaurants they don’t tell you about, that
they don’t show you. The party scene in Kenya is amazing. And what I really
loved about Kenya is I felt completely safe.”



She then explored the Karura Forest, saved from
deforestation by conservationists led by the late Wangari Maathai (Nobel Peace
Prize laureate, leader of the Green Belt Movement, and environmental and
political activist). Karura presented the most memorable moments for Mbatha
while in Kenya.



<div class="wp-block-image"><figure class="aligncenter"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" width="462" height="616" src="https://www.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/06/Nomzamo6.png.png" alt="" class="wp-image-40773" srcset="https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/06/Nomzamo6.png.png 462w, https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/06/Nomzamo6.png-300x400.png 300w, https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/06/Nomzamo6.png-225x300.png 225w" sizes="auto, (max-width: 462px) 100vw, 462px" /><figcaption> Nomzamo Mbatha enjoys the meal at the K1 Flea Market in Kenya. Picture: Supplied </figcaption></figure></div>



“It was lush. And it was just inspiring to know that a
woman’s name was behind all of this. I just remember thinking how massive it
was. We just stood there and it was one of the best experiences of my life… it
was beautiful. For me, it was better than seeing the Eiffel Tower. It’s nothing
like you’ve ever seen.” 



While the visit to Karura Forest left Mbatha in awe, it also
taught her a valuable lesson. 



“It was emotional in the sense that there is so much we can
do for the planet. And it implores one to really do better in terms of our own
social responsibility when it comes to environmental sustainability.” 



<div class="wp-block-image"><figure class="aligncenter"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" width="462" height="614" src="https://www.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/06/Nomzamo8.png.png" alt="" class="wp-image-40775" srcset="https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/06/Nomzamo8.png.png 462w, https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/06/Nomzamo8.png-300x399.png 300w, https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/06/Nomzamo8.png-226x300.png 226w" sizes="auto, (max-width: 462px) 100vw, 462px" /><figcaption> Nomzamo Mbatha outside the K1 Flea Market in Kenya. Picture: Supplied </figcaption></figure></div>



Mbatha says the African continent has much to learn from
Kenya. 



“A lot of innovative businesses in Kenya [are] self-started.
The government of Kenya is very cognizant of the fact they are not going to
bring international brands. In fact, they empower local brands to start their
own businesses, down to potato crisps. It’s very motivating for people to have
the entrepreneurial spirit,” says the globetrotter in love with Africa.

Nomzamo9

Executive Travel: Nomzamo Mbatha’s Kenya

If distinctive architecture marks a great city, then, Nairobi, chief among the great capitals of the continent, has plenty to appreciate. Unfortunately, faced with the urgent needs of development, the preservation of its historical buildings has often been overlooked.&nbsp; 



Nairobi, as some may know it, presents a bewildering range
of architectural styles. Influences conflict from religion and the decadence of
imperial culture to the studied modernism of post-independence and the
synthesized futurism of late. 



Yet, even in this dazzling array of constructed expression,
the city’s architecture will not be recommended by many, if any, of its locals.




One might notice that a lot of the older buildings, some
survived from the colonial era and others erected in the fleeting euphoria of
post-independence, are taken for granted. Their relevance now narrowly defined
by current occupants and not by what they were and how they came to be.



<div class="wp-block-image"><figure class="aligncenter"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" width="434" height="616" src="https://www.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/03/nairobi2.png" alt="" class="wp-image-39897" srcset="https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/03/nairobi2.png 434w, https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/03/nairobi2-300x426.png 300w, https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/03/nairobi2-211x300.png 211w" sizes="auto, (max-width: 434px) 100vw, 434px" /><figcaption> Nairobi Kenya architecture. Picture: Getty </figcaption></figure></div>



The more anonymous international-style towers made of glass
and steel that define the city skyline enjoy more frequent limelight, locating
the ambitions of a modern African city in an increasingly globalized world.



This attitude has been explained by a popular theory
frequently offered in the niche but studied debate within Kenyan architecture.
One that often dominates any headline to do with the designs of the capital.



Evelyne Wanjiku, an aficionado of African architecture and
co-author of a book on the history of Nairobi’s buildings, lambasted the tastes
of her fellow countrymen as a crisis in the city’s property fashions.



“Buildings in Nairobi are a testimony to the influences of
various industrialized countries. A walk around the city reveals buildings of
British, Indian, and even Dutch influence,” she notes in a particularly
disgruntled article in one of the papers of record, Daily Nation.



Beyond the alien persuasions of the Nairobi skyline, she
says that even the well-to-do homeowners in the country reinforce this pattern
through the “Victorian houses or fancy Tuscany structures” that they have built
for themselves.



The assertion is heavy. Kenyans as, consumers of
architecture, are all too willing to be swayed by those of an ‘imported
culture’. 



The reality, however, is a lot more complex.



In just a number of decades, Nairobi has spread, from its
traditional center, to a sprawling network of settlements. In this frantic
urbanization, the designs of architecture have been subordinate to the needs of
development; conditions that the discipline has traditionally tried to avoid. 



This phenomenon inspired a tangent in a conversation with Dr
Bitange Ndemo, a popular newspaper columnist and professor at the University of
Nairobi in Kenya. 



“The beef I have&#8230; is that once we are all dead, nobody
will say that architecture existed in Kenya!” he laments.



To those new to the argument, the beef is two-fold. 



Nairobi’s history is quietly disappearing. Some of it
claimed in a recent spate of demolitions such as those of the colonial-era
bungalows in and around the neighborhoods of Kileleshwa and the famous Kariokor
Estate, home to the African porters of the ‘Carrier Corps’ during the first
World War.&nbsp;&nbsp; 



Their replacements, brutally modern apartment blocks,
allegedly erected for immediate commercial return that the professor, and other
proponents, maintain, do not redefine these areas in any language but instead
deprive them of all identity. Worse still, with average rental prices per month
averaging upwards of $800, only a small slice of the city’s inhabitants can now
afford to call these places home. 



Nairobi, often dubbed as the ‘green city in the sun’, has a
storied history which is told rather vividly through its buildings. 



Founded at the turn of the 20th century, as a depot on the
Uganda Railway, it quickly rose to prominence as a trading post in what would
become British East Africa. It was the industrial center of the country’s
colonial economy &#8211; the main artery in the trade of coffee, sisal and tea.
Eventually, in 1907, it was declared the capital of that region of the British
Empire, a title furtively snatched from the bordering town of Machakos.



As such, Nairobi’s architecture cleverly accommodates the country’s diverse indigenous and settled cultures along with their individual histories.



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Even today, monumental buildings, commissioned by the colonial
government of the day, show a pride in Kenya’s position within the empire.
Designed by a ‘rebel’ architect from the British School of the Arts in Rome,
Parliament House, the home of the country’s legislature, is not a carbon copy
of its archetype as was intended. Instead, it is a cheerful interpretation of
Westminster, showered by the equatorial sun and in constant conversation with
the towering palm trees around it.



The South Asian community, among the city’s early settlers,
is responsible for a large part of the architectural kitsch. Forming the&nbsp; bulk of Nairobi’s established merchant class,
they have left an indelible stamp in the Art Deco styles prominent in some of
the older downtown blocks such as Nanak House, which resembles a distant cousin
of London’s Commonwealth House on New Oxford Street. An example of the generous
extravagance of 1930s design, it is today better known for the upmarket hair
salon on its first floor, than the conditions that inspired it.



While overshadowed by a clustering of modern towers, Jamia
Mosque, in the center of town, is a beautiful specimen of Islamic architecture
in the Arab tradition typical of the period of its construction, the first
decade of the 20th century. Now a central place of worship for Nairobi’s sizable
Muslim population, it is also well known for the businesses that have sprung
from it, including an eponymous shopping mall several yards away.



Even as antiquated foreign fashions identify some of its
streets, there are vernacular interpretations of them shrouded in the edifices
of Nairobi. The Catholic Parish of St. Austin’s, at the edge of the middle
class Lavington suburb, is a glorious showpiece of Gothic Revival with an
African accent. 



With its colossal mabati (corrugated iron) and timber roof
trusses, it is a firm favorite of Ndemo.



“I get satisfaction from good architectural design&#8230; and if
you go inside [the church], you can feel that someone put their thoughts
together to do this,” he says. 



The preservation of these Kenyan relics is not a recent
concern. There is, in fact, a government agency dedicated to this crucial
mandate at the National Museums of Kenya. However, for many of these buildings,
the costs of safeguarding them for posterity far outweigh those of constructing
anew. 



Perhaps no one in the country is more aware of this conflict
than the Head of the Directorate of Antiquities, Sites and Monuments, Dr Purity
Kiura. While adamant that the task of preservation, in an effort to conserve
history and memory in Kenya is important, she insists that there are other
factors that weigh the equation.



“There is agriculture, there is education, there is health&#8230;and all of these are competing with other needs for the nation so monuments are not a priority,” she says. 



She does admit that attitudes are slowing changing. With so
many of the buildings in need of protection poignant reminders of a difficult
period in the country’s past, the need to conserve them is often set against
embittered sentiment. 



A younger cosmopolitan population, a few generations removed
from that time, lends a more sympathetic ear to the obligations of
architectural conservation.



&nbsp;“We are starting to
see a more positive response&#8230; they seem to be understanding their history and
accepting that history,” she continues.



Outside of public office, there has also been, in response,
a modest movement building. Sometime in 2013, the Architectural and Heritage
Advisory Committee (AHAC) was convened. The group, comprised of an eclectic mix
of brand name architects, lay enthusiasts, a prominent journalist and an
architect-turned-photographer, set out to protect Nairobi’s built heritage. 



Its architect, an economist by trade, Aref Adamali, was
compelled to organize it after returning home in 2008. Having lived in some of
the world’s great architectural cities, among them New York and London, he was
met with a fast-changing metropolis in the midst of a property boom.



To him, these developments were not convincing evidence that
it was heading in the right direction. 



“We were losing older buildings&#8230; not just old colonial
buildings made of stone but [some] from the ’60s and ’70s with
post-independence modernist architecture and even cool buildings from the
’80s&#8230; that we could [never] recover,” he recalls.



After a number of conversations, Adamali began the
initiative that would form AHAC. Looking to avoid the taxing listing procedures
of the National Museums, they took their campaign to the interwebs.



“Listing can be contentious [so] we decided not to take the
regulatory approach&#8230; our interest was in casting our net further than the
city center and into the neighborhoods that were quickly changing,” he
explains.



The result was an online poll open to all of Nairobi and a
blog cataloging the capital’s aging architectural gems. After a period of
voting, AHAC compiled a list of 50 of the city’s most treasured historical
properties informed by a broad spectrum of its residents. They also
collaborated with local artists and photographers to immortalize these
structures in exhibitions that appealed to the greater public.



The committee is still contemplating a longer term approach
but they do have a few ideas.



<div class="wp-block-image"><figure class="aligncenter"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" width="433" height="617" src="https://www.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/03/nairobi3.png" alt="" class="wp-image-39898" srcset="https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/03/nairobi3.png 433w, https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/03/nairobi3-300x427.png 300w, https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/03/nairobi3-211x300.png 211w" sizes="auto, (max-width: 433px) 100vw, 433px" /><figcaption>Nairobi Kenya architecture. Picture: Getty</figcaption></figure></div>



“We’d want the owners of these buildings to be, in effect,
the unofficial custodians of them,” Adamali proposes. 



Some of the buildings that feature on the list include some
of Nairobi’s most photographed landmarks like the iconic Kenyatta International
Conference Centre. 



Inspired by the vernacular structure of an African hut and
constructed using locally-sourced materials, it was designed by Norwegian, Karl
Henrik Nøstvik, in close consultation with the country’s first architect, David
Mutiso, in 1968. 



The exercise was a particularly important one for Nairobi.
As the architectural debate blares on, in local newspapers or in intellectual
salons, along with its interpretations of identity, it remains far removed from
the wider Kenyan public. 



Offering locals and laymen an opportunity to locate and
share their own ideas of the city’s heritage gives the preservationists some
support and a lasting shot at success. 



Nairobi is host to not just one but a cornucopia of cultural
connotations through its buildings. Each making conversation, in the language
of design, about their origins and place in the city. Taken for granted as they
are, these monuments of old will continue be lost without memory by the
modernizing nation around them.



As Adamali insists, this cannot be allowed to happen.



“We’ve got to appreciate what we’ve got and together try to do what we can to preserve them for future generations,” he says.



-Marie Shabaya

nairobi

Is Nairobi’s  Storied History Quietly Disappearing?

On a quiet afternoon in the new year, gunshots and
explosions rocked a hotel in the heart of Nairobi. The terror was another
deafening blow to the city’s business community.



The gunshots and explosions rang out first. As scores of
people fled the 14 Riverside complex in panic, others remained trapped within
its office blocks and inner buildings. At the DusitD2 hotel parking lot in
Nairobi, Kenya, vehicles burned violently. In the foyer, guests lay wounded,
only just surviving the horror of a suicide bombing. Outside, more gunshots as
the chaos intensified.



“We are under attack!” an unidentified employee within the
hotel building told Reuters in the early moments.



“We are still in [the] bathroom [&#8230;] gunshots in building,
please pray for us,” Ronald Ng’eno, a terrified civilian, tweeted from his
hiding place shortly after telling his family goodbye.



As the siege ended the next morning, confirmed by
Presidential address, the city began to take stock. Phone calls were exchanged
between friends and family. Companies within the complex set up hotlines for
those searching for their loved ones. At the nearby Chiromo mortuary, a tracing
desk was kept busy for those who needed more concrete answers.



This was not the first attack of its kind in Nairobi. In
2013, terrorists opened fire on unassuming shoppers at the Westgate Mall
resulting in an 80-hour assault that claimed the lives of 67 people. Over a
decade earlier, the American embassy in the capital was bombed in an explosion
that killed 213 civilians and wounded at least 4,000 others.



The latest incident, however, was perhaps the most
terrifying coming after a period of relative calm in the country. The hotel, a
popular venue for business meetings, was situated in the heart of the Riverside
complex that also housed the regional headquarters of major local and
international firms. 



The devastation, much like those of Westgate, will be felt
not only in human cost but in the economic losses that the country will likely
face. This, experts say, may have been the intention of Al-Shabaab, the
Al-Qaeda-backed Somali terror group that took credit for the insurgency.



Among Al-Shabaab’s economic victims are the small business
owners of the complex who, among their neighbors, will feel the biting losses
the most. 



Sam Omindo, founder of Genteel, a men’s tailoring brand that
was due to launch at the complex late January, was worried about starting
again.



&nbsp;“My plans have to
change and the arrangements that went into preparing for the launch are
technically null and void,” he says.



Genteel was a tenant of Metta, an entrepreneur’s club
located in the Belgravia building only a few feet behind the hotel. Originally
from Hong Kong, Nairobi was the club’s second site and an epicenter for
creative businesses in the city. It was also where Omindo met clients and
partners on a regular basis.



“I’m not too sure if people would still be comfortable
coming there&#8230;[this] means I’d have to look for an alternative somewhere
else,” he ruminates.



Beyond this, the fashion entrepreneur also finds himself
counting the cost of the attack on his fledgling business.



&nbsp;He estimates that
regrouping his enterprise would set him back a few thousand dollars, money that
he hoped to launch his business with.



Businesses like Omindo’s will continue to suffer in the
insecurity that follows the January attacks. Past incidents of terrorism were
found to decrease the country’s foreign direct investment significantly. In
2013, after Westgate, this was a 14% decline and investor confidence plummeted
due to fears around the security situation worsening.



Notwithstanding, the cost of doing business in Nairobi will
also rise. Insurance premiums after the mall shootings went up by about 40%
which translated to about 3% of annual revenues. At the time of going to print,
estimates on the costs of terrorism and political violence cover for local
businesses were yet to be established but were expected to follow a similar
trend.



What is known, however, is that for the coming months,
businesses at 14 Riverside will be slow to recover. At the time of publishing,
all of the over 40 businesses had closed their doors indeterminately with their
offices cordoned off as investigations continued.

The cost of terror for Nairobi

One of the most commercially successful artists in Kenya, Nani Croze, has lived a life few could dare to <g class="gr_ gr_3 gr-alert gr_gramm gr_inline_cards gr_run_anim Punctuation only-del replaceWithoutSep" id="3" data-gr-id="3">imagine,</g> and introduced a new expression supported by her art, philanthropy and entrepreneurship.



<hr class="wp-block-separator"/>



The journey to the Kitengela Glass estate begins like any other from Nairobi. Traffic is often heavy and there is frustration on the roads. But as you pass through the last of it, a different world unfurls. The road is murram (gravelly) and a new settlement is unfolding around it, overlooked by a new railroad track for the high-speed train to Mombasa, recent signs of development consuming the old Maasai plains.



But no less than a mile away, cushioned by the narrow gorges
of the Nairobi National Park, is the entry into a wonderland where the life and
work of German-born artist Nani Croze has concentrated for over the last 40
years. It is an eccentric paradise with a lush covering of indigenous trees and
shrubs, canopies over stunning and colorfully outrageous architecture that
announce the artist in her territory.



However, her life in Kenya was a gift of fate. Croze first
came to East Africa with her first husband, the animal behaviourist, Harvey
Croze, and their children at the end of the 1960s. 



“I came to Africa in 1968 to study elephants in the
Serengeti and four years later, the study was finished and we decided to go
back across the continent back to Europe. I filled a VW van with my three kids,
safely in the back, and we got as far as the Kenyan border. The car broke down
and we stayed&#8230;and that was that,” she tells me in the aviary area outside her
house as birdsong echoes around generous foliage.



<figure class="wp-block-image"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" width="962" height="555" src="https://www.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/01/nani31.png" alt="" class="wp-image-38656" srcset="https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/01/nani31.png 962w, https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/01/nani31-300x173.png 300w, https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/01/nani31-600x346.png 600w, https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/01/nani31-768x443.png 768w" sizes="auto, (max-width: 962px) 100vw, 962px" /><figcaption>Glass work by artist Nani Croze. Picture: Supplied</figcaption></figure>



Mother Nani, or ‘Mama’ to the community of artisans and
their families that also call Kitengela Glass home, is a matriarch in this
setting. Her hair is pinned up in a loose bun revealing tanned cheeks and
piercing blue eyes. 



A formidable painter and muralist, Croze is an artist of
many mediums. However, a little-known fact is her life in science. As a young
woman, she convinced the Nobel Prize-winning biologist and founding father of
the science of animal behavior, Konrad Lorenz, to work under him. Her earlier
works depict this scientific knowledge in lively wildlife motifs.



Nonetheless, she is perhaps most known, these days, for her
work with glass. Her estate is testament to this; colored glass panels of all
shapes and sizes line the structures at the entry of her world. The winding
walkway is flanked by sculptures accented with thick glass. The outdoor seating
is dalle-de-verre. 



The workshop and furnace are open for passersby to see. Its
products, ever-present at every corner of the estate, also decorate the
balustrades of the estate’s gallery, roof to her personal studio, intentionally
constructed around a formidable mogumo (African fig) tree, a souvenir from the
early days. She found it growing on the barren plains of what would become
estate when she arrived in 1979, a genus local legend claims can never die.



By this then, a single mother of three, Croze stumbled in to
the glass arts out of economic necessity.&nbsp;
She had purchased the land from the Maasai community of the area and
was, at the time, a working muralist. 



<figure class="wp-block-image"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" width="922" height="618" src="https://www.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/01/nani11.png" alt="" class="wp-image-38657" srcset="https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/01/nani11.png 922w, https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/01/nani11-300x201.png 300w, https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/01/nani11-600x402.png 600w, https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/01/nani11-768x515.png 768w" sizes="auto, (max-width: 922px) 100vw, 922px" /><figcaption> Glass work by artist Nani Croze. Picture: Supplied </figcaption></figure>



“My architect [told me] ‘you can’t pay school fees with
murals, you better start something new, what about stained glass?’” she
recalls.



An influx of Christian missions meant that stained glass
windows were crucial for finishing new churches and, as an art, they were more
profitable. This has since expanded to a wide-range of recycled glass products
from blown glass to beads, mosaics, murals, sculpture and, of course, dalle de
verre. However, the stained glass studio, the first on the estate, still
remains, busy and peopled, tucked away in a quiet corner of the gallery
building.



Croze, perhaps one of the most commercially successful
artists in Kenya, is often credited for introducing this new craft to the
region. She herself is self-taught and along with her son, Anslem, trained by
glass-blowers in the South of France and Holland, built the first furnace in
East Africa. He eventually took over the glass-blowing side of the business and
now runs his own studio next door along with an eponymous retail brand in
Nairobi selling decorative glass vessels, furniture and lighting. 



In her own right, Nani is responsible for training the first
Kenyan glass artisans, initially in stained glass and then in glass-blowing and
mosaics.



“We started together, my first [assistant] was a man called
Omondi. We started on stained glass-making and how it works and it’s quite a
process but once you’re in it, like all my guys here&#8230; you get quite good at
it. It’s a traditional and weary process but once you have [the finished
window] you have something beautiful that can never be undone,” she says.



Of the things that cannot be undone is Croze’s legacy not
only within the community of the estate and the industry she has created around
it but in the lives of many in East Africa.



Kitengela Glass is home to more than 50 artisans and their
families, many of whom have gone on to build independent careers in and outside
of glass art. An example is Edith Nyambura, formerly the resident mosaic
artist, who began her career at Kitengela and eventually wrote a book about her
work in 2010. 



There is also the young Patrick Kibe, colloquially known as
‘Mr. Dudu’ (Mr. Insect in Kiswahili), who arrived as a student at the estate
almost a decade ago and is now carving his own niche, creating figures and
sculptures of indigenous flora and fauna from recycled materials.



<figure class="wp-block-image"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" width="810" height="537" src="https://www.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/01/Nani4.png" alt="" class="wp-image-38658" srcset="https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/01/Nani4.png 810w, https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/01/Nani4-300x199.png 300w, https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/01/Nani4-600x398.png 600w, https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/01/Nani4-768x509.png 768w" sizes="auto, (max-width: 810px) 100vw, 810px" /><figcaption> Glass work by artist Nani Croze. Picture: Supplied </figcaption></figure>



Then there is the school Croze founded, not far from the
estate, often billed as the first of its kind in sub-Saharan Africa. Her
motivation was to introduce to the country the creative education she had
received as a young girl in Germany, which she regretted that her own children
did not have attending local schools.



“We have such terrible schools in Kenya that are so bad for
children! A child should grow up free, they should have music, art, new
movement and environment,” she laments.



The Rudolf Steiner School started with a class of 10 in
Nairobi’s leafy Karen suburb, popularly known as the setting of Out of Africa,
Karen Blixen’s pre-colonial odyssey. 



“It took its time. We had a very good worldwide sponsorship,
especially from Germany. We’ve had our ups and downs but now we have two in
Karen and the other one in Kitale [in western Kenya].”



In addition to her contributions in education, she is also a
key campaigner for young artists across Kenya. She is the founder of the annual
Kenya Arts Diary, a weekly calendar and catalog of up-and-coming contemporary
artists in the country.



The ninth edition was released in November with an exuberant
exhibition at the Nairobi Museum and since its founding has been produced by a
group of passionate volunteers. Every year, she picks up two artists featured
in the diary and invites them to a residency at the estate. The inspiration for
the project, she says, was her father, the acclaimed German woodcut artist HAP
Grieshaber, who also took a similar interest in his students.



“He would always help his students. Art is very expensive
most people can’t buy it so you either make it yourself or you make sure it
happens. The diary is just a venue to make sure people buy it and see it every
week,” she notes.



Although the next issue of the arts diary will be her last,
Croze remains ever passionate about her adopted home and community and hopes to
continue giving back to it while she is still alive.



“I was the first mzungu [Caucasian] in Maasailand&#8230;we had a
really good relationship and we still have with the Maasai community but my Ma
is still not very good, I must say. I feel very much a part of the community,”
she says.



<div class="wp-block-image"><figure class="aligncenter"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" width="463" height="616" src="https://www.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/01/Nani21.png" alt="" class="wp-image-38659" srcset="https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/01/Nani21.png 463w, https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/01/Nani21-300x399.png 300w, https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/01/Nani21-225x300.png 225w" sizes="auto, (max-width: 463px) 100vw, 463px" /><figcaption> Glass work by artist Nani Croze. Picture: Supplied </figcaption></figure></div>



Croze is a focal point at the Nairobi National Museum, from
the dalle-de-verre mural that welcomes museum-goers at the main exhibition
hall, to her mosaic path that snakes through the museum gardens to the goliath
metal and glass sculptures that mark the way through the complex. She remains
one of the few living artists in Kenya to have such a permanent and public
showing.



Even away from the whimsical glass oasis that she has built,
echoes of her are littered across Nairobi. Her commissioned murals on major
commercial buildings such as the American Embassy in the city’s diplomatic district.
She was the first to color the walls of the newly-established United Nations
Environmental Programme, UNEP, in 1972. Her art is also at the Times Tower in
the heart of the old city, home to the tax authority. There are also pieces
dotted across the region, a recent commission at a call center in Eldoret, in
western Kenya, and the windows at the Serena Hotel in Kigali.



“I just want to make sure that it all keeps going.&nbsp; There are always problems here and there, all
the time, but I want to keep it going,” she says.



Croze, true to her word, is still going with plans for a
vocational school to train a larger population of recycled glass artisans in
the nearby township of Tuala. Plans are also underway for a devotional school
to replace her personal chapel that was lost in a land dispute and, of course,
more commissions while she is still able to work on them. 

On the future of the world around her, a life’s
work, she is surprisingly indifferent. “I leave it to the Gods,” she ruminate

nani

IN PICTURES | The glass ceiling is what she makes it

As 2017 gets into full swing I am reminded of the launch of CNBC Africa 10 years ago on June 1, 2007. To say time flies is an enormous understatement. I can only imagine how the Founder and Vice Chairman of the Africa Business News Group, Rakesh Wahi, must feel considering he first arrived in Africa with just a briefcase in hand 12 short years ago. Now he has a business news conglomerate with Africa’s only continent-wide business channel and Africa’s number one monthly business publication, namely and FORBES AFRICA respectively.
Back in 2007, months of rehearsals finally led to the evening of June 1 when CNBC Africa, with a flick of a switch, came to life. Then South African President Thabo Mbeki was the first interviewee on that auspicious occasion. Corporate South Africa was in full attendance. The rehearsals paid off and CNBC Africa’s first broadcast to 48 countries across sub-Saharan Africa went off without a glitch.
<img loading="lazy" decoding="async" class="alignleft size-medium wp-image-4484" src="/wp-content/uploads/2017/04/IMG_3203-200x300.jpg" alt="" width="200" height="300" />
The next morning, broadcast began in earnest with eight hours of African business aired around the channel’s flagship shows: Open Exchange, Power Lunch, Closing Bell and Business Tonight. Ten years ago, the Africa rising story was burning bright but aggregating business content across Africa was still an enormous challenge. CNBC Africa was pioneering territory that no one else had attempted on such a large scale. Businessmen and women across Africa were not well versed in regular, live television interviews and market commentators were still relatively media shy.
Over the last 10 years the channel has played a significant role in unlocking the continent’s business talent and today, as the depth and breadth of African capital markets rapidly improves, African business interviews are happening with regularity at across the continent.
Today, CNBC Africa is taking regional integration to the next level. It’s hard to beat a real-time pan-African conversation with Lagos, Nairobi, Kigali and South Africa all simultaneously on screen exchanging West, East and southern African business news throughout the day.
Those early days also bring to mind some of the many lighter moments that are an inevitable part of any TV channel’s launch phase. One such moment was with my then co-anchor Byron Kennedy, who now heads up corporate affairs for Vodacom. Let me try and talk you through this.
Business Tonight was in full swing, Byron and I were co-anchoring. In the early days we were heavily reliant on the shows production script which detailed which guests were expected at what time during the show. Two guests down and the live show was progressing well. The third guest was seated and, relying on my script, I confidently introduced the guest as Kevin Weeks, Head of the South African Automobile Association. At this point we were on a wide shot – the audience could see Byron, myself and the guest, who was shaking his head violently. Byron immediately jumped in and stated to both the audience and to me “No, it’s definitely not Kevin Weeks…”. But he had no idea either who the guest was and threw me a hospital pass. The director had at this point not established that we were in trouble and instead of cutting to a commercial break – the default if something goes horribly wrong – he maintained the wide camera angle which meant that the audience was not missing a beat. I had no option but to lean over slightly and asked the now bewildered gentlemen the following question “Excuse me sir, what is your name?” followed by “What are we speaking about?”
Needless to say, we have come a long way from then. I felt much better when I was told to google “BBC Taxi Driver” and realized that it happens to the best of us.
But back to the present and the fact that we are now all grown up, in business years that is. Happy 10th birthday CNBC Africa in 2017; it’s been an incredible journey and I look forward to the next decade as we continue to tell the African business story unlike anyone else.

10 Years  Of Magic And  The Odd Mishap

Plans for Nairobi to enter the Global Financial Centre Index (GFCI) – a ranking of the competitiveness of financial centers around the word – finally appear to be on track, following the recent introduction of the Nairobi International Financial Centre (NIFC) Bill. Although the city is yet to be included in the global rank, it’s already among 16 associate centers expected to join the index in the near future.
One of the key roles of the NIFC will be to attract international financial services and multinational corporations to grow and develop the market for financial services in the region. It will help all NIFC-licensed firms to generate new and sustainable revenue streams. On this front, Nairobi is already playing host to several representative offices of global lenders, such as HDFC Bank, Nedbank, First Rand and Bank of Kigali. In addition, the NIFC will provide access to local and regional investment opportunities. Business can be transacted inside or outside Nairobi, in local or foreign currency. This is to allow businesses to operate both locally and internationally. For this reason, plans are already underway to make Nairobi Africa’s first clearing house for the Chinese yuan.
According to the GFCI ranking, for Nairobi to become an international financial center, it will need to enhance five key areas of competitiveness: financial sector development, business environment, infrastructure, human capital, and reputational and general factors. With this in mind, it was encouraging to hear the Cabinet Secretary for the National Treasury, Henry Rotich, propose changes for the local debt market during this year’s budget speech. To start with, market players will now see the introduction of electronic bond auctions which will spare investors from the current manual process of submitting paper bids, the separation of retail and wholesale components of the market and the introduction of primary dealers and market makers. It is likely to attract international portfolio funds looking to investment in the region.
Furthermore, Rotich, through the Financial Services Authority (FSA) Bill will set the stage for mergers across the existing non-banking regulators. The move is expected to address issues around consumer protection, existing regulatory gaps and issues of market conduct. Once enacted, Nairobi’s international status is expected to become even more essential. Some leading institutions have already taken notice. Ecobank Transnational is now planning to upgrade its Nairobi office to be the regional hub of operations for 18 countries. Similarly, global financial services firm, SWIFT, plans to open a regional hub in Nairobi.
A further indication of Nairobi’s increasing competitiveness is the improving business environment. In the 2016 FinAccess survey, Kenyan’s access to financial services stood at 75.3%, up from 66.7% in 2013. But, issues revolving around corruption and rule of law are also key. Kenya would not be an ideal international financial center if its people are corrupt, lazy and lawless. In view of the current financial scandals that have rocked some of the major financial centers, such as the Panama Papers scandal, it’s obvious that reputation is a vital asset that needs to be protected. In fact, reputation has become more important than reality. It is no surprise to see Athens and Moscow at the bottom of the global ranking.
While Nairobi gears up for a leap forward, its efforts so far have attracted attention. Kenya was ranked number 42 out of 140 countries by the World Economic Forum Global Competitiveness Report 2015/16 in financial market development. In 2015, the country was also ranked first in the world for leveraging technology to drive inclusion by the Brookings Financial and Digital Inclusion Project (FDIP).
Looking at this trend, it is safe to say that it’s only a matter of time before Nairobi catches up with the big boys.

Giant Leap Forward

Banks and investors are reluctant to risk money in untested projects. Start-ups are left penniless and broken across Africa. Nairobi-based entrepreneur Erik Hersman struggled for capital from banks unwilling to take a risk. Crowdfunding was the answer.
“We had to make sure that we made this innovation come alive and crowdfunding made it easier. Although the process of marketing the idea while being funded is hard, it is worth it,” he says.
Through online crowdfunding platforms, people pledge small amounts of money to projects for 90 days, for a reward.
Hersman turned to crowdfunding and met people that gave his new business a lifeline.
“It wasn’t just about raising money for the project but we also wanted to test out if anyone else wanted this product. Sometimes something sounds great in our heads but no one else would be interested,” he says.
Using Kickstarter, one of the many crowdfunding sites in Africa, he raised over $160,000 for BRCK – a device that helps people go online where electricity is scarce. It can hop between Ethernet, Wi-Fi and 3G and 4G.
“We looked at the market and we were asking ourselves, why are we trying to connect to the internet using devices that are made in Europe and the US when we have a different infrastructure in Kenya; so we started designing and developing a new way to connect to the internet.”
BRCK began shipping units in July 2014. Thousands had been sold to 54 countries by February 2015. The company employs 40 people.
Hersman is grateful for crowdfunding and says entrepreneurs should use it.
“It is not currently well used and understood in the continent but I wish more people could make use of it,” he says.
Entrepreneur Patrick Schofield, co-founder of Thundafund, a crowdfunding site based in Cape Town, says many businesses fail in their first year and good ideas rarely see the light of day.
“Crowdfunding is the most powerful mechanism we have in Africa. If you have a really good idea and people like it, they will support it. People can put $100 for a good idea, for example, but they are sceptical to put down $5,000 for something that hasn’t been tested,” says Schofield.
“Through the process of the campaign, we test if the idea is viable and if there is a market for it. The entrepreneurs say how much they need to execute their plan. If the target is not reached, the donated funds are returned to the funders.”
Thundafund claims it has funded 170 projects worth R6,123,843 ($550,000).
“There are a lot of ideas around how you can thank or reward backers. This is a very important part of crowdfunding because it will determine how well your campaign will do. For example, you can offer the product you want funding to create as reward, early access to the product or service for example when looking for funding for an album, you will offer signed CDs, VIP access to shows; you can make your backers part of the project and much more,” says Schofield.
Crowdfunding platforms like Malaik, AngelList, EarlyShares, and Seedrs offer equity.
Malaik spokesperson, Vias Lustig, says equity crowdfunding is great, but has drawbacks if not well managed.
“An early-stage company that has raised financing from a hundred different investors through an equity crowdfunding platform will have more trouble getting follow-on investment from venture capitalists,” says Lustig.
Malaik, based in West Africa, acts as a nominee. All the crowdfunded money is channelled through a special purpose vehicle (company formed for investing in equity) that appears on the entrepreneur’s books as a sole investor.
“Smaller investors that participate in equity-crowdfunding are also less likely to contribute and help the entrepreneurs with their business plan, since they have smaller incentives. Malaik also thought about curbing this when developing its model by adopting a lead investor format, this way the lead investor takes at least 25% of the equity round, thus ensuring the company has a larger, more invested individual that can possibly act as an advisor,” says Lustig.
Lustig claims equity crowdfunding could take advantage of the $140 billion to $160 billion gap in finance for African SMEs, because they enable many investors to commit small amounts of capital that would usually be out of the question.
The founder of London-based The Crowdfunding Centre, Barry James, says crowdfunding has not had a massive impact in Africa because of a lack of awareness.
“The UK lagged far behind the US four or five years ago until we started to tackle this. Even now, only a small percentage of people in either country are getting the help and funding they could from crowdfunding, so it has a long way to go,” he says.
“If you’re writing a book, the best advice is to write about what you know. The same is true with crowdfunding and entrepreneurship. That said, campaigns in the tech category tend to raise the most money, while games and comics have the highest rate of success – around 50 percent.”
In South Africa, Schofield says consumer products, arts and entertainment projects are the most supported.
The future could be brighter for struggling entrepreneurs, if you have a dream that draws a crowd.

If you want to get Ahead Draw A Crowd – But Be Careful

Daniel Adongo is not the first athlete from Africa to make it to the highest level of American football; however his dogged determination, relentless grit and unwavering faith could make him the top African athlete the National Football League (NFL).
Weighing more than 120 kilograms and towering at six foot five inches, the linebacker with the Indianapolis Colts has come a long way from Nairobi, where he was born and learned to play a completely different sport, rugby.
The Colts, whose team mantra is build the monster, is quietly building a monster in Adongo. Not surprising as his grandfather, Odiek Chilo, nicknamed him Liech, a Kenyan word for elephant, because he was a big baby.
“From what my mom tells me, I was huge baby and I have been growing ever since!” says Adongo, laughing at his not-so-average stature.
Sport was far from Adongo when he was growing up. Born and raised in a middle-class family in Nairobi, his dad, Joseph was a mid-level executive whose career took the family to London and back to Kenya.
“I had a really great childhood in Nairobi. Even though my parents come from humble beginnings, we were also fortunate enough as a family to be afforded the opportunity to live in Europe,” he says.
He was a typical boy-next-door with an unquenchable curiosity about the world. Even though it never occurred to him that sport would play an enormous role in his life, he says he was very competitive from the age of five.
In London, at the age of six, Adongo insisted on participating in a 15-kilometer charity walk with his parents on a hot summer’s day. Despite objections from his parents and to his father’s amazement, Adongo completed the walk.
“I am happy that I took the opportunity and obligated myself to the discipline and rigor of athletics from a young age.”
It was in primary school that Adongo and his older brother, Leon, discovered their love for sport, particularly rugby.
“I looked up to my older brother and followed him in whatever sports he played. I wanted to emulate everything he did on the field.”
It was former Kenya Rugby Sevens coach, Benjamin Ayimba, who spotted the brothers and their athletic prowess early. At that time, the older Adongo was a student at Makini School and the younger at Strathmore School, both schools in Nairobi.
“People talk about him [Daniel] as a rugby person but he is an all-round sportsman. While at Strathmore School, he was the best at both track and field events. He set a record in high jump and was a greater sprinter. He also played basketball, football and rugby,” says Joseph.
Adongo enjoyed rugby the most and he excelled so much that he was crowned Sportsman of the Year.
His trajectory in sport rose after he joined the junior team at Harlequins, a rugby club in Kenya. It was from there that he was spotted by South African scouts at the 2006 Safari Sevens tournament, playing in the schools category. In 2007, he was scouted by the academy of the Sharks, a rugby team in KwaZulu Natal on South Africa’s east coast.
Within a short space of time, Adongo left Kenya to play professionally in South Africa.
“Before, there was no Kenyan who had been signed to the Sharks Academy with a junior contract at the end of their first year. I achieved that,” he says with pride.
Change was a constant feature in his life and after the 2011 season, Adongo moved north to play for the Blue Bulls in Pretoria. He then decided to play for Counties Manukau in New Zealand in 2012.
“I had established myself in South Africa, but I wanted a change of pace. The decision to move from playing rugby in South Africa to playing in New Zealand was a tough one.”
Adongo took a salary cut, accepting the New Zealand’s minimum 12-week pay of $12,300 including bonuses. Rugby is part of the fabric of New Zealand life. He was willing to sacrifice money for the vital experience.
“The experience in New Zealand was a different style of play. Rugby players in New Zealand employ more skill, tact, power, guile and speed to defeat their opponents. South African players are aggressive and big and they want to hurt you; your manhood is tested when you are playing against South Africans.”
The move to New Zealand paid off; South Africa’s Eastern Province Kings offered Adongo a one-year contract to play for them in Super Rugby. This was a major feat for Adongo; he is the first Kenyan to play professional rugby at the highest level in New Zealand and the first to compete in Super Rugby, the southern hemisphere’s premier club rugby tournament.
“I had to prove to myself that I can excel and excel at the highest level.”
The United States (US) offered him another chance to prove his ability. The Indianapolis Colts showed an interest when Adongo’s manager, Johnny Gbenda-Charles, a former rugby player and Hong-Kong based sports agent, contacted them.
“The Colts were looking for professional athletes from other sporting backgrounds who could transfer their skills to American football,” says Adongo.
The 24-year-old Kenyan had no idea about American football, let alone how to put on cleats, padded armor and helmets.
“Rugby and American football are night and day in terms of technical aspects of the game, even though both sports use extreme levels of physical aggression. American football is much more of a contact sport between the two. It was crazy at first, but I was determined to master the game,” says Adongo, laughing about his early days in the US.
Despite his limited knowledge of the sport, his style of play, which he describes as brutish, aggressive and very physical, but as nimble as a deer, is what probably caught the attention of the Colts’ General Manager, Ryan Grigson, and the coaching team.
Adongo signed a one-year contract and is expected to develop into a vital member of their defensive line-up as an intimidating rush linebacker. This makes him the first black African and first Kenyan to transition from rugby to American football. While the learning curve is steep for Adongo, he continues to push the limits for himself. He made his debut against the Cincinnati Bengals in Ohio.
“I practiced in shorts and t-shirts to force myself to adapt to the extreme weather conditions I was going to be playing in.”
That particular December week, there had been severe snow storms and below-zero temperatures in the Midwest. Adongo’s dedication was noticed and he was promoted from the practice squad to the playing roster.
Adongo, who is deeply religious, says sport is a small part of his life. Bigger is his purpose to inspire the imagination of young Africans to dream big and work hard. After all, that is what he did on his way to becoming a professional NFL player, made in Nairobi.

The Kenyan Hercules Stomping  The States

Tabitha Karanja is in a svelte black dress and seated in the boardroom of her well-appointed Nairobi office. She has a disarming smile and a gentleness that makes it hard to imagine that, in this very boardroom, this soft-spoken mother of four has struck many a business deal and battled feisty competitors. Those who work with her know that beneath the pleasant exterior is a hard-nosed businesswoman with a strong mind and a stronger resolve.
This is evident every morning she revs up her Range Rover to 120kph, driving an hour and 91 kilometers to her Naivasha brewery from her home in Nairobi. This is a woman with a drive few can match. She is the face of corporate Kenya.
Karanja is CEO of Keroche Breweries, Kenya’s second largest brewer (East African Breweries Limited is leader). In all of Africa, she is perhaps the only woman to have founded a beer company. It is an industry for the big boys, but an industry she says she has never felt out of place in. Her heart is in beer-making, and this is where she says she will continue to be, brewing up more action in the years to come.
In August, Karanja celebrated her 50th birthday in Nairobi with close friends and business associates. In many ways, it was a tribute to the milestones she reached in the industry.
“I don’t feel old,” says Karanja. Where most women would have contemplated slowing down after 50, Karanja does not see retirement anywhere on the radar. If anything, the game has only begun.
In January, her brewery in Naivasha will increase capacity by 10 times in a $100 million expansion plan. Where currently it manufactures 60,000 bottles a day, the upgraded facility will produce 600,000 bottles, as Karanja stridently looks to widen her reach in the rest of East Africa and increase her market share to 20%.
Her top-sellers are Summit Lager and Summit Malt, which started production in 2008 as “naturally-brewed, sugar-free, and hygienic alternatives” targeting consumers in the low-end alcohol market that could not afford elite brands or were more dependent on illicit brews.
Today, it is clear Kenya’s social climbers want more. Business is anything but flat.
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“We are launching another beer brand in the next six months. I want the Summit brand to be all over Africa. The brand should live beyond my time,” says Karanja.
Beer or paint?
Karanja’s story is one of resilience and determination. Her first job was with the Ministry of Tourism in Kenya. Thereafter, her maiden business venture, with husband Joseph Karanja, was a hardware store, which she ran for 10 years. She wanted to diversify, and began searching the market for ideas, which is when she saw a gap in the beer market. Her other option was to sell paint, but she thought: “How often will a man paint his house? I have to go in for fast-moving consumer goods.”
With a paltry KSh200,000 ($2,200) from her savings and the 30 acres of land in Naivasha that she owned, in 1998, she started manufacturing fortified wines from a one-room facility. After 10 years in the wine and spirit business, she entered the beer market with the Summit brand.
“People were left to drinking anything that was available in the villages. I came up with a product that was affordable, hygienic and met international standards,” says Karanja.
The challenges were many, as it took a whole year – and several desperate trips to the financing banks – before the brand finally gained traction.
“We didn’t have anyone’s support. People did not understand there could be another brewery in this country. We had to fight and break that monopoly by not giving up, and believing that if multinationals can do it, so can we, as it’s good for the country, and good for Africa, so we can create jobs. There was no looking back.”
Over the years, Karanja has taken on the might of the competitors and the many “smear campaigns” against her, but did she face any setbacks for being a woman?
“I guess I am one of the few lucky women in business. I have never had to face discrimination. People don’t see me as a woman, they see me as an entrepreneur. I believe in myself, and believe in whatever I am doing.”
This belief is an attribute she intends imparting to the next generation of Kenyan business leaders. In May this year, her company launched the Keroche Foundation to train and mentor upcoming entrepreneurs and small business owners. Her company employs over 300 people and gives back to the community through youth education.
The young ones in her own family are taking her cue. Karanja’s 26-year-old daughter Anerlisa Muigai is following in her mother’s footsteps. After a marketing degree in London, Muigai returned to Nairobi last year to launch Executive, a line of still bottled water for a niche market.
“I have always looked up to my mother. She has been my biggest inspiration, she gives me hope in so many ways,” says the young entrepreneur. “She is a successful businesswoman because she never gives up. She conquers every goal, is a go-getter and very smart. I like that she comes home and does not make the house an office.”
Karanja agrees that for a woman juggling work and family, there are immeasurable sacrifices to be made every day.
“Being at the top, you have to balance it all. When you sleep, you are so tired, because you have made sure everything has gone right, that you have fed your family, and you have given time for your business. It’s difficult as there are sacrifices you make, like giving up on your sleep. I sleep after midnight, and wake at six.
“Every day after work, I take a Summit Malt. It does not give you a hangover, it’s good for the body,” she says. Even at home, Karanja cannot stay without endorsing the brand she is so passionate about.

New-shortcut.lnk_1

The Iron Lady Of Beer

While watching the CCTV footage of the Westgate attack in a
Nairobi, it is impossible to remain fixated and stare unblinking at the screen. How can we not look away when confronted with images of terrorists casually taking aim at civilian shoppers cowering in supermarket aisles.
It still seems impossible to fathom that the killers struck on a Saturday afternoon. A time for families, when parents pushed strollers and hauled groceries into shopping carts—trolleys that would be used hours later to evacuate the wounded and return the dead.
The sense of disbelief grew by the hour with the knowledge that a business, and most importantly, people we had invested in, had been caught up in the attack.
Swedfund claimed a 14% share in Deacons, a leading Kenyan retailer which owned four outlets in the mall as sub-anchors, including the popular Mr. Price fashion store that dominated the ground floor. More terrifyingly, the employees were barricaded behind steel shutters praying for salvation and texting what they believed would be their final words to loved ones.
In total, 30 of Deacons’ staff were caught up in the attack. Against the odds, all of them survived. Unlike many of the other store managers, our own had simulated an emergency evacuation in their company training. In short, in a time of incredible adversity and terror, they knew what to do in the most unthinkable of circumstances.
The stories of survival among the Deacons’ team led me back to Kenya to meet them in a time of aftermath and painful reflection for the whole of East Africa.
As a former McKinsey consultant, I arrived in Nairobi accompanied by a throng of media focused more on the economic impact than the human toll of the crisis. Yet this went against everything I believe. With my recent international NGO background, I had come to my new role at Swedfund with the hope of contributing to Africa’s economic revival.
Around 600 million new jobs will be needed worldwide in the next 15 years to absorb a burgeoning youthful workforce, mainly in Asia and sub-Saharan Africa, according to a recent World Bank report.
The private sector will be the engine for this job creation, accounting for 90% of jobs in the developing world, but governments have a vital role to play by ensuring the right conditions are in place.
In our opinion, if you want to achieve inclusive growth you must not only make solid financial investments based on due diligence but, against traditional forms of investing, also improve working conditions, sustainability and solid corporate governance. The reaction of the staff at Deacons in a time of crisis taught us much about we need to know about this investment in people.
Swedfund’s decision to invest in retail represented a vote of faith for the nation’s middle class, whose emergence in key African countries cannot be overlooked. It is key in driving economic, social and political expectations. By 2025, annual consumption in emerging markets is estimated to rise to $30 trillion.
During my visit, it emerged that Deacons had lost up to 15% of its Kenyan business and lost $2 million in the attack. But this, of course, paled into insignificance when compared to the human toll of the attack.
Encountering the young women who had worked in the Mr. Price store, where as many as 40 shoppers had been saved by the quick thinking of the management, I was both troubled and inspired by their resilience. Some of the store workers texted their husbands and begged them to say goodbye to their young children. Others had persistent and violent nightmares. One told me she struggles each day with her own survival, knowing others who had died.
There is never an appropriate time to talk about investing or re-investing in the wake of an incident like Westgate, but for the Kenyan people it is clear that they want this on the agenda immediately. If incidents like the mall attack deter investors it could harm the country in the long term.
One of our roles is to defend investments in difficult places. In my opinion, there is no greater incentive to invest in job creation and youth by backing local businesses in nations prone to terror attacks.
By investing in economically-sound projects, we can achieve a catalytic effect. We can create jobs and help secure the future of youth and prevent their descent into extremism, like the young men who carried out the Westgate assault.
In Sweden, there are progressive firms like H&amp;M and Ericsson looking towards inclusive growth on the continent but there is a need for more multinationals to invest and create jobs. Africa’s greatest strength could be its young and rapidly growing population.
Framed against this youthfulness, the prerequisites for expansion and development in Africa are better than in many other places on earth. According to a McKinsey report, the continent’s consumer-oriented businesses will grow by $400 billion by 2020. The bottom line? An investment in Africa can also be seen as an investment in youth.
What the Westgate attack teaches us is that enabling youth is key, but we also need to join forces. If we can show the way, we can make sure private business join NGOs in a global partnership to help job creation. We cannot look away from Africa like we can the stills on the CCTV screen.

Seuffert-swedfund-hires-2208

Keep Your Eyes On Kenya

In 1998, approximately two hours since I had passed the front gate of the United States (US) Embassy in Nairobi, a huge blast ripped through the building at 10.35AM.
The embassy was situated next to the busy road that I would take every day to and from journalism school. The bomb was targeted at the US embassy, but Ufundi House next door, which houses small offices and a secretarial college, took the brunt of the explosion.
The journalism school was about five kilometers away from the city center and I remember being in a usual morning lecture when I heard a loud bang.
Being young and curious, we rushed to the scene of the blast where rescue workers were trying desperately to dig their way into the wreckage to reach dozens of people trapped inside.
The blast had almost leveled the five-storey Ufundi House and caused extensive damage to the embassy. The scene was chaotic, people running in all directions. The roads were even more chaotic, cars driving in the wrong lanes with their lights on. People who did not know what had happened thought that the government had been overthrown and there was heavy fighting in the city center.
Nairobi was in mayhem. What do you do? Where do you start from? Who do you call? I had two brothers and a sister in Nairobi but there was no way of reaching them, telephones were down and transport was non-existent. I felt helpless and horrified.
Back at the scene, a lady covered in blood tells her story to the media.
“I heard a loud bang then the whole place was shaking and within a split second glass was falling on my head,” she said.
Ambulances, firefighters, army and police frantically attended to bodies, both dead and injured, burnt buses and cars, and damaged buildings. It is a scene that has stayed with me for a very long time. The first question that I asked myself was, ‘What did we do to deserve such a violent attack?’
As a dense plume of smoke soared above the skyline, hundreds of people fled the scene while thousands rushed towards it to see what had happened. The city quickly became logjammed, causing further problems for ambulances and rescue workers.
The charred bodies lay in the street near mannequins blown out of nearby shop windows. Scores of people were seen covered in blood from injuries caused by flying glass.
After spending four hours at the scene, I picked myself up and started walking home. Along the way, information started coming through. The death toll was 207 Kenyans and 12 US citizens. More than 1,000 had been injured.
In the blink of an eye, the Al Qaeda terrorist group announced its presence in East Africa, and brought the group’s leader Osama Bin Laden to the attention of the US government.
Terrorism has taken another dimension since then. Kenya’s security forces have struggled to contain an evolving terrorist threat and much of the focus has been on Somalia’s Al-Qaeda-linked Al-Shabaab militants, who use Kenya to seek out new recruits and financing.

Horror in Nairobi

When I meet Julian Kyula in his office at the penthouse of the International Life House, smack in the middle of the bustling Nairobi central business district, I cannot make up my mind whether I should address him as pastor or by his surname because rarely do you meet a church minister who doubles up as a shrewd businessman.
Obviously exhausted after a long flight from New York, Kyula tells me he needs to beat the annoying Nairobi traffic jam to be home with his family in around an hour, so we get down to our interview.
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In the world of mobile commerce Julian Kyula needs no introduction, he is the co-founder and CEO of MoDe, a company he describes as disruptive by nature. MoDe is a nano-finance company that lends credit, as low as 50 cents, profitably through mobile phones.
“When you are in need of cash at 3AM and you cannot access the ATM, or you run out of internet bundles somewhere in Africa, or want a bus coupon or need to buy a day’s worth of electricity in a prepaid facility, that is when MoDE steps in,” he says.
For a company in its third year of existence, having successfully completed its first financial transaction in September of 2010, MoDe has done admirably in the mobile money arena. By June this year, the company was handling 500 million transactions, each ranging from 50 cents to $10 and serving 105 million customers across the 17 African countries it operates in and recording over $750 million in sales revenue since its inception. MoDe is also making inroads in the Asian markets, making it among the top global FinTech companies.
“We have opened new offices in Delhi and Mumbai and we plan to go for the American market by opening offices in the United States in 2014,” says Kyula.
“We believe we are at the forefront of building one of the largest FinTech businesses globally and what is so exciting is that the next big thing is coming from Africa. This will boost our efforts as we seek to deepen partnerships with the United States and Europe as we chase for opportunities in that market,” he says, struggling to hide the smile on his face.
MoDe has partnered with the giant mobile telephony service provider Airtel group, and MTN in the African market, with intentions to hit 13 more markets before the end of the year.
Whenever conversations about the African telecoms sector are held, Kenya always features largely due to the success of M-Pesa, the mobile money transfer system. However, the Kenyan telecoms sector is one that has evolved faster than the legislation designed to regulate it and Kyula knows this too well, observing that when he started there were all kinds of licenses required by the government, most of which were unnecessary.
“Legislation should enable business, it shouldn’t be an impediment,” he says.
Getting over the challenge of cumbersome regulations was the first hurdle in Kyula’s quest at providing nano-finance. Next was to convince a mobile service provider with a significant subscriber base to take a chance on a little-known outfit.
Airtel was an obvious choice for Kyula despite it being the second largest service provider in Kenya after the dominant Vodafone powered Safaricom. Airtel has an impressive subscriber base in West and Central Africa and it has a footprint in India and other emerging markets, exactly what Kyula was looking for.
“If you want to build something that is global you must work with a partner who can take you outside the continent and Airtel was willing to do that for us,” he says.
Looking at the dynamic nature of mobile money innovations in the recent past, one would wonder just how relevant a company like MoDe will be in the next five to ten years.
“We do understand that problems surrounding the access of credit in Kenya, Singapore, Vietnam or America are similar and we are preparing ourselves by spreading our geographical risk by being in as many markets as possible.’’
Kyula’s strategy seems to be working for the company.
“Look, when you stop innovating you begin to die,” he says as he moves towards a trophy the company won at the IBM global entrepreneurs award.
In 2012, Kyula was IBM’s Africa Entrepreneur of The Year, the IBM Latin America Entrepreneur of the Year as well as the recipient of the African Leadership Network Of Top 12 Companies.
Kyula’s share in MoDe stands at around $85 million, however, his total investment portfolio and companies in agriculture, equity investment, and real estate seated on his firm Kyula Holdings, give him a total net worth of $115 million.
So when Kyula, or Coach as he is fondly referred to by his employees, is not jumping into planes to close deals halfway across the world he is busy preaching at his local church called The Purpose Centre. One would wonder how he is able to balance both worlds.
As opposed to a businessman who moonlights as a pastor, Kyula claims to be a pastor who moonlights as a businessman. He insists that church and business are two worlds that can complement each other if the right balance is achieved.
“My best decision and my worst mistake is failure. I was naïve when I was much younger to think that when you are upset with someone you go ahead and compete with him,” explains Kyula.
“There is no better school than failure, you just have to pick up the pieces, take time to recover, reassess, reconfigure, rest and revive. These are my five ‘R’s of life.’’
For an entrepreneur who has experienced significant success and wealth, you may wonder what is left on Kyula’s bucket list.
“The one thing that I want to be able to achieve is to shift the dimension of how we look at those at the bottom of the pyramid. I would like to innovate something that shakes the way businesses look at people that are underprivileged. I want to be able, in my lifetime, to have a million children in Africa going to school because I lived,” he declares.
To this I say amen.

A Pastor  Disruptive By Nature

Arrivals and departures in Nairobi these days look more like a wedding venue than an airport. Huge white tents make up for the charred remnants of the arrivals hall.
Children sleep on chairs in the morning chill, as passengers crowd under canvas. This is Jomo Kenyatta International Airport (JKIA), in the wake of the crippling fire on August 7.
For five hours, flames tore through the fourth busiest airport in sub-Saharan Africa. It disrupted trade and travel plans for tens of thousands of people as Kenya heads for its tourism peak season.
The annual wildebeest migration alone draws thousands to the Maasai Mara in July and August.
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“We are going to put up a temporary terminal that will take about 2.5 million passengers at the same time. We will also fast-track terminal four, which was meant to be opened sometime in March next year. We need to think how we can bring it forward,” says the airport’s manager, Edward Kobuthi.
The fire was another blow to Kenya Airways. It has struggled through turbulent times after reporting a $7 billion loss in 2012. The fire forced the airline to cut international flights by 25%.
“Roughly in terms of revenue, not bottom line, we have lost about $4 million against our plan,” says Titus Naikuni, CEO of Kenya Airways.
“What has happened is that we have changed a number of things. We have moved our international flights to the domestic [terminal], which means all our departures are through domestic. That is very congested.”
“A simple fire gone bad,” says President Uhuru Kenyatta, who criticized the authorities for failing to modernize the airport and for their handling of disasters.
The International Civil Aviation Organisation (ICAO) stipulates that fire fighters should be at the scene of a blaze in three minutes. It took Kenyan fire fighters at least 40 minutes after the fire broke out at around 5AM.
The fire is also likely to slow the expansion of the airport, which has dragged for months following leadership and financial wrangles in the Kenya Airports Authority (KAA). The project—expected to break ground this year—may be delayed, hurt the economy and frustrate Kenya Airways.’
“Kenya Airways&#8217; expansion plan is entirely correlated to the successful and speedy expansion of JKIA. The airport experience has been suboptimal for a while and I am sure Kenya Airways is hoping that the fire is the catalyst for a more aggressive KAA,” says Aly-Khan Satchu, an independent analyst.
KAA plans to expand the airport, which is a regional link to Europe, the Middle East and Asia, in order to handle traffic of 17 million passengers per year by 2020 from the current 6.5 million. In the wake of the fire, it has its work cut out.

Tag: Nairobi

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