Opalo's weblog

• airports airports

  Posted: July 31, 2010, 10:47 pm by kenopp

  Yours truly is about to embark on a much awaited summer vacation back home. Nothing beats the annual summer trip back to the bustle of Nairobi and weekend trips to my “ancestral homeland” of Siaya. The only difference is that unlike back in my undergrad days this time vacation doesn’t really mean no work. Grad [...]

• do not miss out on this…

  Posted: July 29, 2010, 5:21 am by kenopp

  Happening on Blattman’s Blog. In addition to the many foreign experts who are being asked to please stand up, I add, would the real eastern Congolese also please stand up and weigh in on this debate? Also, Texas in Africa has a number of posts on minerals and conflict in the eastern DRC to mark [...]

• really Mr. Moi, really?

  Posted: July 29, 2010, 5:12 am by kenopp

  So when the former president runs around Kenya being characteristically anti-reform by campaigning against the proposed constitution and claiming that "I was not a dictator. People wanted peace" we can only sit back and ask: really Mr. Moi, really? Wazee wengine wanazunguka wakisema katiba ni mbaya

• au sending more troops to somalia, defends Sudan’s al-Bashir

  Posted: July 27, 2010, 7:39 am by kenopp

  The African Union Summit in Uganda resolved to send an additional 2000 troops to Somalia. 5000 Ugandan and Burundian troops are already stationed in Mogadishu to prop up the beleaguered transitional government. The same summit resolution also sought to change the rules of engagement to allow AU troops to preemptively attack suspected terrorist al-Shabab strongholds. [...]

• southern sudan

  Posted: July 26, 2010, 9:21 am by kenopp

  As the January 9th, 2011 referendum draws closer the international community is getting concerned about the consequences of Southern Sudanese independence. Many fear that the north, led by the strongman Omar al-Bashir, will not honor the CPA and let the Southerners go. Southern stability is also a concern. Once in the early 1990s the SPLA/M [...]

• sunday roundup

  Posted: July 25, 2010, 10:44 pm by kenopp

  Easterly goes to church in Ghana. This post has pictures on some interesting way to use bed nets…. It seems like the only way we shall ever eliminate malaria on the Continent is by getting rid of all the mosquitoes. Other tropical places have done it. Why can’t it be done on the Continent, at [...]

• quick hits

  Posted: July 23, 2010, 11:39 pm by kenopp

  This is progress. I hope PLO does not go the way of most idealists and get sucked into the vortex that is Kenya’s corruption and patronage networks. Relatedly, the latest TI ratings suggest that corruption may have declined a tiny bit in Kenya. Rwanda still leads the pack as the least corrupt country in the [...]

• hapa na pale (here and there)

  Posted: July 22, 2010, 9:24 am by kenopp

  Bankelele has a nice post on medical investment in East Africa. For the business-minded, here is one more reason for Kenyans to vote YES in the August 4th referendum for a new constitution. I remain apprehensive about the size of government that will result from a victory for the YES camp. But as a student [...]

• Paul Kagame: Rwanda’s “savior” turned despot

  Posted: July 21, 2010, 11:37 am by kenopp

  Rwandans go to the polls on August 9th. There are no prizes for guessing who the winner will be. President Paul Kagame, who is credited by most to have ended the Rwandan genocide in 1994, has recently had to resort to his darker tendencies to continue his stay in power, even as he walks the [...]

• Happy Birthday Madiba!

  Posted: July 19, 2010, 5:51 am by kenopp

  Nelson Rolihlahla Mandela is 92 today. To mark the occasion scores across the world will celebrate the Nelson Mandela Day, created in honor of Madiba’s service to humanity. The man surely has a special place in the pantheon of the greatest sons and daughters of the Continent who ever lived. Happy Birthday Madiba! Filed under: [...]

• is france messing up africa?

  Posted: July 14, 2010, 11:17 pm by kenopp

  Elizabeth Dickinson at FP asks. Whatever the answer might be one thing is clear: France still has commercial and geopolitical interests in French-speaking Africa and would love to maintain close ties with the region, even if it means propping up misguided dictators who buy homes in the French Riviera while their own people starve. The [...]

• a very nigerian affair

  Posted: July 14, 2010, 9:57 am by kenopp

  The BBC reports that the Nigerian state owned oil company (NNPC) is insolvent, with a US $ 5 billion debt. Most of the money ($ 3b) is owed to the Federation Account a lootable cash cow that distributes money to different levels of government within the Nigerian state. The country is divided into 36 states [...]

• Sudan’s president bashir charged with genocide, icc issues new arrest warrant

  Posted: July 12, 2010, 7:47 pm by kenopp

  President Omar al-Bashir just won’t shake the ICC off. The strongman of Khartoum already has an arrest warrant with his name on it for war crimes and crimes against humanity. To this the international criminal court has added three counts of genocide, the most serious charge in international law. It is interesting to see how [...]

• Mwakwere seeks to retain seat in matuga by-election

  Posted: July 12, 2010, 10:19 am by kenopp

  Latest: The Daily Nation reports that former Kenyan Transport Minister Ali Chirau Mwakwere has been re-elected as member of parliament for Matuga. Mr. Mwakwere will probably be reinstated as Transport Minister by President Kibaki. The Matuga by-election was occasioned by a court order that annulled Mwakwere’s initial election in the 2007 general election. Update: Mwakwere [...]

• al-shabaab may be linked to kampala blasts

  Posted: July 12, 2010, 5:39 am by kenopp

  UPDATE: The daily nation reports that Somalia’s insurgent group al-Shabab has claimed the bombings that killed dozens in Kampala yesterday. The Atlantic’s Max Fisher offers an interesting analysis of the bombings. Blasts in Uganda’s capital, Kampala, killed at least 64, the BBC reports. According to the report Ugandan security forces suspect that the bomb attacks [...]

• demographic transition in kenya, signs of hope

  Posted: July 10, 2010, 1:47 am by kenopp

  Kenyan women, on average, still have a staggering 4.6 children in their lifetime, down from 4.9 in 2003. One Mr. Omwenga – a public health administrator – says that part of the problem is polygyny, which at 13% is still a too-common-for-comfort practice in most of rural, poorer and more Islamized parts of Kenya. Mr. [...]

• Urban Poverty

  Posted: July 8, 2010, 11:38 pm by kenopp

  This is the kind of story that makes you sick in the stomach. The story is about the plight of women in Nairobi’s slums and focuses on one Ms Kambura: In 2006, she was gang-raped by four men who infected her with the Aids virus, hardy 100 metres from her one-room home. She had gone [...]

• food for thought…

  Posted: July 7, 2010, 8:38 pm by kenopp

  The Economist reports a scientific finding that links nutrition and disease burden to human intelligence. The findings add to the development debate by suggesting that disease burden, through its effect on brain development, is a significant predictor of a country’s average intelligence level and that this in turn may explain endemic underdevelopment within the tropics. [...]

• Kenyan politicians’ pay

  Posted: July 5, 2010, 12:21 am by kenopp

  The Economist has a graph comparing politicians’ pay across the globe. After the new emoluments that parliament unanimously adopted last week, Kenya’s crop of thieves poles, and on this list the Prime Minister, would rank at the very top. Shame shame shame. Finance Minister Uhuru Kenyatta and the Prime Minister himself are on record as [...]

• three cheers to gettleman and his ilk

  Posted: July 1, 2010, 12:56 am by kenopp

  I am on record as being very critical of Jeffrey Gettleman, the New York Times bureau chief for eastern Africa. His sensational reporting from the region has oftentimes painted a one dimensional picture of events and portrayed east Africans as irrational and passive beings at the mercy of fate, and their sadistic rulers. That said, [...]

Blah blah blah

Fish cakes

Alas a fish cake.

Yet more fish cakes

Guess what ... yeah ... fish cakes.

The end of the fish cakes