Tuesday, August 16, 2011
Back Again
A lot has happened in the last years since I went on hiatus. It is time to blog again. I have realised that there is a shortage of news and awareness on infrastructure projects. I will start sharing my insights into the what is happening in Kenya at the moment. In other words, I am back!
Monday, July 7, 2008
Rain, Roads and Traffic mis-direction
It has not rained a lot this rainy season. In fact in my home I am currently experiencing water rationing . I was excited when it rained last Friday...for a short time. Getting home from work was terrible! I got stuck in traffic for nearly one hour. The roads were virtually turned into rivers as water flowed on them towards the lowest point. Now lets face it, to drive in Nairobi or Kenya, you cram the route in such a way that you know where every pothole or unevenness in the road is. The next day, my normal route was turned into an unknown as new potholes have appeared. I am having to learn to navigate the road again.
In Kenya we tend to fix working systems. So you get to hear a lot of talk of phasing out the roundabouts and replacing them with cross junctions... controlled by traffic lights and on the other hand T junctions will be phased out as they cause unnecessary snarl ups!!! T junctions out cross junctions in? Talk about sticking our heads in a sand pit!
Sarit Centre has re-directed the traffic to a mostly one way street configuration (a chance for cops to catch those driving on the wrong side) a change from a working system to let us say a somewhat better system for the shopping centre alone. Sarit Centre has managed to direct traffic going into it and thank God lowered the bumps at the road between Lower Kabete road and School Lane. The problem is traffic going into Sarit Centre has been solved, but the problem has now been shifted to the rest of Westlands especially for traffic to and from Westlands roundabout on Ring Road Parklands. This of course affects the traffic on Parklands Road and Lower Kabete road causing unnecessary traffic jams as no one now knows who has the right of way...those on Ring road or those joining it. This are those cross junctions that are meant to replace roundabouts that our city planners keep on talking about.
Something else that I have noticed is the habit of our road engineers of putting pavements everywhere with no drainage way-leaves. Our roads become rivers in the rainy season causing cars to stall thus causing unnecessary traffic jams. Why for example would anyone put pavements on a perfectly smooth roads like the airport road? The road from the airport was re-carpeted and thank you Chinese construction company you left a 500cm drop at the beginning of the carpeting and at the end so that we all know you did a good job by putting a lot of tarmac on the existing road. A few days ago they were busy putting up pavements with no drainage way-leaves on the road to the airport. On your next trip to the airport, keep your eyes peeled for surprising new potholes on what was a perfect functioning road.
For all drivers on Kenyan roads, I wish you a "mis"-directed, traffic free, rainless filled, pothole less road!
In Kenya we tend to fix working systems. So you get to hear a lot of talk of phasing out the roundabouts and replacing them with cross junctions... controlled by traffic lights and on the other hand T junctions will be phased out as they cause unnecessary snarl ups!!! T junctions out cross junctions in? Talk about sticking our heads in a sand pit!
Sarit Centre has re-directed the traffic to a mostly one way street configuration (a chance for cops to catch those driving on the wrong side) a change from a working system to let us say a somewhat better system for the shopping centre alone. Sarit Centre has managed to direct traffic going into it and thank God lowered the bumps at the road between Lower Kabete road and School Lane. The problem is traffic going into Sarit Centre has been solved, but the problem has now been shifted to the rest of Westlands especially for traffic to and from Westlands roundabout on Ring Road Parklands. This of course affects the traffic on Parklands Road and Lower Kabete road causing unnecessary traffic jams as no one now knows who has the right of way...those on Ring road or those joining it. This are those cross junctions that are meant to replace roundabouts that our city planners keep on talking about.
Something else that I have noticed is the habit of our road engineers of putting pavements everywhere with no drainage way-leaves. Our roads become rivers in the rainy season causing cars to stall thus causing unnecessary traffic jams. Why for example would anyone put pavements on a perfectly smooth roads like the airport road? The road from the airport was re-carpeted and thank you Chinese construction company you left a 500cm drop at the beginning of the carpeting and at the end so that we all know you did a good job by putting a lot of tarmac on the existing road. A few days ago they were busy putting up pavements with no drainage way-leaves on the road to the airport. On your next trip to the airport, keep your eyes peeled for surprising new potholes on what was a perfect functioning road.
For all drivers on Kenyan roads, I wish you a "mis"-directed, traffic free, rainless filled, pothole less road!
Saturday, June 14, 2008
Ethnicity, Land & Politics in Kenya
Time to break the hibernation. I spent a lot of time travelling and thus got to do quite some reading. Many things have happened in the short time that i was away but I will only write about something that affects me directly in all my interactions and that is land.
The new lands minister, Mr Orengo, has been in the news making some controversial statements about leases and size of land people can own. The thing that got me thinking was an advert in the Nation a few weeks ago where owners of land which are 10 acres or more in the area 70km around Nairobi or 40km around Nakuru, Mombasa or Kisumu, were asked to tender in to a certain ministry for cooperation in developing housing estates. This got me thinking about WHO actually owns such land around the cities mentioned. No surprises here mostly politicians or sons and a few white Kenyans.
I then started researching land issues and came up with the chart at the bottom of this text. What it shows is the connection between politics, land and tribes. I hope it will explain why we have clashes in the Rift Valley. I know most people do not know that Majimbo was dreamt up by white settlers when independence became inevitable in the hope of becoming a protected minority tribe thus keeping control over the land they already owned. They managed to convince some tribes...mostly the Kalenjin to join them in their cause. Majimbo was supported by the Somalis who wanted to succeed and join up with Somalia and the Coast peoples though one has to differentiate between the coastal mainland (Mijikenda, Giriama etc. and the Island. Their politicians have never and do not see eye to eye on many issues.
Something else which most people do not know is that the Luhya's, represented by Muliro, were for Majimbo but pulled out of the group when Kitale was put in Rift Valley province. At that time many whites of South African decent (anyone remember Bruce Mackenzie?) were settled in Kitale and they did want to stay on over there. They did not want Kitale to be part of North Nyanza district as western province was called then thus become dominated by the Luhya's who were politically active along with the Luo's. On the other hand, the Luhya's did not want to be dominated by the Kalenjin's but lost to the whites.
Another issue that came up were the Sabaot. They wanted to be part of Rift Valley with their Kalenjin cousins but were put in now Western province...an offshoot of the current land clashes though crrently it seems to pit clan against clan.
To get back to the chart, it has a few spelling mistakes, some data is also missing and only shows the political arena till 1990. I will refer to this chart as r.c. version 1. I am working on a second part which explains Uhuru Kenyatta's dilemma of leading a pro-majimbo political party as a Kikuyu and why referendums will always kill majimboism.
The chart also shows how our politicians failed to build truly national structures. Tom Mboya had started building one but slowed down after KANU became the de-facto single party. Most of the politicians were afraid that the national party structures would be hijacked and used against them by their rivals or by some young up-coming politician.
Anyway I am looking forward to your feedback.
By the way the CC licence is also applicable all over the world! So please respect it. It was a lot of work piecing up the information.
Ethnicity Land & Politics in Kenya by Tengeza is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 2.0 UK: England & Wales License.
Based on a work at tengeza.blogspot.com.
Permissions beyond the scope of this license may be available at http://tengeza.blogspot.com/.
The new lands minister, Mr Orengo, has been in the news making some controversial statements about leases and size of land people can own. The thing that got me thinking was an advert in the Nation a few weeks ago where owners of land which are 10 acres or more in the area 70km around Nairobi or 40km around Nakuru, Mombasa or Kisumu, were asked to tender in to a certain ministry for cooperation in developing housing estates. This got me thinking about WHO actually owns such land around the cities mentioned. No surprises here mostly politicians or sons and a few white Kenyans.
I then started researching land issues and came up with the chart at the bottom of this text. What it shows is the connection between politics, land and tribes. I hope it will explain why we have clashes in the Rift Valley. I know most people do not know that Majimbo was dreamt up by white settlers when independence became inevitable in the hope of becoming a protected minority tribe thus keeping control over the land they already owned. They managed to convince some tribes...mostly the Kalenjin to join them in their cause. Majimbo was supported by the Somalis who wanted to succeed and join up with Somalia and the Coast peoples though one has to differentiate between the coastal mainland (Mijikenda, Giriama etc. and the Island. Their politicians have never and do not see eye to eye on many issues.
Something else which most people do not know is that the Luhya's, represented by Muliro, were for Majimbo but pulled out of the group when Kitale was put in Rift Valley province. At that time many whites of South African decent (anyone remember Bruce Mackenzie?) were settled in Kitale and they did want to stay on over there. They did not want Kitale to be part of North Nyanza district as western province was called then thus become dominated by the Luhya's who were politically active along with the Luo's. On the other hand, the Luhya's did not want to be dominated by the Kalenjin's but lost to the whites.
Another issue that came up were the Sabaot. They wanted to be part of Rift Valley with their Kalenjin cousins but were put in now Western province...an offshoot of the current land clashes though crrently it seems to pit clan against clan.
To get back to the chart, it has a few spelling mistakes, some data is also missing and only shows the political arena till 1990. I will refer to this chart as r.c. version 1. I am working on a second part which explains Uhuru Kenyatta's dilemma of leading a pro-majimbo political party as a Kikuyu and why referendums will always kill majimboism.
The chart also shows how our politicians failed to build truly national structures. Tom Mboya had started building one but slowed down after KANU became the de-facto single party. Most of the politicians were afraid that the national party structures would be hijacked and used against them by their rivals or by some young up-coming politician.
Anyway I am looking forward to your feedback.
By the way the CC licence is also applicable all over the world! So please respect it. It was a lot of work piecing up the information.
Ethnicity Land & Politics in Kenya by Tengeza is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 2.0 UK: England & Wales License.
Based on a work at tengeza.blogspot.com.
Permissions beyond the scope of this license may be available at http://tengeza.blogspot.com/.
Wednesday, May 7, 2008
Thursday, May 1, 2008
Infrastructure News
It seems like the new ministers are now on a run to outdo each other by proposing one or the other new infrastructure project. Take for example this one about upgrading the railway. It has taken Kenya 40years to realise that the railway needs an upgrade. The talk is to change the line to standard gauge and electrify the line. While Kenya Railways would be upgrading the line, RVR will be left to run the meter gauge railway in the meantime. Furthermore, no one seems to know/say where 20% of the Ksh.80billion needed for the exercise will come from. Man, Kenya cannot even afford 300m for its minsters so where will she get Ksh.16b? Is this just empty talk to keep peoples minds of the issues?
The Kilindini Port REALLY needs to be upgraded. This is way overdue. A harbour in Lamu to service Ethiopia will be even better wince it will service bigger ships and hopefully sort out the insecurity problems in the area at least. I also wonder why the cruise terminal has not been built. I know the argument has been that there are not enough ships docking in, but what happens if Dar builds one first in the region? Build one, market it and the ships will dock!
Oh and to add to that, the Kenya Navy is the one that should be sorting out the pirates along the Somali coast. It is Kenya that gets affected by piracy. I hope this will happen soon as our politicians like using defence projects for shady deals leading to things like the Navy ordering ships from someone without experience in building war ships!
As someone who has been using Kisumu airport on a regular basis, it is also long due for expansion. The runway has to be lengthened to accommodate bigger planes and the terminal size increased to deal with the increased passenger numbers. I do not see the road between Kisumu - Kericho - Nakuru being repaired any time soon.
Another story talks of current houses in Shauri Moyo being destroyed and new 3 bedroomed ones being built. I wonder how long this has been in planning since no mention is made of temporarily relocating the current tenants or at least giving the temporary accommodation till the works are finished. I wonder if the 1-1.6m price tag for the houses is subsidised (normal house costs about Ksh24,000/sqm) and by whom? Will they do something about Jogoo Road since they are increasing the density in the area?
The Kilindini Port REALLY needs to be upgraded. This is way overdue. A harbour in Lamu to service Ethiopia will be even better wince it will service bigger ships and hopefully sort out the insecurity problems in the area at least. I also wonder why the cruise terminal has not been built. I know the argument has been that there are not enough ships docking in, but what happens if Dar builds one first in the region? Build one, market it and the ships will dock!
Oh and to add to that, the Kenya Navy is the one that should be sorting out the pirates along the Somali coast. It is Kenya that gets affected by piracy. I hope this will happen soon as our politicians like using defence projects for shady deals leading to things like the Navy ordering ships from someone without experience in building war ships!
As someone who has been using Kisumu airport on a regular basis, it is also long due for expansion. The runway has to be lengthened to accommodate bigger planes and the terminal size increased to deal with the increased passenger numbers. I do not see the road between Kisumu - Kericho - Nakuru being repaired any time soon.
Another story talks of current houses in Shauri Moyo being destroyed and new 3 bedroomed ones being built. I wonder how long this has been in planning since no mention is made of temporarily relocating the current tenants or at least giving the temporary accommodation till the works are finished. I wonder if the 1-1.6m price tag for the houses is subsidised (normal house costs about Ksh24,000/sqm) and by whom? Will they do something about Jogoo Road since they are increasing the density in the area?
Wednesday, April 30, 2008
Tanzania
Some quick pointers:
Yellow Fever pass required by all EAC residents since 1st February 2008. I have not yet been asked to produce one yet but it is official so make sure you have it just in case. There seems to be a shortage of the Yellow Fever vaccine currently in Kenya. Try Nairobi Hospital, AMREF at Wilson Airport or better still and the cheapest Nairobi City Council at City Hall.
There is a cement shortage in TZ. Three companies produce Cement there. Two are owned by the government and the other is owned by a South African company. The SA owned cement company is exporting all its cement back home to help build the Stadiums in readiness for the World Cup. The other two closed down at the same time for general repairs - it is called organisation! As a result shortage and now prices are going through the roof. The government has decided to allow importers to import cement leading to some illicit activities on the side.
The Central Bank Governor of Tanzania was sacked because of corruption/ shady deals. His sacking is the source of some juicy rumours making rounds in TZ. Just follow this link and go through the comments at the end of the story. I also received an email purporting to show how the former governors would take some of his work home. The pictures are actually from a raid on a former Mexican drug lord's den.
Yellow Fever pass required by all EAC residents since 1st February 2008. I have not yet been asked to produce one yet but it is official so make sure you have it just in case. There seems to be a shortage of the Yellow Fever vaccine currently in Kenya. Try Nairobi Hospital, AMREF at Wilson Airport or better still and the cheapest Nairobi City Council at City Hall.
There is a cement shortage in TZ. Three companies produce Cement there. Two are owned by the government and the other is owned by a South African company. The SA owned cement company is exporting all its cement back home to help build the Stadiums in readiness for the World Cup. The other two closed down at the same time for general repairs - it is called organisation! As a result shortage and now prices are going through the roof. The government has decided to allow importers to import cement leading to some illicit activities on the side.
The Central Bank Governor of Tanzania was sacked because of corruption/ shady deals. His sacking is the source of some juicy rumours making rounds in TZ. Just follow this link and go through the comments at the end of the story. I also received an email purporting to show how the former governors would take some of his work home. The pictures are actually from a raid on a former Mexican drug lord's den.
Friday, April 25, 2008
BORAQS CPD Seminar
The first Continous Proffesional Development Seminar of the year by BORAQS was held yesterday at Safari Park Hotel. It was the first compulsory CPD meeting for members since new rules were introduced last year so moi had to attend or risk de-registration. The theme was "The role of Professionals in Reconstruction".
Some Highlights of the meeting:
Inspiring talk by HABITAT representative Mr. Claudio Acioly on how Habitat handled the after effects of the Pakistan Earthquake two years ago. He had some very interesting pointers on how Brazil manages to handle the rapid urbanisation currently taking place which I am sure our planners could learn from. For example a city mayor can be jailed if he/she does not come up with a Participatory Urban Plan in the first six month of taking the office.
Qs. Mwai Mathenge talked about the conflicts in cap 525 of the Kenya laws and the Procurement Act which governs how the government handles tenders. Simply put, tenders for construction work are in the same category as tenders for pens in the Ministry.
Dr. Elijah Agevi seems like he would have left the audience more inspired if he had more time. He talked about inflation and funding reconstruction.
Red Cross representative Davies Okoko gave an inside view into how the Kenya Red Cross deals with disasters. They work with scenarios and were prepared for the worst during the last elections and thus were able to handle the Internally Displaced persons. According to the Red Cross, the resettlement of IDP's will last till October 2009. Resettlement will follow the rainy season.
Dr. Robert Rukwaro talked about the approach to resettlement & challenges to be faced. Too theoretical in my opinion.
PS of Roads Mr. Michael Kamau gave the closing speech and challenge the attendants to become more proactive in the society by shedding the outdated laws. He cited the example of Supply Officers who were sacked by the government. They regrouped and branded themselves as Procurement Agents and pushed the Procurement Act through parliament, thus gaining back their jobs. PS's only afraid of two laws - the Anti Corruption and Economic Crimes Act & the Procurement Act. He mentioned the problems and challenges he has at work whereby the Lands Ministry subdivides land and leaves no drainage way leave. No wonder our roads flood during the rainy season! Asked why Architects do not do site supervision leaving it to Clerk of Works.
From the meeting some things emerged:
Overall...somewhat too long. The inspirational talks came from none members. Unfortunately too much emphasis is given to theoretical aka Rukwaro solutions and laws at the expense of the practical ones.
What I hope to see is members showcasing their works...oh forgot it may go against the 1968 advertising laws :-/
Some Highlights of the meeting:
Inspiring talk by HABITAT representative Mr. Claudio Acioly on how Habitat handled the after effects of the Pakistan Earthquake two years ago. He had some very interesting pointers on how Brazil manages to handle the rapid urbanisation currently taking place which I am sure our planners could learn from. For example a city mayor can be jailed if he/she does not come up with a Participatory Urban Plan in the first six month of taking the office.
Qs. Mwai Mathenge talked about the conflicts in cap 525 of the Kenya laws and the Procurement Act which governs how the government handles tenders. Simply put, tenders for construction work are in the same category as tenders for pens in the Ministry.
Dr. Elijah Agevi seems like he would have left the audience more inspired if he had more time. He talked about inflation and funding reconstruction.
Red Cross representative Davies Okoko gave an inside view into how the Kenya Red Cross deals with disasters. They work with scenarios and were prepared for the worst during the last elections and thus were able to handle the Internally Displaced persons. According to the Red Cross, the resettlement of IDP's will last till October 2009. Resettlement will follow the rainy season.
Dr. Robert Rukwaro talked about the approach to resettlement & challenges to be faced. Too theoretical in my opinion.
PS of Roads Mr. Michael Kamau gave the closing speech and challenge the attendants to become more proactive in the society by shedding the outdated laws. He cited the example of Supply Officers who were sacked by the government. They regrouped and branded themselves as Procurement Agents and pushed the Procurement Act through parliament, thus gaining back their jobs. PS's only afraid of two laws - the Anti Corruption and Economic Crimes Act & the Procurement Act. He mentioned the problems and challenges he has at work whereby the Lands Ministry subdivides land and leaves no drainage way leave. No wonder our roads flood during the rainy season! Asked why Architects do not do site supervision leaving it to Clerk of Works.
From the meeting some things emerged:
- Members have not been involved in any resettlement work.
- Members seem at loss as to how to handle the Procurement Act which is in direct conflict with Cap 525
- In bad taste some members wanted each IDP to be given 1m cash handouts and another suggested buying land in Eldoret since it was cheap just as some members were buying buildings in Zimbabwe due to inflation.
Overall...somewhat too long. The inspirational talks came from none members. Unfortunately too much emphasis is given to theoretical aka Rukwaro solutions and laws at the expense of the practical ones.
What I hope to see is members showcasing their works...oh forgot it may go against the 1968 advertising laws :-/
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