Author: Francis Muli

Agriculture Cabinet Secretary Peter Munya has been taken to court over the transfer of the Kenya Meat Commission (KMC) functions to the Ministry of Defence. Acting for the Law Society of Kenya (LSK), lawyer Manwa Hosea filed the suit terming the transfer as illegal and unconstitutional. In its arguments, LSK says that the move is inconsistent with the Constitution of Kenya 2010 and the Kenya Meat Commission Act. “The Ministry of Defence has no role on or representation in the Kenya Meat Commission as established under Section 3 of the Kenya Meat Commission Act and further that the Act does…

Oppo officially launched two products, the Oppo Reno4 and Oppo Smartwatch in Kenya today. In a virtual event hosted by Shaffie Weru, Oppo officially unveiled their Smartwatch and Oppo Reno4 smartphone. The smartphone is said to push the boundaries with a slim industrial design and stunning back case. Dubbed the Reno Glow, the Android 10 phone features a 6.4″ AMOLED 1080 by 2400 pixels design with a 20:9 aspect ratio and 83.5% screen to body ratio. The phone screen features a TUV Low Blue Light to make it easier on your eyes. The slim 7.7 mm phone is light with…

Former Insurance Company East Africa (ICEA) investment manager Lincoln Kivuti Njeru has been found guilty of stealing Ksh62.7 million from the company through collapsed Nyaga Stockbrokers. He has be sentenced for nine years in jail. Milimani Law Courts chief magistrate Francis Andayi found that Mr Njeru received the amount through fraudulent sale of ICEA share investments. The amount was then channelled to his personal bank account, from the company’s account. Njeru then lied that the amount was lost through erosion of share value of the company at the Nairobi Stock Exchange (NSE), an allegation that was found to be false.…

Rapper Wangechi has won in a case against Tecno. The Kenyan rapper had sued the mobile phone company in 2016 after the firm used her images on their online pages announcing the launch of a new phone model. “They used my image and likeness in the form of an advertisement, which came across as an endorsement of the product.” Wangechi said. “They did not seek my approval or consent for it. Neither did they pay for the use of my image and likeness, yet after eight weeks of legal conversation, they went silent and deleted all images and videos associated…

Being a professor, an administrator and a surgeon looked like the best combination of skills for Professor George Albert Omore Magoha to lead the troubled Ministry of Education in President Uhuru Kenyatta’s Cabinet. A man who had been the Vice Chancellor for the University of Nairobi for ten years, and leading the Kenya National Examination Council (KNEC) for three years was more than enough for President Kenyatta. Considered to be a no-nonsense cabinet secretary, it was expected that he would transform the education sector in Kenya by offering an alternative leadership. One and half years since he was appointed the Cabinet…

Your Television, Radio and Satellite powered Internet signals will from today experience intermittent disruptions due to the positioning of the sun. Each year during the Equinox, the sun aligns with communication signals and causes a Solar Outage by overpowering their signals. The equinox refers to the time when the sun crosses the plane of the earth’s equator. As a result, night and day are of approximately equal length all over the earth. Equinox occurs every year around March 21 and September 22. The outages are expected to last about 4 days, with intermittent disruptions lasting between three to seven minutes.…

Tuskys Chief Financial Officer (CFO) Daniel Ndiragu left the company in July 2020 as the company’s financial woes heightened, it has emerged. According to reports, Ndiragu resigned in December 2019, but has been serving notice up to July 2020 when he officially left office, silently. By the time he left, he had served as the CFO for six years, before the chain retailer was hit by cash flow issues. Tuskys became the first Supermarket chain to go under the scrutiny of CAK’s buyer power department which was formed after Nakumatt holdings went down with Ksh30 billion worth of suppliers’ debt.…

The US Department of Commerce on Friday announced that TikTok and WeChat’s transactions in the country had been banned effective Sunday. This was followed by a surge in downloads for both apps. However, the companies seem to have gotten a reprieve from the ban from the most unlikely sources. US President Donald Trump is reported to have approved of the deal between TikTok and Oracle, prompting a week delay of the ban by the Department of Commerce. A judge in California also issued a preliminary injunction  against WeChat’s ban, saying the app’s users showed “serious questions going to the merits…

The Board of Trustees of the Siemens Limited Staff Pension and Life Assurance Scheme has announced that they are winding up the scheme. In a public notice in the dailies, the Board said that it will have the benefits of all members transferred to a registered scheme of their choice. The members will have to have to sign consent forms on or before Friday, October 23. They will be required to attend an education meeting on Tuesday, September 29. “The meeting (on September 29) will provide members with appropriate information to enable them to make an informed decision regarding consent…

Kenya’s Covid-19 caseload has risen to 36,981 after 152 more tested positive for Covid-19 from a sample of 2,224 in the last 24 hours. In a statement, the Ministry of Health said that the youngest case was a 3-year-old infant and the oldest was aged 89 years. 84 are male and 68 are female. Two patients succumbed to the disease bringing the total number of deaths to 648. 110 patients were discharged, bringing the total number of recoveries to 23,887. 39 of the recoveries are from the home-based care programme while 71 are from hospitals across the country. Nairobi had…

Gatundu South MP Moses Kuria over the weekend made his first public appearance after recovering from Covid-19. Unperturbed maskless Moses Kuria was among 30 mps who accompanied Deputy President to AIC Ziwani for the installation ceremony of Nairobi Area Bishop Rev. Joshua Nzau Kimuyu. This comes as irony, or maybe arrogance, from the same legislator who urged Kenyans to be careful since Covid-19 was real, after being hospitalised for 27 days. “If you are in a hospital bed- Like myself for the last 27 days here at Karen Hospital you witness first hand the amount of sacrifice they make amid…

At least 400 families have been left homeless after being evicted from Muthurwa Estate by the Kenya Railways Staff Retirement Benefits Scheme who own the land. The families had been issued with a 24-hour notice on September 18, after the scheme claimed that it had no tenancy agreement with any of the households. “You are hereby notified to vacate the premises described above within 24 hours from September 18 at 5pm. Be warned that this land belongs to the Kenya Railways Staff Retirement Benefits Scheme and we have no tenancy agreement with any occupants in the area. We shall take…

The Kenya Audience Research Foundation (KARF) has been ordered to pay research firm Ipsos Kenya Ltd Ksh113 million for research work done in 2016. KARF is a consortium of media, marketing and marketing associations formed in 2017 by the Media Owners Association (MOA), Association of Practitioners in Advertising (APA) and Marketing Society of Kenya (MSK) to provide estimates of audiences to the media industry as a basis for the planning of advertising budgets. In a ruling by the High Court, it was found that KARF failed to pay Ipsos for research work done in 2016, whose data was sold by…

Schools could reopen on Monday, October 19, 2020 if the Ministry of Education adopts the recommendations of Covid-19 Education Response Committee. According to reports by the Sunday Nation, Education CS Prof George Magoha is set to meet the committee on Monday, September 21 to deliberate on the proposed dates. If the government agrees with the committee and adopts the new dates,  KCSE and KCPE examinations will be done in  April 2021. If the recommendations sail through, the second term will begin in October and close at the end of November, while the third twill start in January and end in…

Four years after Mark Zuckerberg’s first official visit to Sub-Saharan Africa, Facebook has announced plans to open what will be its second office in the continent. The tech giant, which already has an office in South Africa, has announced plans to open an office in Lagos, Nigeria next year. The company is expected to secure a location by the second half of 2021 and speculations are rife that the company could embark on a recruitment process. The office is expected to host a team consisting of engineers, sales, partnerships, policy and communications personnel. Facebook’s head of New Product Experimentation says…