Author: Francis Muli

The government lost at least Ksh102.99 billion in revenue to illicit trade in 2018, the Anti-Counterfeit Authority has revealed in its findings of the National Baseline Survey on the extent of counterfeit and other forms of illicit trade in Kenya. This is as compared to Ksh101.23 billion lost in 2017 to illicit trade. From the 16 sectors of the economy that the study concentrated on, building, mining and construction was heavily affected by counterfeiting with a share of 23.37% in value of total illicit trade, followed by energy, electrical and electronics with a share of 14.67% in 2018. The sector…

Facebook has released a video chat and messaging app to help children connect with their friends and family in a fun, parent-controlled space. The Messenger Kids app is available on Google Play store for Android and Apple App store. It is designed for children between the ages of six to 12 years. To design the Messenger kids app, Facebook worked closely with youth advisors made up of experts in child development, online safety and media over a couple of years. The company also consulted with child safety educators across Africa to ensure that the product can balance parental control with…

The Kenya Revenue Authority plans to tax every Kenyan downloading e-books, movies, and mobile apps. In the new proposals, KRA wants to tax news, magazines, journals, streaming of TV shows and music, podcasts, and online gaming. “A digital market place supply shall be deemed to have been made in Kenya where the recipient of the supply is in Kenya, the payment proxy including credit card information and bank account details of the recipient of the digital supplies is in Kenya; or the residence proxy including the billing or home address or access proxy including Internet Proxy address, mobile country code…

Kenyan transport workers through the Transport Workers Union Kenya now want President Uhuru Kenyatta to suspend the Covid-19 containment measures “due to unfair treatment”. In a letter to the President, the Union’s secretary general Dan Mihadi says that the government has been treating them as the weakest link in the fight against Covid-19. He says that despite being the only people making sure that the economy continues, the government has not cushioned them to ensure they work seamlessly. Mr Mihadi also argued that vulnerable drivers and other transport workers have been left out in the economy stimulus package being applied…

During this Covid-19 pandemic period, a lot of people are working from home. As you adjust to mixing your job and home life, you may get some things mixed up or sometimes forget to send important emails at the required times. Once you remember to send the email, it could be late at night, or you could simply be sending an email to someone on a different time zone, or worse still, you could be writing an angry email which you are still not sure whether to send or not. Whatever the case, Gmail provides an effective tool to help…

The first deputy governor of the Bank of South Sudan Maror Chier Rehan has died in Nairobi of Covid-19 related illness. His death was announced by director of communication in the Bank of South Sudan Majok Nicodemus who said that Rehan died a few hours after being airlifted to Nairobi. “The first deputy of governor of Bank of South Sudan died in Nairobi yesterday (Tuesday) at 11 PM because of short illness. The cause of death will come later in official statement when the body arrives,” Nicodemus told South Sudan’s Eye Radio. Rehan was appointed to the position on March…

Safaricom CFO, Sateesh Kamath, has been appointed to the role of Chief Financial Officer Vodafone Business, effective July 1, 2020. He will be reporting into Vinod Kumar, Chief Executive Officer Vodafone Business and will become a member of Vodafone Group Finance Leadership Team. In his statement, Safariom CEO said that they will be announcing his successor in due course. Sateesh joined Safaricom PLC as CFO and Executive Director on the board on August 1, 2016 from Vodacom Tanzania Ltd, where he held a similar position. “He is credited with, among many other achievements, helping to build Safaricom shareholders’ value by…

Yesterday, activist Mutemi wa Kiama, the man behind Wanjiku Revolution social media accounts, was arrested by police in his residence. At the time of his arrest, the reason for his arrest was unknown, but later it was revealed that he was booked for digital pirating of a book. Today in the morning, he was taken to Milimani Law Courts, but was taken away before appearing in court. His whereabouts were unknown by the time of going to press. https://twitter.com/Maskani254/status/1270676104391667713 It was reported that the office of the Director of Public Prosecutions (DPP) refused to approve the charges since it had…

Uber cash digital wallet is set to launch in Sub-saharan Africa through Uber’s partnership Flutterwave, a Nigerian-founded San Francisco-based fintech firm. Uber users will be able to top up their digital wallets using various remittance partners that are active on Flutterwave’s pan African Network. Flutterwave is a B2B payment gateway network that enables customers to tap its APIs and tailor payment applications to their preference. According to Uber’s General Manager for Sub- Saharan Africa, Alon Lits, Uber cash will start going live this week until next week in South Africa, Nigeria, Uganda, Kenya, Ghana, Ivory Coast and Tanzania. Read: Netflix,…

Twitter’s version of stories, Fleets, has just launched in India following the official launch in Brazil. The feature is being rolled out gradually worldwide and was also released in Italy last month. “India is important for Twitter since it is one of our largest and fastest-growing audience markets globally,” Twitter’s India managing director Manish Maheshwari said in a statement. “We are excited to bring the Fleets experiment to India and make it one of the first three countries in the world to experience this new product.” “From the test in India, we’ll learn how adding a new mode of conversation…

The Law Society of Kenya is challenging a decision by the Court of Appeal allowing the Communications Authority of Kenya (CA) roll out the Device Management System (DMS), a system which will allow the government access individual mobile numbers together with their phone activity and locations. Through Lawyer Dudley Ochiel, LSK said that if CA proceeds to take action based on the decision, it will contravene the human right to privacy as the government will gain access to people’s phone records at their own convenience and even share the information with third parties for ulterior motives. “The appellate court made…

Safaricom and Google have inked a deal to enable Kenyans access the wide collection of entertainment, education, sports and news content available on YouTube. The initiative will see Safaricom avail an affordable Ksh10 data bundle even as consumption of online content spikes due to stay-at-home advisory aimed at stopping the spread of Covid-19 pandemic. The new daily bundle, which will be free on the first day for first-time subscribers, will offer 80MBs for use on YouTube, which is equivalent to up to 30 minutes of standard definition streaming and up to an hour of low definition streaming. The bundle will…

Kindle e-readers can now permanently delete documents and books from their personal libraries. Although the feature is not mentioned in the release notes, it is available in Software update version 5.12.5. Avid kindle users have for a long time complained of library management as the app can quickly become disorganized, especially when using a kindle to access various news articles from read-later services such as Instapaper or Pocket. This has led to clutter of hundreds of items which previously, could only be removed using Amazon’s rudimentary web interface or iOS and Android apps. You can also delete the books from…

Oil Marketing Companies (OMCs) and retail station dealers found to be hoarding petroleum products risk a one-year jail term or a one million shillings fine including revocation of their licenses, the Energy and Petroleum Regulatory Authority (EPRA) has warned. This follows reports of artificial shortage of petroleum products in the country particularly, Western Kenya. According to EPRA director general, Mr Pavel Oimeke, the country has sufficient petroleum stocks. However, preliminary investigations indicate that a number of OMCs are deliberately holding back sales to non-franchised petroleum retailers (independents) in anticipation of a price increase. He warned that the practice is tantamount…

The government of Burundi has announced the death of President Pierre Nkurunziza after suffering a heart attack. President Nkurunziza died at Cinquantenaire Hospital where he had been hospitalised. Whereas the government indicated in a statement on Tuesday evening that the outgoing Head of State died following a cardiac arrest, sources indicate that he died from Covid-19 related complications. “The Government of the Republic of Burundi announces with great sadness the unexpected death of His Excellency Pierre Nkurunziza, President of the Republic of Burundi, at the Cinquantenaire Hospital in Karusi following a cardiac arrest on June 8, 2020,” a statement from…