Author: Francis Muli

Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg is facing increased pressure from all sides following his refusal to take action against President Trump. The latest to join in are 33 former employees who worked in Facebook in the early stages including those who helped develop the original community guidelines. The group presented their stand through an open letter to the company detailing a singular clear and strongly argued case against Zuckerberg’s position. The group argues that Facebook’s position on moderating Trump is inconsistent and consciously exposes the public to dangers the company has witnessed before and that it creates double standards that makes…

The latest Executive Order by President Uhuru Kenyatta has abolished the Presidency and instead put the Office of the Deputy President under the Office of the President. Under the new government structure, the Deputy President will not be able to act autonomously, but will depend on decisions made by the President or his office. This means that the Deputy President will no longer have power to hire staff, have a budget or other related functions. Although he is still the second in command, the DP will serve in the “Executive Office of the President” alongside head of public service Joseph…

Facebook is launching a feature called ‘manage activity’ which will make it easier for you to delete old individual posts or in bulk. The social media app says it will help by offering filter suggestions containing certain people in them or a certain period of time. To start off, the feature will be first available on Facebook’s mobile app. Facebook says the feature is meant “to make it easier for you to curate your presence on Facebook to more accurately reflect who you are today.” For instance, someone might want to delete old content if they are about to start…

Sameer Africa net loss for the year ended December 2019 has almost doubled to Ksh1.062 billion as compared to a loss of Ksh529 million recorded in 2018. The Group’s revenue reduced by 15 percent from Ksh2.07 billion in 2018 to Ksh1.76 billion in 2019 following the closure of several retail outlets in Kenya and the East African region. The working capital of the firm is now on the negative at Ksh134 million. The management says that the loss for the year significantly increased from the loss reported for the year 2018 following the decision to exit from the tyre business…

Jambojet has announced a raft of safety measures for passenger and crew safety in the fight against the novel COVID-19 during travel. Some of the measures taken include thorough sanitisation of aircrafts with industry approved detergent before and after each flight paying extra attention to all touch prone areas. Additionally, the aircraft have been fitted with High Efficiency Particulate Air (HEPA) filtration system that refresh the air every 3 minutes. “Once we resume operations, we will ensure that we continue to follow the set guidelines by the Ministry of Health, WHO, IATA and other relevant bodies,” said Jambojet acting CEO,…

Subscription based media such as podcasts, streaming of television shows, podcasts and music are the new targets for Value Added Tax (VAT) This follows the National Treasury draft Publication rules to include the Digital Market Place under the tax bracket, termed as Value Added Tax (Digital Market Place Supply) regulations, 2020. The regulations follow the passing of provisions on taxing the digital market place through the Finance Act, 2019 which gave the Cabinet Secretary of the National Treasury the role of setting taxing modalities. Read: Mobile Money Transactions Decrease Due to Coronavirus Pandemic The digital market place will bring any business,…

Following a couple of months of limited sporting events due to the COVID-19 pandemic, things are slowly starting to get back to normal around the world and the amount of live action available to SuperSport viewers on DStv and GOtv will increase significantly this month. For football fans, this includes the resumption of three major European leagues: the Premier League, La Liga and Serie A. All three confirmed their restart dates last week, with Spain’s La Liga the first to return on the evening of Thursday June 11 with the Seville derby of Sevilla v Real Betis. A further nine…

Safaricom has further taken measures to strengthen its resolve in the fight against fraud that has seen subscribers lose colossal amounts of cash from their M-Pesa accounts from time to time. Fraudsters keep up to date with current affairs and use sophisticated methods to access customer accounts and wipe their accounts clean. They customize their cons to fit the relevant context and to befit the latest Safaricom promotions which sound very believable to the customer. They have perfected the art of impersonating bank officials, Safaricom staff, government officials and even needy cases in society to target their victims. Read: Safaricom…

Safaricom Foundation in partnership with education development NGO Dignitas have announced a programme that will power e-learning for learners in Kawangware and Dandora slums. “We have partnered with Education NGO @dignitasproject to empower students in Kawangware and Dandora access e-learning tools as they keep up with their revision at home,” said Safaricom Foundation in a tweet. https://twitter.com/SafaricomFDN/status/1267793739751268352 The foundation donated devices to help relay educational content through SMS and online platforms. Read: Safaricom Youth Orchestra Students Set for E-learning Classes The phones supplied to the learners are already pre-installed with educational content in line with the Kenya institute of Curriculum…

Mobile money transactions have fallen in the last two months as more households have been forced to tighten their budgets due to the financial crisis occasioned by the Coronavirus pandemic. According to data from the Kenya National Bureau of Statistics, the total value of mobile money transactions fell from Ksh364 billion in March to Ksh307 billion in April. The total number of transaction in April were 124.9 million, down from 150 million in March. The statistics represent the lowest mobile money transactions in the two years. This happened despite telecom companies giving offerings on mobile money transactions and well streamlined…

The Directorate of Criminal Investigation (DCI) has issued an alert to parents and guardians and educational institution to be cautious as there was an increase in disturbing trends of offenses against children during this COVID-19 period. The DCI said in a series of tweets that the perpetrators are taking advantage of the online learning in schools and other learning institutions where children are undergoing zoom classes to lure their victims. Many schools and even tertiary education institutions students are using various online portals to continue learning and revise while at home. This has necessitated use of internet devices even for…

Kenyan taxi-hailing service, Little cab, has partnered with St.John’s to provide ambulance services to its users. The partnership has come at a time when the government has enforced curfews and movement restrictions following the crisis brought about by the Coronavirus pandemic. The Taxi is now offering ambulance services to users who will request for an ambulance within its operation radius. The service is available in the Little app. Users who find themselves in a situation requiring medical emergency can access the ambulance without a hassle. Little CEO Kamal Budhabhatti said the company is always looking for technological inventions that they…

Former Mediamax Head of Radio Joyce Gituro has landed a new job at Radio Jambo, after several months in the cold. Gituro will now be hosting a Sunday show dubbed Injili Jumapili (Gospel Sunday), slotted for the hours between 5am to 10am. In a message posted on her Facebook page, Gituro said that the job came as a gift for her birthday. “Some birthday gifts are straight from God! See you on 7th June God willing,” she posted. Read: Mediamax Head Of Radio Joyce Gituro Confirms Exit Months After Being Poached From RMS This comes as a blessing to Gituro…

The Kenya Commercial Bank (KCB) will on Thursday appoint PricewaterhouseCoopers (PwC) as its external auditor, automatically replacing KPMG. The changes will see KPMG lose at least Ksh55 million in revenues, that KCB parts with every year as auditing fees. This is the second job KPMG is losing less than a year, after losing Absa Group Kenya’s job last year. “To appoint Messrs PwC, Certified Public Accountants, as the new Auditors of the Company in place of KPMG, Certified Public Accountants whose term expires at the end of this meeting,” reads AGM notice in part. Also, this is the second topmost…

TikTok apologized to users after complaints that posts with the hashtags #GeorgeFloyd and #Blacklivesmatter had garnered zero views on the popular short video making app. Users accused the ByteDance owned app of censoring black voices in the on-going protests witnessed in the US following the death of George Floyd at the hands of police in Minneapolis. Some TikTo users changed their profile pictures to a raised black fist to symbolize black power, while others urged fellow users to unfollow people who did not support the protests. A popular TikTok creator termed this as ‘the unfair censorship of black creators.’ “We…