Author: James Wambua

The soak of the much-awaited long rains has never found Kenyans more prepared to reverse the current state of food scarcity as farms across the country are coated with greenery of new crop. Farmers are not taking chances with the government unable to secure maize from international market to bridge the deficit and are returning to farms in what may prove to be a huge swing in productivity. While they wait, fearing the ominous warning that the March-April-May long rains may be less than average and with an impending El Nino later in the year, farmers are hoping they will reap enough to sustain them from the country’s worst…

When Ken Musau flew to London late last year, he had high hopes of navigating with ease in UK’s labour market. As it turned out, however, his experience was so far removed from the stories he had heard before of men and women who are making a tidy income from Britain, a country that saw sudden surge in work opportunities following Brexit. “Wiki za kwanza hapa zilikuwa mbaya sana kwangu. Niliumia sana.  I was even contemplating flying back home to continue with my computer repair business in Nairobi,” he said. But as fate would have it, Ken would soon receive a referral to a contact…

The last time I visited St Teresa, a children’s home in Huruma, Nairobi, for charity work, I spent a fair share of my time washing clothes for the kids. Another team fed the children, some with special needs. We also took time to play with the youngsters, and seeing their faces brighten with joy for the donations we made and time spent together was both humbling and very satisfying. As we scrubbed the foam into bubbles in lively conversations with my friends Justus Muthee and Anthony Ndegwa, washing clothes for the children took our minds about a dozen or so years down memory lane before…

NCBA Group has reported a 147 percent increase in foreign exchange trading income to Kes12.5 billion for the year ending December 2022, a boon for the bank in a period when traders experienced a biting shortage of the US dollar in the markets. In the 12-month period under focus, importers in Kenya have been grappling with an acute foreign exchange crunch, with Central Bank’s US dollar reserves dropping to their lowest in eight years amid a weakening of the shilling against major global currencies. The tough market conditions saw Investments, Trade and Industry Cabinet Secretary Moses Kuria early this month come out saying some lenders…