Kenya to Abolish Work Permits for EAC Citizens

Kenya has started the process of removing work permits for citizens of other East African Community nations wishing to work in the country.The ministries of East Africa Community and Immigration are jointly preparing a Cabinet paper to legalize the move.

East African Community Minister Amason Kingi said he was consulting his Immigration counterpart Otieno Kajwang' to abolish the conditions so that professionals from Uganda, Tanzania and Burundi can work freely in Kenya. Kenya already has such an agreement with Rwanda.
Speaking during a workshop organized by the ministry and Association of Professional Societies in East Africa, Mr Kingi said the issue of permits does not bring about full free movement of workers.
“I have noted that in the protocol the issue of work permits still exists. This I have noted will not bring full free movement of workers as they will still be required to apply for them,” he said.
Mr Kingi told the participants that Mr Kajwang' confirmed he had taken up the matter and the Cabinet will deliberate on it.

“The ministry will propose to the Government to extend this to all East Africans and push for the removal of work permit at the regional level to enhance free movement of workers,” he emphasized in a statement.
The minister commended Rwanda which has unilaterally removed work permit requirement for East Africans seeking to work there.

“Kenya has a bilateral arrangement with Rwanda whereby Rwandese are not required to apply for work permits in Kenya and vice versa,” he added.
Mr Kingi announced that he has formed a task force to audit the protocol for the establishment of the EAC common market and determine its harmony with the Kenyan laws.
He said a miscellaneous Amendment Bill should be proposed so as to facilitate a smooth implementation of the Common Market protocol taking effect from July 1 this year.
Mr Kingi said when the protocol takes effect, EAC citizens will be given equal treatment in the labor, services and capital markets while at the same time protect their rights to establish themselves and reside in the country just like Kenyans.

He said EAC partner states have made tremendous progress in the integration process and that it is the only regional bloc that has successfully implemented the customs union in the continent.
He said the region is now gearing up to implement the next stage of economic integration which involves harmonizing the region’s factors of production market.

Source: http://www.nation.co.ke/News/

Kenya's Gift to Silicon Valley: How to Track a Crisis

Imagine if any Pakistani could send an anonymous text message to the authorities suggesting where to look. Each location could be plotted on a map. The dots would be scattered widely, perhaps, with promising leads indistinguishable from rubbish. But on a given day, a surge of dots might point to the same village, in what could not be coincidence. Troops could be ordered in.
This kind of everyone-as-informant mapping is shaking up the world, bringing the Wikipedia revolution to the work of humanitarians and soldiers who parachute into places with little good information. And an important force behind this upheaval is a small Kenyan-born organization called Ushahidi, which has become a hero of the Haitian and Chilean earthquakes and which may have something larger to tell us about the future of humanitarianism, innovation and the nature of what we label as truth.
After Kenya’s disputed election in 2007, violence erupted. A prominent Kenyan lawyer and blogger, Ory Okolloh, who was based in South Africa but had gone back to Kenya to vote and observe the election, received threats about her work and returned to South Africa. She posted online the idea of an Internet mapping tool to allow people anonymously to report violence and other misdeeds. Technology whizzes saw her post and built the Ushahidi Web platform over a long weekend.
The site collected user-generated cellphone reports of riots, stranded refugees, rapes and deaths and plotted them on a map, using the locations given by informants. It collected more testimony — which is what ushahidi means in Swahili — with greater rapidity than any reporter or election monitor.
When the Haitian earthquake struck, Ushahidi went again into action. An emergency texting number was advertised via radio. Ushahidi received thousands of messages reporting trapped victims. They were translated by a diffuse army of Haitian-Americans in the United States and plotted on a “crisis map.” From a situation room at the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy in Medford, outside Boston, Ushahidi volunteers instant-messaged with the United States Guard in Haiti, telling them where to search. When the Chilean earthquake struck, Ushahidi deployed again..
Ushahidi suggests a new paradigm in humanitarian work. The old paradigm was one-to-many: foreign journalists and aid workers jet in, report on a calamity and dispense aid with whatever data they have. The new paradigm is many-to-many-to-many: victims supply on-the-ground data; a self-organizing mob of global volunteers translates text messages and helps to orchestrate relief; journalists and aid workers use the data to target the response.
Ushahidi also represents a new frontier of innovation. Silicon Valley has been the reigning paradigm of innovation, with its universities, financiers, mentors, immigrants and robust patents. Ushahidi comes from another world (Kenya), in which entrepreneurship is born of hardship and innovators focus on doing more with less, rather than on selling you new and improved stuff.
Because Ushahidi originated in crisis, no one tried to patent and monopolize it. Because Kenya is poor, with computers out of reach for many, Ushahidi made its system work on cellphones. Because Ushahidi had no venture-capital backing, it used open-source software and was thus free to let others remix its tool for new projects.
Ushahidi remixes have been used in India to monitor elections; in Africa to report medicine shortages; in the Middle East to collect reports of wartime violence; and in Washington, D.C., where The Washington Post partnered to build a site to map road blockages and the location of available snowplows and blowers.
Think about that. The capital of the sole superpower is deluged with snow, and to whom does its local newspaper turn to help dig out? Kenya.

Source:http://www.nytimes.com/2010/03/14/weekinreview/14giridharadas.html

Offshore Outsourcing: Kenya Shows Promise

When examining offshore outsourcing options, Kenya shows a lot of promise for cost savings, however, it has seen its IT services potential slowed by political instability and infrastructure improvement delays. When will this alternative to India and China be viable?
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With India's rising costs and employee turnover encouraging information technology executives to look beyond the subcontinent for offshore outsourcing providers, a country like Kenya could be poised to win more IT services business from abroad. Kenya boasts a big pool of English-speaking professionals and the government has invested millions to improve the country’s telecommunications infrastructure.
Once the political issues are addressed, Kenya could be one of the world's fastest developing outsourcing destinations due to its large English speaking population, low costs, and near shore status for European and Middle Eastern companies, says neoIT's Kublanov, putting it on par with its IT services competitors on the continent including South Africa, Mauritius, Egypt and Ghana. The East African nation could become a preferred destination for call center and smaller business process outsourcing contracts. Thus far, the local call center industry employs 3,000 professionals and has grown to $5 million since the first call center opened a few years ago, says Kublanov, leaving plenty of room for growth. The most established local providers include Skyweb Evans, Kencall, and Preciss, who serve customers in the United States, Canada, and Europe.

Infrastructure improvements are coming, slowly but surely. The Kenyan government has invested $100 million in The East African Marine Systems (TEAMS), an undersea cable to connect Mombasa with Fujairah in the United Arab Emirates, which is expected to bring the cost of connectivity down to the levels India pays, says Kublanov. In addition, construction has finally begun on the Eastern Africa Submarine Cable System (EASSy), spearheaded by the world bank back in 2003, which will connect East African countries to the rest of the world via high-bandwidth fiber optic cable. The project is slated for completion in late 2010.
The Kenyan government also plans to complete a 5,000-seat technology park and export promotion zone by 2012, a move aimed at boosting the BPO industry. IDC Kenya says data centers, managed services, help desks, call centers, and application and hosting services will be key areas to watch in 2010.

Source: http://www.cio.com/article/458768/Offshore_Outsourcing_Kenya_Shows_Promise?page=2&taxonomyId=3195

Kenya gets undersea broadband fibre optic cable

An undersea fibre optic cable bringing broadband Internet connectivity to east Africa, reached the Kenyan coast from the United Arab Emirates on Friday (Jun 12, 2009).

The East Africa Marine Systems (TEAMS) fibre optic submarine cable project is a joint venture of the Kenyan government and Emirates Telecommunication Technology (Etisalat) and a consortium of local investors.

It is expected to boost internet connections and greatly reduce the cost of telecommunications, especially data transmission in the region. It is expected to become operational next month.

President Mwai Kibaki said the project was a landmark in Kenya's national development history.
"With the launch of this project Kenya is now equipped with one of the most advanced and cost effective, nation-building tools," said Kibaki, adding it would allow east Africans to be "fully digital citizens of the 21st century"

From Nairoberry To Nairobi City In The Sun

Once, the Famous City In The Sun, Nairobi has of late been known as Nairoberry and City in the garbage. But thanks to the new initiative spearheaded by the Government Spokesman's office, Nairobi is now reclaiming its original fame through the Interministerial Committee on Nairobi Beautification.

Nairobi residents and visitors to the city are open - mouthed in surprise due to the ongoing work where Uhuru highway is being transformed, through beautification to become one of the most beautiful gateways in the world.
Work by the Office of the Government Spokesperson, Dr. Alfred Mutua, to improve the image of the city so as to attract investors and raise the standards of the country is being hailed as dramatic, outstanding and one that is long overdue.

Kenya's economy to grow at 3.5p.c

Kenya’s economy is projected to grow at 3.5 per cent this year on the back of a booming services sector and resilient construction industry.

According to the World Bank’s, Kenya Economic Update report released on Thursday, the economic growth is projected to further improve to 3.5 per cent in 2010.

World Bank said the growth trend was against the tide, which has seen many countries register decline in growth rates this year. “The good news is that Kenya is one of the few countries in the world that will grow faster in 2009 than it did in 2008.” said Johannes Zutt, the Bank’s country director for Kenya. “Despite many challenges the economy remains resilient to the quadruple shocks. The financial position remains strong, financial sector is robust, external sector remains in balance and inflation has declined to below 10 per cent.” said Mr Wolfgang Fengler, the bank’s lead economist.

Industry is projected to grow at 3 per cent driven by the construction boom.

Tourism, which registered a massive 36 per cent decline following the election crisis last year is expected to rebound 28 per cent.

Other sector that have registered growth are information communication technology at 28 per cent and telephony at 35 per cent. The arrival of two fibre optic cables is expected to further increase internet connectivity with the telephony, particularly cellular phones fast expanding to the rural areas.

More detailed information on this story is available on; http://www.nation.co.ke/business/news/-/1006/824316/-/hf6firz/-/index.html

Kenya's Success in Controlling AIDS is Example for Africa

In its recently released annual report on the global AIDS epidemic, the United Nations lowered its estimates of the numbers of people infected worldwide by 6.5 million. The U.N. says most of the decline reflects changes in the methodology for measuring the extent of the disease. But as Derek Kilner reports for VOA from Nairobi, Kenya stood out as one of the few cases where there has been a genuine easing of the epidemic.

New figures show that the percentage of people in Kenya living with the AIDS virus fell to 5.1 percent in 2006, down from 5.9 percent a year earlier and 9 percent in the mid-1990s.
The government's efforts are visible in the number of Kenyans receiving antiretroviral treatment, which grew from 3,000 in 2002 to 118,000 in 2006. Similarly, over 400,000 people received voluntary counseling and testing, or VCT, in 2006, up from only 1,000 seven years ago.
Boaz Cheluget, head of monitoring and evaluation at Kenya's National AIDS Control Council, says one of the main reasons Kenya has been able to translate the attention and money into successful programs is that the country's work force is highly skilled.
"Kenya has an advantage," said said Cheluget. "I think the quality of staff and service provision in any sector is high, and so when we introduce something the implementation is of quality. I have been to many countries, and I can see there are quite a lot of gaps in terms of skilled workforce, in terms of performance, in terms of governance."
Cheluget says the country's high literacy rate also contributes to the success of projects implemented at the local level.

In the run-up to World AIDS Day on December 1, Kenya has been holding a number of events to encourage testing. Patrick Obath, managing director for Shell Oil in Kenya, was one of the many business leaders participating at one such event in Nairobi on November 26.
"We have had HIV/AIDS programs at work since 2002. We have had a policy which was piloted at Kenya Shell and has now been adopted globally by Shell. And in the last three years when we have had VCTs at work, we have had about a 98 percent uptake," said Obath.
Education efforts have also expanded recently, bolstered by the introduction of free primary education in 2003, and the corresponding rise in school attendance. General knowledge of HIV in Kenya is now nearly universal.