It is better to own 10% of a billion dollars than 100% of ten dollars. Kenyan entrepreneur Ndiritu Muriithi lives by this philosophy. Twelve years ago, he saw an opportunity when he visited his childhood friend, Bernard Macharia, who was working as a rancher in Rumuruti, Laikipia County.
“It seemed odd to me that cattle destined for slaughter were being transported alive to Nairobi and other markets. I wondered why they were not being slaughtered at the source. After all, a pick-up truck can only ferry four to five live animals, but three times that number when they are slaughtered,” says Muriithi.
A year later, Muriithi and Macharia started Ngare Narok Meat Industries. With $34,775 as seed capital, they set up a modest abattoir that served livestock traders in the region.
“We saw a big opportunity. Every Thursday, we have a market day in Rumuruti and livestock from Samburu, Baringo and Isiolo are sold,” says Muriithi.
<img loading="lazy" decoding="async" class="alignleft size-medium wp-image-3054" src="/wp-content/uploads/2014/09/Forbes-2-300x200.jpg" alt="" width="300" height="200" />Be
According to statistics from the Laikipia sub-county veterinary office, around $347,000 is exchanged at the Rumuruti livestock auction every week. The market is the second largest in Kenya after the one in Garissa in northern Kenya that is valued at more than $695,000.
Laikipia County is the Kenyan capital of ranching and the ideal place for Ngare Narok. The region has 43 registered ranches sitting on between 10,000 to 110,000 acres of land. The ranches occupy more than 50% of the total land area. The county had 189,685 heads of cattle and 623,648 sheep and goats, according to the Kenya Population and Housing Census. Macharia estimates the entire Kenyan livestock business to be valued at $23 million.
Of the 43 ranches in Laikipia, 30 are privately owned. Laikipia is home to Ol Pejeta Conservancy, East Africa’s largest black rhino sanctuary. Private ranches are used for wildlife conservancy as well as cattle rearing.
“Most ranches are owned by white Kenyans and they account for 15 to 20 percent of the cattle in Laikipia,” says Macharia.
Livestock infrastructure is supported by 50 holding grounds, stock routes and outspans, two public and three private abattoirs, five auction yards and 33 slaughter slabs.
When FORBES AFRICA visits Ngare Narok, the staff is preparing to slaughter a group of animals. The plant has a daily capacity of 50 cows and 100 smaller animals.
“When the animals are brought to us from the auction market, we have to give them about five hours to graze and rest. This allows them to relax, otherwise the meat will be hard because of their tension,” says Rajab Hassan, the General Manager of Production at Ngare Narok.
The company has also broadened its services. Instead of only being an abattoir, Ngare Narok now collects hides and skins, and produces prime beef products, organic compound fertilizer, and organically tanned leather and leather products. Initially, the business didn’t make much money but its fortunes have since improved. By 2007, it was making $31,000 and by the end of last year it had revenue of $1.8 million. Projections for the end of this year are $11.5 million.
“Essentially, we were a toll slaughter house. You brought your animals and we slaughtered for a fee. This led to a trade in hides and skins, as some butchers and meat mongers would pay for the slaughter service using the resultant hide or skin. Ninety percent of the revenue is from hides and skin,” says Muriithi.
Abattoir operations generate large amounts of offal waste. Ngare Narok had to innovate or continue spending money on its disposal. The solution was to produce organic compound fertilizer. They also started experimenting with naturally occurring herbs to tan hides and skins.
“In this business, you make money by adding value to everything. You have to utilize all the by-products to make a good return,” says Macharia.
Muriithi and Macharia were fortunate enough to have friends that believed in their business. One of them was the resident judge of the High Court of Kenya, Justice Isaac Lenaola.
“Lenaola invited his friend in 2005. In the same year, my colleague at the International Finance Corporation, Mary-Jean Ndlovu, intrigued by the story, visited the abattoir. Shortly after, she invested,” says Muriithi.
In 2009, two other potential investors showed an interest in the business. They, however, were not impressed. Their recommendation was drastic: overhaul the top management. The board and management were not taking the business seriously enough. Whereas Ngare Narok had a professional looking business plan, it lacked execution.
Muriithi decided to heed this advice.
“In mid-2011, I had a conversation with my business partner Ken Mbwaya. We were looking at how we could transform our small businesses we had invested in. These SMEs were draining our income instead of growing it.”
Mbwaya, a former HP regional boss, decided to take charge of Ngare Narok in August, 2012, and things started changing.
The renewed shareholder enthusiasm led to two successful issues of rights. They have since welcomed four new shareholders.
“In total, we raised [$460,000] in equity in 2013, most of it from YCEO Holdings Ltd, a young venture capital firm,” says Muriithi.
This year, Fanisi Capital, a private equity fund invested $2.5 million for a 40% shareholding.
Although Muriithi had the option of getting money from a bank, he says private equity offers much more.
“It comes with professional investment and expertise which allows an entrepreneur to get additional ideas that will take the business further than what a sole entrepreneur could have done.”
The downside of private equity is that investors expect high return is short spaces of time. This doesn’t worry Muriithi.
“All aspects of life involve an element of risk. The only question is how well we manage that risk.”
His vision is to make Ngare Narok a multi-billion-dollar establishment. All he wants, is to own just 10% of it.

Beefing Up

“Roho Mzungu,” shrieks a group of barefoot children in prayer caps as they run past a mildewed wanted poster, crudely plastered onto an ancient narrow lane on Mombasa Island. Translated from Swahili, the youngsters’ cries simply mean: White Ghost. It has become the latest moniker for perhaps the most unlikely international terrorist of our generation.
I am back in Mombasa after an absence of two years and there is still only one name on the lips of local people. Today, in the schools and playgrounds of coastal Kenya, a region that once welcomed a million tourists every year, a flame-haired British housewife plagues the nightmares of local children. To the local media she is also known as the White Widow and her name is whispered in fear in churches and teeming coastal markets.
<div id="attachment_3029" style="width: 310px" class="wp-caption alignleft"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" aria-describedby="caption-attachment-3029" class="size-medium wp-image-3029" src="/wp-content/uploads/2017/04/NM_00001208-1-300x201.jpg" alt="" width="300" height="201" />NAIROBI, KENYA &#8211; SEPTEMBER 23: Heavy smoke is seen from the site of the terrorist attack, Westgate Mall, on September 23, 2013 in Nairobi, Kenya. The attack occurred on Saturday, 10-15 gunmen from the extremist group Al-Shabab entered the mall and opened fire at random on shoppers; 68 deaths have been confirmed. (Photo by Gallo Images / Nation Media / Salaton Njau)</div>
Thirty-one-year-old Samantha Lewthwaite, a white Muslim convert and the fanatical widow of Jermaine Lindsay, the 7/7 bomber who killed 26 people when he blew up a Piccadilly Line Tube train near London’s King’s Cross in 2005, remains at large in East Africa today, known to be in possession of significant quantities of explosives, cash, ammunition and a zeal so deeply entrenched her name is whispered in Al-Shabaab training camps with some reverence.
Kenya has been a primary target for Al-Shabab fighters ever since Nairobi sent thousands of troops to fight in Somalia. The Africa Union Mission in Somalia (AMISOM) has used troops from various African countries to fight the militants since 2007, but Kenya’s ramped-up involvement since October 2011, has been instrumental in pushing Al-Shabaab out of its most important strongholds, including Mogadishu and the port town of Kismayo.
The enduring role of a British housewife at the core of East Africa’s terror shows how complex the task of combatting the growth of attacks is. As we approach the anniversary of the Westgate Mall attack, global terrorist related deaths have leaped by almost one third as the world enters a deadly new phase in the cycle of violence.
Data compiled by Maplecroft, a British risk consultancy, found that over the last 12 months, global deaths have risen 30% compared to the previous five-year average. Africa, as a continent, has been among the hardest hit. With terrorism incidents in Libya doubling in the last year, violence is having a toxic impact on its economy, especially its oil sector, while attacks in Egypt have hit its tourism industry and of course Kenya, which has been hit by increasing attacks.
For Kenya in particular, there is arguably more to lose from adverse publicity. According to Maplecroft, June represented Kenya’s bloodiest month since the Westgate shopping mall attack, with 69 deaths and at least seven wounded, with a single Al-Shabaab attack on a Mpeketoni village in Lamu County responsible for 48 of the deaths.
In Mombasa, the impact of terrorism on the local economy was stark. Occupancy in most of the major resorts strung out along the coast was as low as 10%. Kenya’s tourism, which has provided 15% of GDP in recent years, is in tatters. Warnings last month by the British and other foreign governments prompted flustered tour companies to evacuate clients from Kenya’s coastal tourist hub, Mombasa. Today, the luxurious resorts on Lamu Island stand empty. Operators admit it could take years to restore confidence.
The reason? Mombasa is a fertile recruiting ground for Al-Shabaab, working through radical mosques and clerics. These leaders portray the conflict across the border as jihad, which has an energizing appeal to many youth. The myth of Lewthwaite has curiously become part of that dynamic.
Lewthwaite’s list of alleged cohorts is as deadly as it is long. United States (US) intelligence sources believe that networks linked to Dawood Ibrahim, one of the world’s most wanted men, are bankrolling the deadly Al Qaeda cell Lewthwaite is part of. Dawood, the head of Indian crime network D-Company, is currently the most wanted man in Asia and the ruthless driving force of 5,000 foot soldiers involved in everything from drugs trafficking to contract killing. Currently on the Interpol wanted list, his association with Al Qaeda in Africa has dramatically grown in the last two years.
What is undeniable is Lewthwaite has funding from somewhere and she is backing it up with action. Lewthwaite was recently identified as the brains behind a bold operation to free her terrorist lover, Jermaine Grant, who was arrested in Mombasa in December 2011 in a raid. Kenyan police believe the audacious attempt to rescue Grant, as he was taken from prison to a Mombasa court to face trial, was coordinated by Lewthwaite after two suspected terrorists were stopped crossing into Kenya from Tanzania with bullet-proof vests and face masks. Both men claimed they were acting under the direction of Lewthwaite.
A source from the Kenyan Anti-Terrorism Police Unit told me that she could still be in Mombasa.
“We believe that for some time she was in fact hiding in plain sight here in Mombasa, working her identities between a now blonde western tourist and burka-clad Muslim. Mombasa is Kenya’s second largest city and she knows the city well. The problem for us is, although not quite a master of disguise, she is afforded the right to wear a hijab or a burka and this simplest of methods allows her to travel. To catch her we must lift the veils of 100,000 women and she knows this is her biggest weapon.”
Lewthwaite’s incredible life on the run is a remarkable twist to an enduring story that is made for Hollywood. Over three years ago, Lewthwaite was forced to flee a terrorist safe-house in Mombasa after Kenyan Police received a tip-off that an Al Qaeda-linked terror cell she was part of was planning to blow up hotels and shopping centers in the city over Christmas.
Instead of the suspects they expected, the police discovered an empty shell. A hastily abandoned bomb-making factory containing batteries, hydrogen peroxide and wires. Crucially they also found a false passport left behind in panic by one of the alleged terrorists, a white woman, later identified as Lewthwaite.
Since then, it has been shadow chasing for the authorities. Relentlessly hunted by the Kenyan Anti-Terrorism Police Unit, and partially supported towards the end of last year by Scotland Yard’s elite SO15 anti-terror squad, the White Widow has remarkably eluded capture.
Frustrated at Lewthwaite’s sophisticated field skills, Kenyan investigators increasingly believe that the Aylesbury mother of three might have played a small, but influential, part in the 2005 London bombings and is now so mired in jihad she has abandoned her three young children to enable her to stay on the run.
The information surrounding Lewthwaite’s current whereabouts is believed to have been sourced under interrogation from known associates of the Briton, including Marianna Issa Mohammed, a female terrorist who was arrested in Kisamayo, Somalia.
Claims that she had boasted of prior knowledge of the London bombings within the terrorist community are particularly remarkable considering that in the wake of the tragedy, Lewthwaite went public on her horror at her dead husband’s act of terror and she was even placed into protective custody by Scotland Yard.
Suspiciously, it wasn’t until a week after the 2005 bombing, that Lewthwaite contacted her local police to register her husband missing. At the time, she claimed they were having relationship troubles. Lewthwaite then later refused to accept Scotland Yard’s insistence that her husband had been the bomber, until investigators produced evidence and she was apparently dragged screaming from her home claiming her husband’s mind was poisoned by radicals.
The White Widow’s journey from suburban Britain to Somalia is all the more astonishing because her father was in fact a British soldier who served in Northern Ireland. Her parents separated when she was 11, which friends claim badly affected her, leading to her being comforted by Muslim neighbors in the town.
After starting A-levels in religious studies, the teenage Samantha decided to convert to Islam, aged 15 and began wearing a hijab and swapped her jeans and T-shirt for a salwar kameez, a traditional Asian tunic and trousers. At 17, she went one step further, changing her name to Asmantara.
As her radicalization continued, Lewthwaite, described by her teachers as precocious and intelligent, enrolled for a degree in religion and politics at the prestigious School of Oriental and African Studies in London. Around this time, she met Jamaican-born Islamic convert Jermaine Lindsay on an internet chatroom for Muslims and they later met face to face at an anti-war rally in London. The couple married in an Islamic ceremony in the front room of a terraced house in Aylesbury in October 2002 before just four witnesses. None of Lewthwaite’s family attended.
“My father Andy didn’t approve and stayed away and my mum just couldn’t make it. I was his youngest daughter. He found it hard enough when I converted to Islam, without marrying a Muslim I had hardly met,” she later recalled.
In 2004, the couple’s first son was born, which is when Lewthwaite claims her husband started to spend time at radical mosques. She has said he was a peaceful man before these visits. Lewthwaite was seven months pregnant with their second child when Lindsay launched his 7/7 attacks. Police believed that she was also a victim of the terrible events and placed her in protective custody after her house was torched in an arson attack.
But her precise movements since the bombings are harder to follow. Within two years of the London attacks, the widow met a new lover, identified by her family only as a Moroccan Muslim from Birmingham, and she later gave birth to her third child in August 2009. It was shortly after this point that Lewthwaite went off the grid.
In late 2010, Lewthwaite is believed to have traveled to South Africa on her own passport but later left with a new identity: that of Natalie Faye Webb, a 26-year-old South African-born nurse based in Essex, England, who was later confirmed as a victim of identity theft. At this point, it is believed Lewthwaite spent time at a training camp in Somalia.
By August 25, 2011, the Briton entered Kenya from Tanzania with her three children, also on false passports, where she is believed to have met with her current lover, Habib Saleh Gani, an Al-Shabaab sleeper, in Mombasa. Lewthwaite is also thought to have made contact with a third British terrorist, Jermaine Grant, 29, from Newham, East London.
By linking herself to Al-Shabaab, Lewthwaite had chosen one of the most ruthless terrorist organizations on the planet. The group, which has imposed a strict version of Sharia law in areas under its control, including the stoning to death of women accused of adultery and amputating the hands of thieves, was responsible for a double suicide bombing in Kampala, which killed 76 people watching the 2010 World Cup final at a local rugby club.
Chillingly, a cache of intelligence, found on the body of Al Qaeda’s African leader and inside the bullet-ridden truck he tried to ram through a Somali government checkpoint, provides a chilling look at the global aspirations of Al-Shabaab. The meticulously prepared documents that detail plots for a kidnapping and attacks on London’s prestigious Eton College, Jewish neighborhoods and the posh Ritz and Dorchester hotels, were uncovered last year when senior Al Qaeda leader Fazul Abdullah Mohammed was shot dead by Somali forces.
According to anti-terrorist police, Lewthwaite seemed the perfect operative. Able to seamlessly mix with tourists on surveillance trips but also able to revert back into strict Muslim society in a burka, her logistical skills proved to be invaluable.
On arrival, it seems Lewthwaite blended quickly into the tourist capital of Mombasa where she operated three safe houses in high-end estates in the north of the city. In the Kisauni area, she lived in a house belonging to a wife of Musa Hussein Abdi, a British-born terrorist who lived in Africa for a long time and who was killed in Somalia last year alongside Fazul Mohammed. The latter was the mastermind of the bombings on the US embassies in Nairobi and Dar es Salaam.
Lewthwaite then moved to Shanzu, a magnet for British tourists, where she lived in a five-bedroom villa paying four month’s rent upfront. She used her western appearance to mingle with holidaymakers and carry out reconnaissance on security in major hotels. But on December 19, 2011, anti-terrorism police raided the house. How Lewthwaite escaped before the raid is a mystery.
Police recovered 60 bullets, two magazines for AK-47 rifles and bomb-making material including acetone, hydrogen peroxide, ammonium nitrate, sulphur, lead nitrate chemicals, AA-sized batteries, an electric switch and a piece of conductive wire.
Ahmed Hassan, a resident of the Kisauni apartment block, says Lewthwaite would leave the house in both western clothes and in her burka.
“Wearing a burka will not get you into an international hotel but wearing a bikini will and a sarong will. It is obvious now that she was the terrorist’s main spy,” he says.
Following the raid, Lewthwaite fled with a laptop, cash and bomb-making material to another safe house barely 20 kilometers away from where anti-terrorism officers believe she dished out equipment and money to field terrorists under the noses of unsuspecting neighbors and police.
But as the net tightened Lewthwaite’s London associate, Jermaine Grant, was arrested in central Mombasa. Grant’s arrest is significant. Within days the White Widow’s latest hideout was exposed again. But, when officers led a raid on the property in January, Lewthwaite had somehow left shortly before and was last seen driving towards the Tanzanian border crossing, Lunga Lunga.
Lewthwaite didn’t raise her head in Mombasa again until June 24 last year when witnesses claim they saw a white woman throw grenades into a crowded bar, killing three people, including a nine-year-old boy, and horrifically injuring 30. Since that last incident, she has been true to her nickname. A ghostly presence linked to sporadic attacks across Kenya including the Westgate Mall.
In Mombasa, Lewthwaite’s case file remains open at the regional Law Courts, where she has been charged in absentia. Court documents indicate that Lewthwaite and her lover Gani are charged with being in possession of explosive materials and conspiracy to commit a felony. The files also allege that Lewthwaite is bankrolling a Mombasa terror cell whose members include Grant.
Jacob Ondari of Kenya’s directorate of public prosecutions believes Lewthwaite is highly dangerous.
“She is not just a small cog in this terrorist machine; she has links to the top. I will be calling for the death penalty when she is finally caught. That would be our prayer,” he says.
In recent months, The Muslim Youth Centre, a radical Kenyan organization believed to have terrorist links, has used the myth of Lewthwaite as a recruitment tool, boasting of her escape from the world’s most sophisticated intelligence agencies. The group has also posted a recent video of a hooded British Al-Shabaab operative calling for holy war in Somalia in a bid to further boast their international credentials.
Perhaps most tellingly, using Lewthwaite’s image on its website and Twitter feed, the group recently referenced the Hollywood blockbuster, The Thomas Crown Affair, in which Pierce Brosnan plays an art thief who carries off a heist by dressing dozens of accomplices in identical clothing as him, allowing him to escape right under the noses of the police.
According to Phyllis Muema, director of the Kenya Community Support Center, a not-for-profit group in Mombasa that works on rehabilitating Somali fighters, Lewthwaite is a powerful recruitment tool.
“To have a white western woman on their side provides Al-Shabaab with a major weapon. For illiterate and impoverished young Muslim men it is easy to be radicalized, but to follow a white woman with access to money from abroad and with her education and intelligence is a significant allure,” she says.
For Lewthwaite’s family, the uncertainty of her children’s fate remains the hardest pill to swallow. Her grandmother in Northern Ireland, Elizabeth Allen, wears a panic alarm and has been told to contact police immediately if Lewthwaite arrives at her home in Banbridge, where she spent part of her youth. Her mother, Christine Allen, claims she hasn’t heard from her daughter in years.
My source within the Kenyan Anti-Terrorism Police Unit reveals that they have believed for several months that although Lewthwaite is still with her lover, Gani, she is no longer on the run with her children.
“We believe that she is separated from her children at the moment to enable her to remain at large. Even under a burka her footprint is compromised by the children. We have artists’ impressions of them and Lewthwaite knows they are her biggest weakness. She cannot hide them under burkas. We believe they have been smuggled over the Somali border and are being cared for in a training camp.”
The claims are backed up by postings on the widow’s closed down blog which stated: “I advise you to raise your children in the cult of jihad and martyrdom and to instil in them a love for religion and death.”
The source added: “The truth is there was no mention of children from eye witnesses in the final property she was linked to and interrogations since have identified her as operating with Habib only. It wouldn’t be the first time a jihadist has made such a sacrifice. They sacrifice everything they have for this life.”

On The Trail Of The White Widow

Four days after the horrors of the Westgate siege, the mall’s business owners shuffled back to what was left of their businesses. Among them was Joyce Gikunda of Lintons Beauty World, a Nairobi spa and beauty chain. Her Westgate store was the oldest and most profitable of her three branches.
<div id="attachment_3025" style="width: 209px" class="wp-caption alignleft"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" aria-describedby="caption-attachment-3025" class="size-medium wp-image-3025" src="/wp-content/uploads/2017/04/Dr.-Joyce-Gikunda-new-199x300.jpg" alt="" width="199" height="300" />Dr. Joyce Gikunda</div>
“I never recovered anything as mould had set in due to flooded water and our insurance cover didn’t include terrorism,” she says.
Scores of business owners in Westgate rued their insurance. Up to then, terrorism came under political risk and many didn’t know about it and therefore didn’t sign up.
This is changing. The head of the Association of Kenya Insurers, Tom Gichuhi, told London-based ‘Africa Insurance Review’ a few weeks after the attack that business owners had been given a wake-up call.
“Especially for firms with no terrorism cover, and those who have terrorism cover, to evaluate their current contract to make sure they are properly covered,” he says.
The concern is the cost. Earlier this year, Kenyan reinsurers pushed up terrorism premiums by 40%. Set against an environment of increasing attacks since Westgate, from Nairobi to the coastal cities, these rates may continue to climb.
“Risk perception is rather high,” says Kenyan analyst Aly-Khan Satchu. He estimates the cost of terrorism cover for businesses to stand at 1% to 3% of annual revenue.
That may be too high for some. Gikunda recently opened a new Lintons outlet at another shopping mall, the Village Market, just a 15-minute drive from Westgate. She is considering terrorism cover options. But, after losing close to KES20 million ($230,000) after the mall attack and being forced to open a new store, Gikunda is not sure whether she can afford it.
“It’s quite expensive insurance,” she says.
Despite grim tidings for small business owners, it seems that the economy, as a whole, is pulling through. While concerns rest on the worsening security crisis, which has already hit shopping and tourism, foreign investment from the North American and European markets is still flowing into Kenya. More investment is also coming in from fellow African countries.
“It’s the resilience of the market,” says Satchu.
Gikunda mixes resilience with a generous dash of hope. She admits fear from Westgate is still hurting her business in other Nairobi malls, but presses on.
“I am still opening new stores because this is my country and we must invest and live in it successfully as citizens,” Gikunda says.
Luckily for Kenya, many other business owners feel the same way.

In The Cold Shadow of Westgate

Catherine Masitsa is a very optimistic woman. She knows she will be in business until the end of time.
“I know people will still be getting married when Jesus comes!” she says.
A trained veterinarian with an MBA in Strategic Marketing, Masitsa is a feisty entrepreneur making a decent living from Kenya’s growing wedding industry that is said to contribute KSh70 billion ($797 million) to the Kenyan economy and expected to grow to KSh100 billion ($1.14 billion) by 2015.
These figures are not captured in any government documents or financial projections. Kenya’s wedding industry is a gold mine made up of multiple smaller suppliers like caterers, wedding consultants, dress-makers, beauty consultants, photographers, DJs, honeymoon planners et al. While the industry as a whole represents a lot of money, each of the component parts is much smaller, some smaller than the others.
These smaller composite suppliers can be very local and likely will be small and privately-owned, traditionally the types of businesses that do not necessarily report financial information to any agency other than the Kenya Revenue Authority. This is in sharp contrast to larger industries, comprised of companies that make public their profits making it easier to find information. Secondly, many of the smaller components like caterers, DJs, photographers, printers of invitation cards, also do other events that are not necessarily bridal events.
Masitsa’s own story runs in tandem with Kenya’s growing wedding industry. She had never dreamt she would be a part of it when growing up in rural Kenya. At the height of her veterinary career when she was in her mid-20s, she got bored of her job, quit and went into publishing without any knowledge of the business. In 2000, she started Going Out magazine with only KSh45,000 ($500) and it is only when she was in the publishing business that she learnt how advertisers in Kenya operate.
“Advertisers wanted publishers to nail their market. They expected you to know what your target audience was doing every hour of the day. The Going Out audience was wide and I noticed a gap in niche magazines,” she says.
After her own wedding in 2003, Masitsa was inspired to start a wedding magazine – Samantha’s Bridal Wedding, which was the first bridal publication in Kenya. Eleven years later, it has become a major player in East Africa’s wedding market, evolving into a wedding media and lifestyle company.
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The Show That Changed It All
A turning point in Masitsa’s entrepreneurial journey was in 2008 when Kenya went through post-election violence.
“After publishing Going Out for eight years, I had to shut it down. That year, we had no advertising and we couldn’t publish for about six months. We used to give the magazine for free. You can’t publish when you have no adverts. I simply lost the passion,” she says. The same year, she also shut down another publication she owned – Business Woman.
Magazines are very capital-intensive and Masitsa found it impossible to repay her bank loan.
She had a KSh7 million ($80,000) bank loan and a KSh3 million ($34,000) overdraft. Overnight, the bank loaded the KSh7 million on the overdraft and she now had a debt of KSh10 million ($114,000) to repay.
“They say in war, you pick the soldiers who look like they can survive. That is how I stopped publishing the two magazines and picked Samantha’s Bridal because it was more promising,” she says.
Masitsa put her house on the property market so she could clear the bank debt. She ended up paying the bank KSh32 million ($364,000).
“After I found a buyer for my house, my documents at the Ministry of Lands suddenly disappeared. For eight months I had a buyer with money but I had no documents and the bank interest was increasing.” One day she went to the Ministry office and started crying. The officer took pity on her and in two days her documents were found. She sold the house for KSh28 million ($318,000) and was left with a balance of KSh4 million ($45,532). What saved her were the real estate investments she had.
“Then, I was in my 30s. The good thing about being in your 30s is that you have a very huge appetite for risk. If you don’t utilize your 30s, you will never take any risks. Now in my 40s, I take more calculated risks.” In the same year (2008), she launched a TV show called Samantha’s Bridal and that changed her fortunes for the better.
Masitsa realized that if she was not on television, people would never know her magazine existed. This is what motivated her to get into producing television shows centered on weddings.
“TV stations pay me for the cost of production. I specialize in producing good TV lifestyle content because there are so many things that go on in weddings. When you watch the show, you can tell about the fashion trends in Kenya, youth issues, finance, music etc. It is a window to society. They are telling their story through an event.”
According to a survey commissioned by Samantha’s Bridal, over 28,000 couples get married in Kenya annually in a formal wedding ceremony, an increase of up to 10% over the last five years. On average, 26 businesses are involved in the staging of one standard wedding.
“The annual average spend per wedding is KSh800,000 ($9,000) to KSh1.2 million ($13,700) making the wedding expense the biggest single expenditure other than buying a house and a car for most people,” says Masitsa. She says these are just conservative numbers.
“I have seen a wedding worth KSh200 million ($2.3 million) and another that cost only KSh7,000 ($80). Weddings are recession-proof. Couples will stop at nothing to show the world the true meaning behind ‘what’s love got to do with it!’ when it comes to the wedding budget,” she says.
In Kenya, couples are engaged for an average of 16 to 17 months before marriage. During that time, on a national average, couples spend about KSh1.3 billion ($14.8 million) on engagement rings, wedding rings and other jewelry, KSh7 billion ($80 million) on gowns, suits and tuxedos, flower girl outfits and bridesmaids’ dresses, dresses for guests, and KSh2 billion ($22.7 million) on honeymoons.
The survey also revealed that annually, engaged and newlyweds spend millions of shillings on new home purchases.
“They are responsible for a big segment of the wedding registry gifts and furniture industry. In addition, each couple spends an average of KSh700,000 ($8,000) on fitting out their homes with furniture and household electrical appliances,” says Masitsa.
In East Africa, Ugandans and Tanzanians spend more than Kenyans. This spend is driven by the fact that weddings are community affairs and families spend a lot of money on their children. It is very normal for them to hold a fundraiser, while in Kenya, the couple foots most of the bills.
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Fairytale Weddings
<img loading="lazy" decoding="async" class="alignnone size-medium wp-image-29441" src="http://www.forbesafrica.com/app/uploads/2017/05/FWA-2014-Aug-Sep-044-046-Catherine-Masitsa-003-300x200.jpg" alt="" width="300" height="200" srcset="https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/05/FWA-2014-Aug-Sep-044-046-Catherine-Masitsa-003-300x200.jpg 300w, https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/05/FWA-2014-Aug-Sep-044-046-Catherine-Masitsa-003-600x400.jpg 600w, https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/05/FWA-2014-Aug-Sep-044-046-Catherine-Masitsa-003-768x512.jpg 768w, https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/05/FWA-2014-Aug-Sep-044-046-Catherine-Masitsa-003.jpg 1024w" sizes="(max-width: 300px) 100vw, 300px" />
Those who can spend, spare no expense on lavish weddings. There are couples who fly in Bollywood stars to perform at their weddings so as to create a personalized experience for their guests. A bride recently flew in the Cake Boss to bake her cake.
There is a couple who spent KSh200 million ($2.3 million) for an eight-day wedding.
“For all those days, they had an open bar and French champagne for 3,000 guests. The bride’s dresses were valued at more than KSh4 million ($45,500), each made of real diamonds and she wore a new outfit every day. Family members flew in from all parts of the world. The couple hosted them in high-end hotels in Nairobi.”
In another wedding, the groom wanted to replicate Prince William’s wedding suit. He went to the UK and bought three military suits each valued at KSh3.5 million ($40,000) – for himself, his best man and the page boy. Then there are those who make their wedding planners sign contracts with non-disclosure clauses.
“However, there is nothing new under the stars. It is about creating experiences for wedding guests from the moment they arrive – how you put those elements together makes it a truly unique experience. If the money was budgeted for, the couples spend it. They don’t want to look at their wedding pictures and feel bad.”
Masitsa describes a wedding as the launch of the couple’s new life together to the public.
“The way you launch a Toyota is not the same way you launch a Benz!”
With Kenya’s wedding market projected to grow steadily, there are already international designer brands setting up shop in Kenya. The Echo Boom, also known as Generation Y or the Millennial, is the next big generation to move into the ‘engagement zone’.
Eighteen million Kenyan men and women, born between 1980 and 2000, make up this generation. This group offers bridal marketers an opportunity to reach a larger audience than in the past and also an increase in market share.

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$2.3 Million For A Wedding?

It’s a haunting image. A terrified woman lies flat on the floor of a coffee shop where she might have been sipping a cappuccino just minutes before. Beside her are her two young children. The woman clings to her son and clutches her daughter by the elbow. Empty bullet casings are scattered around them. But what really makes the picture so powerful is how it depicts a safe and familiar scene as anything but. This is a split second in the life of a mother fighting for her children.
<div id="attachment_2947" style="width: 187px" class="wp-caption alignleft"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" aria-describedby="caption-attachment-2947" class="size-medium wp-image-2947" src="/wp-content/uploads/2017/04/RTX13XVR-1-177x300.jpg" alt="" width="177" height="300" />Kenya Defence Forces soldiers comb the rooftop of the Westgate shopping mall, on the fourth day since militants stormed into the mall, in Nairobi September 24, 2013. Somalia&#8217;s al Shabaab Islamist group said on Tuesday its militants were still holed up in a Kenyan shopping mall they attacked at the weekend and there were &#8220;countless dead bodies&#8221;, raising fears the death toll could be higher than 62. REUTERS/Noor Khamis (KENYA &#8211; Tags: CIVIL UNREST CRIME LAW MILITARY) &#8211; RTX13XVR</div>
Nairobi-based photojournalist Tyler Hicks, of The New York Times, took the photograph and, in May, won a Pulitzer Prize for it.  A month after it was taken, the woman in the picture contacted him. They found themselves talking about the mall music.
“In covering conflict, it often isn’t the big things that you remember. It’s not the loud explosions or gunfire that your mind focuses on but often it’s some small detail,” he says on a call from Iraq.
“With all the shooting and running around and people screaming there was this very calm music echoing through the shopping mall.”
The woman told him she spent almost five hours lying in that very place with her children, trying to keep them calm and quiet. She remembers quietly singing along with that same mall music to her children to try to distract them and keep them still.
Hicks has risked his life many times to take the photos that have defined his career but this one sticks with him.
“That picture for me sums up what happened there, this is an attack on innocent civilians. The fear on her face and this amazing scene of her trying to hide and protect her kids,” he says.
Since the mall siege a year ago, Nairobi has been under persistent attack. A few months after Westgate, a hand grenade was thrown on to a minibus in the city suburb of Eastleigh. It claimed four lives and maimed at least 40 others. A day earlier, twin bomb blasts rocked the northern town of Wajir, killing one and injuring three others.
But perhaps some of the biggest attacks since Westgate were carried out more recently, further away, on the Kenyan coast. In July, unknown gunmen opened fire at marketplaces in the coastal villages of Hindi and Gamba. As with the mall attack, the gunmen began shooting at market goers indiscriminately. Both attacks claimed 29 lives. Earlier, in June, gun battles raged in Lamu, a resort town, and a number of buildings were set alight. That attack killed 48.
The Somali extremist group, Al-Shabaab, has taken responsibility for each of those attacks. After Kenyan armed forces, supporting a weak UN-backed Somali force, began pursuing the Al Qaeda-linked militants in southern Somalia three years ago, the group has vowed to fight back.
“Kenya’s operations in Somalia are something of a black box,” says Parselelo Kantai, East Africa Editor for The Africa Report, who’s been following the region’s insecurity.
“Because no independent reports have revealed what is going on, Al-Shabaab’s claims of atrocities being committed there by the KDF [Kenya Defense Forces] cannot be ignored&#8230; that’s the reason Al-Shabaab have given for attacking Kenya.”
In May, the group officially announced their war against Kenya.
Beyond the human cost, Hicks’ image of the woman and children tells another story. The abandoned coffee shop, where the family spent hours hiding, is still abandoned today. The economic cost to business owners within the mall was catastrophic. Many lost everything because they did not have the right insurance policy. Even the mall’s owners lost out, despite their insurance pay outs. Until the mall reopens, its owners will lose around $4.5 million every year.
Also, scores of mall employees lost their jobs because of the attack. The mall’s grocery store, Nakumatt, lost three employees during the shootings and its 150-strong staff was made redundant. A new store in another part of the city may rehire some of them.
It has been a year since Westgate and the aftermath is a difficult reality for its survivors. Life for many in Kenya will never be the same again. But if you look closer at the Hicks photograph with the terrified family on the cafe floor, you’ll see that some hope still lingers.

A Picture Of Fear  That Still Lingers

Five hundred years ago, Niccolo Machiavelli said it is much safer for a leader to be feared than loved. Anne Waiguru, Kenya’s Cabinet Secretary for Devolution and Planning, is the kind of leader who elicits both love and fear.
Waiguru is spoken of as a combative, no-nonsense go-getter and hard-worker. Waiguru, the person, smiles, loves dancing, carries lunch to work and is a doting mother to three sons.
She is among six women in Kenya’s cabinet of 18 and the only female Cabinet Secretary in the Presidency. Outside the presidential framework, Waiguru wields considerable power and influence. Her docket has the largest budget in government – KSh84 billion ($967 million), controlling key government functions of devolution, public service management, economic planning, women, youth affairs, special programs, and arid and semi-arid land dockets.
Working with Waiguru is not for the faint-hearted. With a heavy docket to manage, she pushes hard and keeps long hours. Those who have worked with her describe her as detailed and forceful, breaking all barriers. A government officer who worked in one of the ministries under Waiguru says she rules with an iron fist, it is either her way or the highway.
Waiguru describes herself as “extremely focused, disciplined, hard-working, smart and flexible”.
“I am able to change when I discover I am going in the wrong direction,” she says.
She confesses to placing a very high premium on hard work, an attribute she inherited from her late father who was a police officer.
“He is the reason I am here. It didn’t matter where you ended up, discipline and standards were always a big deal to my father.” She studied in Kenya at the Egerton University for her under-graduation and later pursued a master’s degree in economic policy from the University of Nairobi.
Rolling up her sleeves is part of her character. While preparing for the launch of the KSh6 billion ($70 million) Uwezo (Swahili for empowerment) Fund meant for youth and women, she went to the venue on the eve of the event and did something that shocked her team.
“She practically showed us how she wanted the chairs arranged. They had to be the same without special preferences to the President, his Deputy or herself. She said uwezo is about empowerment and equality of Kenyans,” says Dennis Itumbi, Director, Digital, New Media and Diaspora in the Executive Office of the President.
Her hands-on personality is not only about work. She also sets the bar high for her sons.
“They have a strong personality for a mother and I spend a lot of time with them.” One of her sons is a musician and to support him, she also took up music lessons. Her youngest son, who is 10, wants to be President of Kenya and has even expressed his ambitions to his mother’s boss. The eldest, 19, is already running an IT business.
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Tears and Twitter
Now in her early 40s, Waiguru joined the public service under an initiative of the World Bank as a Technical Advisor to the Public Service Reform Secretariat in what was then the Cabinet Office. Prior to that, she had briefly worked at Citigroup NA.
After completing her term at the Reform Secretariat, Waiguru moved to head the Economic Stimulus Programme (ESP), to accelerate Kenya’s economic growth following the slump caused by the 2007/8 post-election violence.
At the helm of ESP, she was instrumental in ensuring all health centers had maternal units with beds.
“Many women in rural Kenya do not make it to a health center and give birth by the roadside. To avoid this, we tried to have them come to the health center every three weeks. We gave health workers bicycles and motorbikes to regularly check on expectant mothers at home. These are the things that keep me in public service.”
Waiguru confesses she did not nurse dreams of becoming a minister.
“The one thing I really wanted to be for a very long time, was a Permanent Secretary because it was the highest level a civil servant attained then that would allow me to influence policies,” she says.
After ESP, she moved on to become Director of the Integrated Financial Management Information System (IFMIS). This was a defining moment in her career. She had to lead the implementation of financial policies and programs to ensure efficient and transparent use of government money.
The media described her cabinet appointment in April 2013 as ‘a meteoric rise’. Waiguru was a trailblazer in government reforms and had upset the status quo. The rumor mills on social media went on overdrive. Having worked with President Kenyatta while he was Finance Minister, her appointment was seen as a reward. She was seen as a woman who had suddenly risen from nowhere. The stories got to her.
“I cried and worried in the beginning until I got used to the newspaper articles. You are used to someone criticizing you positively but some people are outright nasty. I now read comments on Twitter and laugh.”
Looking back, she wishes she knew earlier on in her public service career about the need to have the skin of a rhino.
“People asked why I was given the position. The same was not asked about my [male] colleagues. When we [women] do very well, people are surprised. When men do very well, it was expected. I see it even now when people tell me that I am doing very well as if they did not expect me to. They would not be surprised if a man did the same.”
The appointment suddenly threw her in the limelight, but she has never been a public person.
“I am very good one-on-one and in the background. I would never take myself to the media and hence people did not know I existed.”
Waiguru says women have to work four times as hard as men to get recognition because the society is still patriarchal.
“For a woman, half the time you must have proved a point before you are even considered for a position. It is very rare to hear someone say a woman has potential. A woman has to have a few accomplishments.”
Despite the high expectations, Waiguru does not have sleepless nights.
“I am very conscious of the fact that I am human and have limitations, so I do the best I can. Once I have done all I can, I go home and sleep easy because even if I stay awake nothing is going to change anyway. When there is a crisis you will not find me worried. What is the worst that can happen in life?”
Waiguru has had days when Murphy’s Law applied. In November 2013, she had to manage a crisis after health workers went on strike for 11 days over devolution of services from national to county governments. There were reported deaths as hospital services were paralyzed. In January 2014, Waiguru had to flag off food aid to Turkana, in northern Kenya. The media described the drought as a national shame.
“I don’t think flagging off food was a shame. With disasters, the issue is when it happens, are you prepared for it? We were prepared, you did not hear us asking the private sector for money or food. We are still buying and distributing food.”
While putting her heart in her work, Waiguru says she is passionate but not attached.
“Serving in the public service changes the way you see things. When you are out there, you tell government what it can do better but when you are in here with all our problems no one will ever give you a pat on the back. Your passion drives you.”
As Waiguru marked one year in office in April, she says devolution will be her main success story. She wants Anne Waiguru to be synonymous with transformation.
“I want people to talk about my contribution to the transformation of Kenya because I was committed to it and I had the ability to make that a reality,” she says.

Loved And Feared In The Corridors  Of Power

While Kenya marks and celebrates 50 years of independence in December, many are not convinced that the country has achieved its full potential and believe it is far from meeting citizen expectations. Many years after Kenya achieved its independence from Britain, poverty, illiteracy and disease continue to thrive in the country.
Even though there has been some progress, much more could have been accomplished. Kenya is still grappling with the same basic problems that were supposed to be defeated at the inception of the country but many feel nothing has been achieved to warrant any applause.
<div id="attachment_2364" style="width: 310px" class="wp-caption alignleft"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" aria-describedby="caption-attachment-2364" class="size-medium wp-image-2364" src="/wp-content/uploads/2017/04/ARP2089067-1-300x225.jpg" alt="" width="300" height="225" />Mau Mau leader of Kenya African National Union (KANU), Jomo Kenyatta, holds the official document of Kenya independence, December 13, 1963 in Nairobi as he became President of Kenya. At left is Prince Philip of Edinburgh representing Queen Elisabeth for the ceremonies.</div>
Skyrocketing food prices and the high cost of living are the main challenges facing the nation, and must be addressed to significantly improve the people’s living conditions.
The gap between the poor and the rich has widened while poverty has made many dependant on others. This is not the independence that Kenya and Kenyans need. This must be addressed through government creating more job opportunities for the high number of unemployed.
There is fear that resources are not allocated equally and in the next 50 years the government must address this. Kenyans expect nothing less than equality in allocation of national resources and the creation of jobs across the country, so that people in all areas have opportunities to better their lives.
The new constitution and reforms associated with it have begun to usher the country into an era of accountability, transparency and good governance. But to safeguard the gains made so far and to secure the progressive future that constitutional reforms promise, the nation must effectively address the rising insecurity in Kenya.
Kenya’s new constitution is a progressive document that aims to address the failed legal and moral systems created by earlier colonial and postcolonial regimes. The country’s previous constitutional order alienated most citizens from the state, but minority and indigenous communities have borne the brunt of this exclusion. This system reproduced and strengthened differences between Kenya’s diverse groups—mainly ethnic and religious—rather than building a pluralistic society that tolerates all shades of diversity based on equality before the law.
The history of Kenya is one in which its rulers have consistently demonstrated an insatiable appetite for human sacrifice. Some of the country’s most brilliant leaders have been assassinated, from Tom Mboya in 1969 to JM Kariuki in 1975 and Robert Ouku in 1990.
Founding president Jomo Kenyatta—father of the present leader—ruled the country from 1963 to 1978 like a monarchical patriarch, enriching himself through large tracts of state land. Despite having been jailed by British colonial authorities for being a leader of the Mau Mau armed struggle, Kenyatta relied on Pax Britannica—through a British defence pact—to protect his regime. These pro-western policies were challenged by his vice-president, Oginga Odinga, who lamented in a 1967 autobiography, Not Yet Uhuru, that the country had not yet attained full independence.
The heroic Mau Mau struggle from 1952 was one of the greatest anti-imperial movements and exposed the brutalities of the British authorities who tortured and killed at least 20,000 liberation fighters and imprisoned another 150,000 people in concentration camps. Kenyatta’s death in 1978 saw the rise to power of Daniel arap Moi.
<img loading="lazy" decoding="async" class="alignleft size-medium wp-image-2365" src="/wp-content/uploads/2017/04/shutterstock_142808740-1-300x300.jpg" alt="" width="300" height="300" />
In a country with deep ethnic divisions, it was important that a Kalenjin replaced a Kikuyu. Moi ruled for 24 years with an iron fist and was a crude autocrat who introduced one-party rule and queue-voting that violated the sanctity of the secret ballot. His regime became increasingly draconian after a failed coup in 1982, with violence being used to whip up interethnic tensions in bloody elections in 1992 and 1997.
Corruption scandals proliferated, and combined with Robert Ouku’s murder, eventually pushed previously tolerant western patrons to press their client to introduce multiparty democracy and observe presidential term limits.
A pro-democracy alliance finally triumphed in 2002 under the leadership of Kikuyu politician Mwai Kibaki, Moi’s former vice-president. Kibaki’s stealing of a presidential election in 2007—widely believed to have been won by Raila Odinga—triggered some of the worst interethnic clashes in 2008 in which 1,500 people were killed and 600,000 displaced. The president shamefully had himself sworn in like a thief under the cover of darkness. The 2008 violence centered on Kikuyus and Kalenjins in the Rift Valley. The political marriage of convenience sealed by the present Kikuyu president and his Kalenjin deputy and fellow International Criminal Court (ICC) indictee, William Ruto, helped calm tension during the recent elections.
Political power in Kenya has been used to acquire economic power, thereby placing an additional premium on the necessity of acquiring political power. This has been taken to absurd levels, where particular leaders have used their political positions to illegally acquire wealth and, upon being called to account, have said that their ethnic groups are being persecuted politically.
However, even when a particular community is in power, the perks are only enjoyed by that community’s elite. It does not always translate into a tangible benefit for the ordinary people.
Kenya’s next 50 years will hopefully benefit heavily from the foundations set in the last decade and firmed up in 2010 by a new constitution, which has given massive powers to institutions rather than individuals. As Kenya builds towards its centennial celebrations, the challenge is to foster a tolerant and more secure society.
The country is poised for an expanded economic portfolio thanks to the discovery of major oil and gas deposits in the Rift Valley and the Kenyan coastal regions respectively. The entry of Tullow, Anadarko, Cove Energy, First Australian Resources (FAR) Limited, Pancontinental and Total among others shows an economic boom long before 2030. With the passing of the Kenya Mineral and Mining Policy 2011, Kenya too is set to open up its mining industry covering gold, iron ore, titanium, coal and other precious stones. Improved infrastructure will enhance more intra-regional trade and boost a robust service industry.
Away from economic transformation is the new socio-political-economic model set in the counties system, which will be replacing the colonial provincial administration scheme. Under the new Kenya’s administrative stations, there are 47 new counties as opposed to the original eight provinces in the past. Fifteen percent of the national budget will go to the county governments.

50 Years Of Poor Man’s Tears

Soccer-loving young girls in northern Kenya may never have heard of Elham Sayed Javad, but they have a lot to thank her for. If it was not for the Canadian-based fashion designer, they would not be able to play in official tournaments.
Javad created a hijab which operates magnetically. It opens and releases if it is pulled from anywhere around the neck area. Her design was one of the two approved by FIFA in June last year, when it lifted its ban on the religious garment, which had been in place for five years due to safety concerns.
<div id="attachment_5872" style="width: 268px" class="wp-caption alignleft"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" aria-describedby="caption-attachment-5872" class="size-medium wp-image-5872" src="/wp-content/uploads/2017/05/000_Nic502245-258x300.jpg" alt="" width="258" height="300" />Bahraini player Muna al-Edaysi (R) vies with Palestnian Nivin al-Kolayb during their Women&#8217;s Arabia Cup football match in Manama on October 27, 2010. AFP PHOTO/ADAM JAN</div>
The ruling means women and girls who wear the hijab for religious reasons can now play in competitive soccer competitions. Having overcome that hurdle, all that was left for the girls from the Horn of Africa (Hodi region) was to find a competition to participate in.
Last year’s East Africa Cup presented them with a rare opportunity. The event is organized for youths between the ages of 11 and 16. It combines a range of sporting and cultural events and is lauded for highlighting gender issues. Apart from that, the team have little else.
There is no girls’ or women’s league to play in, and any ambitions of representing the country, while admirable, may prove little more than a pipe dream.
The level the Kenyan girls would have looked at, the under-17 event, appears to be one of the most problematic in their country and many others on the continent.
Kenya withdrew from the under-17 World Cup qualifiers in August because of what they claim was a logistical issue with their opponents, Equatorial Guinea. Kenya claimed the Equatoguineans’ communication regarding match details such as the venue and the kick-off time, as well as confirmation of visas, was received too late.
What actually occurred is not clear. Equatorial Guinea’s media had reported that Kenya may not arrive, but on the match day, August 16, activities went ahead as planned. The officials were present, the Equato-
guinean team warmed up, and stood to attention for their national anthem.
They were even instructed to kick off, and did, scoring a goal before the match was awarded in their favor because of the Kenyan no-show.
Farce aside, Equatorial Guinea have now qualified for the final playoffs which will decide which three African sides travel to Costa Rica for next year’s under-17 women’s World Cup. They will play Ghana in a two-legged tie this month.
The other clashes will be between Zambia, who beat Botswana to advance to this stage, and South Africa, who received a bye into the deciding stage. Nigeria were also given a free passage to the last six and will face Morocco.
For Kenya, all that’s left is disappointment and questions. While some of their aspiring players received a boost in the form of the lifting of the ban on the hijab, others were left high and dry by the under-17 shenanigans.
Their coach, Florence Adhiambo, says incidents like this make it difficult for the girls to stay motivated.
“It’s heartbreaking to see things like this happen. It discourages girls who have just started with their careers,” she says.
She is not alone in these sentiments. Former Nigeria captain Flo-rence Omagbemi, who was on the organizing committee for the 2012 under-17 World Cup, and remains on it for next year’s event, echoed those thoughts at a meeting in Zurich.
“All is not well with the game at the moment in Africa and we need to act fast to salvage the situation,” she says. “We have a lot of talented young girls with great passion for the game but they have no support from their federations. The soccer administrators are not doing much to help improve women’s soccer.”
The most obvious example of that is in the lack of fixtures. The African Women’s Championship has been taking place biennially since 1998 (the men’s has been going since 1957) and age-group qualifications are also held every two years. But the number of countries pulling out means the competition is often marred by the cancellation of fixtures.
More tellingly, there are no fully professional leagues in the women’s game on the continent. That leaves it lagging behind places like the United States, where the women’s game is run the same way as the men’s.
As a consequence, Nadi Sora, the coach of the Hodi girls’ team, explains they don’t have much to aspire to.
“There are no female role models, so there is still discrimination against girls. The whole community enjoys sport, but the girls do not have leagues, we just have tournaments, so we have to wait for a tournament to compete,” she says.
One woman to look up to is the president of Burundi’s football association, Lydia Nsekera, the first woman on FIFA’s executive committee, and who was profiled on these pages last month. Nsekera agrees that without regular competitive matches, women’s soccer will continue to lag behind. She has also identified financial reasons as one of the main roadblocks to developing the women’s game.
“In Africa, there are people who question the rationale for funding female football. But I am confident that, with the right encouragement, women’s football will evolve and reach the level of men,” Nsekera says decisively.
South Africa is one place where corporates have been captivated by the women’s game. In June, Sasol announced a four-year extension of its sponsorship for Banyana Banyana, the national women’s team, and the semi-professional soccer league for women. Many players in the league combine playing soccer while they are still studying.
At least in South Africa, there is some form of encouragement for girls to think seriously about the game. In other countries, especially those with more traditionalist ideas of the role of women, it is frowned upon for girls to take up the game.
FIFA’s unbanning of the hijab has helped for some, but Sora reveals that the Hodi girls’ team still face reprisal from their neighbors.
“The community looks down on us, they curse us and say things to us like, ‘you should not disrespect your culture’, but we continue to play, because when we play football, we are free.”
What the youngsters need are more people like Nassra Juma Mohammed, the founder of Zanzibar’s Women Fighters FC. Mohammed was inspired by the Swedish women’s soccer team, who visited the island in 1998, and wanted to start her own club.
The team are another of Africa’s success stories. They are sustainable because they draw funds from a small shop Mohammed started. And they are successful because their determination, more than their love of the game, allows them to challenge everyone from teachers to their husbands as they fight for their right to play soccer.
Some of the people standing in their way are hard-line religious men who claim women should not play soccer because “they shouldn’t wear shorts”. Even though these women continue to rebel against such restrictive ideals, if any one of them was to agree with the idea or felt she would have a better chance if she covered up, she need only don one of Javad’s hijabs to adhere to Islam, stay on the right side of the FIFA’s laws and still play the beautiful game.

Hijhab scores a goal against FIFA

Seated in an MBA class in Lausanne, Switzerland, several thousand miles away from his home in Kenya, 31-year-old Jimna Mbaru was told to do something that is considered taboo in many parts of Africa. Before embarking on the course, one professor asked the class to write their eulogies.
“I thought, how do I write my eulogy at 31?” says Mbaru during an interview at his Nairobi office.
“That exercise was meant to make us think long-term. When you die, how will you be remembered? No-one is remembered because he or she left a lot of money. When you think with the end in mind, you find yourself thinking about posterity and creating an institution that will outlive you.”
Decades later, Mbaru—a man whose name features prominently in conversations about Africa’s stock markets—is glad to have sat in that MBA class.
Now aged 66, Mbaru is retired and serves as chairman of his investment bank, Dyer &amp; Blair. He has diverse business interests in several companies, some of which are in the banking and insurance sectors. Mbaru was the driving force at the Nairobi Stock Exchange (NSE) where, as chairman, he was instrumental in transforming the exchange into a global market.
Mbaru describes stock exchanges in Africa as unique. The American approach was always through the equities route, followed later by the bond market.
“For new markets like Rwanda, I took the bond market route first. I advised their central bank to start by issuing bonds and bills with maturity of up to 182 days. Then they extended to one, two and five years so they could start building a yield curve. I knew the equities would come automatically.”
Mbaru was directly involved in establishing stock exchanges in Rwanda, Tanzania, Uganda, Zambia, Malawi, Namibia, Botswana, Mozambique and countries in West Africa.
The success of any stock market is intertwined with the leadership of a country and when he was asked to reorganize the Botswana Stock Exchange, the first thing he did was have a chat with the leaders of the country.
“There is no point of organizing a stock exchange unless a country is committed to it.”
Botswana was an interesting assignment because they had a budget surplus but no budget deficit.
“I recommended that their central bank issue bonds for purposes of managing monetary policy and liquidity in their banking system. They got surrogate bonds and the government decided to fund their pension funds over one year. This resulted in a budget deficit of five years and they were able to move formally into the market.”
Mbaru says the number of listed companies on the NSE has not grown substantially because many of the organizations in Kenya are either family-owned, government-owned or subsidiaries of multinationals which get money from their parent companies.
“They don’t need to raise a lot of capital from the market.”
But this has since changed as family-owned companies like Athi River Mining and Scangroup came to the market to raise money for purposes of expansion.
He says you can make a fortune from the stock market but it is not a place to make money in the short-term.
“We analyzed Kenya’s stock market and found that if you take a five-year horizon and you add dividends, bonuses and capital appreciation, all will average a 35% return per annum.”
Looking at the NSE, foreign investors are the major buyers.
“It is good because they provide liquidity to the stock market.”
With a vibrant secondary market, it means the primary market will be able to get their shares fully subscribed. Besides liquidity, foreign investors make the market vibrant because they do a lot of analysis and research before they invest.
“If Kenyans see foreigners buying they know the shares are good to buy. If anything, they force the local brokerages to upgrade and improve their services and research.”
Regarding the future of stock exchanges in Africa, Mbaru sees a lot of them being internationalized in terms of trading platforms and practice.
“They are also changing in that they will no longer be owned by players. They will be demutualized and will operate like businesses, like the Johannesburg and London stock exchanges.”
He adds that most will be owned substantially by the bigger stock exchanges.
“I see NASDAQ trying to buy Johannesburg or NSE.”

HOW WILL YOU BE  REMEMBERED?

After terrorists were rooted out of the Westgate shopping mall, a group of dignitaries flocked to the site of the siege. One of the first to visit the shopping mall was Phyllis Kandie, the cabinet secretary for East African affairs, commerce and tourism.
After laying a wreath, she turned to the swarming media and declared: “The country is still safe for tourists.”
<div id="attachment_2274" style="width: 310px" class="wp-caption alignleft"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" aria-describedby="caption-attachment-2274" class="size-medium wp-image-2274" src="/wp-content/uploads/2017/04/NM_00001208-300x201.jpg" alt="" width="300" height="201" />NAIROBI, KENYA &#8211; SEPTEMBER 23: Heavy smoke is seen from the site of the terrorist attack, Westgate Mall, on September 23, 2013 in Nairobi, Kenya. The attack occurred on Saturday, 10-15 gunmen from the extremist group Al-Shabab entered the mall and opened fire at random on shoppers; 68 deaths have been confirmed. (Photo by Gallo Images / Nation Media / Salaton Njau)</div>
One day later, the country’s principal secretary of Kenya’s treasury, Kamau Thugge, emerged to assure investors of the country’s security. The officials’ sentiments reflected the uncertainty over the effects the attacks committed by the terrorist group, Al Shabaab, which left 67 dead and dozens missing, on the Kenyan economy.
While government spin doctors insist that the siege will not have any effect, analysts predict a slight dent on economic growth. The most immediate impact was the closure of stores in Westgate, which housed international brands like Deacons, Clarks and other businesses, such as banks.
On a larger scale, global credit rating firm, Moody’s, predicts that Kenya’s economy will lose 0.5% of potential GDP growth this year. In an advisory to investors, the firm noted that the attack will affect Kenya’s growth and fiscal revenues, most directly through its effects on tourism.
This industry accounts for 2% of Kenya’s GDP and earned the country more than $13 billion last year, in addition to creating millions of jobs.
Moody’s could have been onto something. Barely a week after the siege, the governments of the United States, Britain, Australia and Sweden cautioned citizens against visiting Kenya, to the chagrin of Kenyan state officials who had pushed for the West not to do so. These countries account for half of the 1.7 million tourists who visited Kenya last year.
<div id="attachment_2276" style="width: 187px" class="wp-caption alignleft"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" aria-describedby="caption-attachment-2276" class="size-medium wp-image-2276" src="/wp-content/uploads/2017/04/RTX13XVR-177x300.jpg" alt="" width="177" height="300" />Kenya Defence Forces soldiers comb the rooftop of the Westgate shopping mall, on the fourth day since militants stormed into the mall, in Nairobi September 24, 2013. Somalia&#8217;s al Shabaab Islamist group said on Tuesday its militants were still holed up in a Kenyan shopping mall they attacked at the weekend and there were &#8220;countless dead bodies&#8221;, raising fears the death toll could be higher than 62. REUTERS/Noor Khamis (KENYA &#8211; Tags: CIVIL UNREST CRIME LAW MILITARY) &#8211; RTX13XVR</div>
Kenya, which is known for exotic wildlife safaris and pristine beaches, is traditionally a tourism hotspot. The attack came at a bad time. The sector’s peak season is from July to December and many hotels and parks had hoped to benefit from the many bookings normally recorded in this period. After the attack, some have recorded cancellations as visitors adopted a wait-and-see attitude.
The sector is also still reeling from the election blues in March, when visitors stayed away due to fears of a repeat of the post-election violence that took place in 2008. Last year, the uncertainties over elections and the European economic crisis led to a 1.9% decline in the number of tourists.
The attack and any political instability brought about by the trial of the country’s president, Uhuru Kenyatta, and his deputy, William Ruto, at the International Criminal Court will hurt risk ratings, making it difficult to raise money in foreign markets. Any money that is raised will also attract higher interest rates.
Kenya plans to issue a $1.5 billion Eurobond this year to finance rail, road and port upgrades. The country has a favorable rating by various firms. For instance, Standard and Poor’s rating for Kenya is ‘B+’ stable and Fitch has graded it ‘B+’ positive outlook. Weakened by the terrorist attacks, the favorable rating is also being assaulted by politicians.
There have been calls by the Senate and the National Assembly to ratify a motion to pull out of the Rome Statute that creates the ICC, where Kenyatta and Ruto are on trial. Moody’s has warned that Kenya risks being downgraded from a stable rating of B1 if it goes ahead with this, signifying a higher risk for investors.
A lower rating may deter investors with plans to put their money in Kenya in addition to raising premiums that insurers charge for terrorism cover. George Otieno, the chief executive officer of Africa Trade Insurance Agency, an institution that insures investors against terrorism in different countries, told reporters that premiums are likely to go up for those taking terrorism and sabotage cover. However, he predicted that the costs will go down in the long run.
In addition to insurance, firms will also have to spend more on security by installing CCTV cameras, alarms and metal detectors. They will also have to train employees and arrange back-up for their data. All this will increase the cost of doing business.
The government, under pressure after analysts accused them of bungling the intelligence gathered before the attacks, is likely to increase spending on security and defense.
“This will have the consequence of raising the government’s gaping budget deficit,” noted Laura Chakava of investment firm Alpha Africa Asset Managers. Kenya’s budget deficit has grown from 6.5% of the GDP in the 2012/2013 fiscal year to 7.9% in 2013/2014, marking a 1.4% increase. This is against a target of 5%.
Though there are no reliable studies on the effect terrorism, like the Westgate attack, will have on the flow of foreign direct investment in Kenya, research by American scholars offers a glimpse.
In a paper published this year, Subhayu Bandyopadhyay of the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis, Todd Sandler of the University of Texas at Dallas and Javed Younas of the American University of Sharjah looked at how terrorist activity had impacted foreign direct investment (FDI) to 78 developing countries between 1984 and 2008. They noted that one domestic terrorist incident per 100,000 persons reduces net FDI between $323.60 million and $512.94 million for an average country. On the other hand one transnational terrorist incident per 100,000 persons reduces net FDI between $296.49 million and $735.65 million.
Kenya plans to attract $8 billion in foreign investments over the next five years.
However, both governments and analysts agree on one thing; the fundamentals of the Kenyan economy are sound. Unless other factors crop up, the attacks will only have a short to medium-term effect on growth.

The Cost of Terror In The Mall

In silence and solitude we traverse the scrub-specked grasslands of Kenya’s famed Masai Mara in search of an elusive leopard spotted the previous day.
The rains have begun and newly formed rivers and gorges pockmark a terrain sketched with the region’s emblematic acacia trees. Shuka-clad Masai tend cattle on conservancy land fringing the national reserve and copious wildlife blankets the expanse. But few of the roughly 700,000 tourists who descend annually upon one of  the Seven New Wonders of the Natural World remain. Soon, shuttered camps will reopen and from July through October crowds will return to witness the Great Migration of countless wildebeest, zebra and other game transiting from Tanzania’s adjoining Serengeti National Park.
Navigating the muddy soil, even in a tank-like vehicle, proves challenging. But perseverance rewards us with remarkable sights. A buoyant Thompson Gazelle inexplicably chases a rare Denham’s bustard, lions feast on zebra remnants, the carcass of a newly killed giraffe sadly succumbs to scavengers, while herds of majestic elephants lumber across the plains. Bones and skulls litter the landscape, but rebirth abounds. An endangered cheetah lounges amid camouflaging scrub just meters from her two young cubs. Babies of every endemic breed suckle their mothers’ teats as siblings frolic nearby. It’s the natural order of things and I feel privileged to behold this diverse kingdom without mobs encroaching.
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Unfortunately, serenity masks peril as escalating human-animal conflict and an ivory poaching pandemic threatens survival of the animals we come to see.
Enter the crusaders, one of whom is Kenyan native Richard Roberts, founder of The Mara Elephant Project (MEP). It works alongside government and environmental groups—including the Kenya Wildlife Service (KWS), American-based Escape Foundation and prominent NGO Save The Elephants. The privately funded non-profit organization was created in 2011 to help communities “combat the increasing human-animal discord” and augment anti-poaching efforts. In 2012, the Mara suffered 149 elephant mortalities, 139 of those attributed to poaching.
“Too many elephants were getting killed. Something needed to be done to help farmers and wildlife coexist Without wildlife there is no tourism… and tourism is wildlife’s savior. There are more eyes on the ground and more incentive to protect the animals,” says Roberts. And as the tourist industry accounts for 14 percent of Kenya’s GDP, raking in $1.2 billion in 2011, that’s a lot of incentive to keep visitors coming.
“A funny disconnect exists. The Masai love tourism but don’t like the wildlife. They don’t see the correlation,” adds Marc Goss, director of MEP and manager of Mara North Conservancy.
But that’s not a universal sentiment, especially amongst the more than 100 Masai, who have thus far benefited from sponsored training at the Mara’s Rekero Camp guide school. For them, the dual crisis is evident as I learn from Teketi “Stephen” Nabala, my ardently well-informed guide from the exclusive Ngerende Island Lodge.
“We [Masai] benefit greatly from tourism, economically and socially. Exposure to more people and increased education is beginning to open eyes to the importance of protecting our ecosystem.”
Recent demonstrations in the Mara calling for stronger government action substantiate changing attitudes.
Since the reserve opened in 1948 on a scant 520 kilometers­—today park and conservancy land spans more than 1,500km2—tourism has exploded. The Masai Mara alone generates $50 million annually.  In the mid-nineties, privately-managed conservancies sprouted on the reserve’s perimeters when Masai began leasing newly-owned parcels of formerly communal land to lodge operators. This arrangement provides income, employment and camp-endorsed community support for residents, while visitor fees ($70 to $100 for non-East African residents) subsidize Conservancy management and preservation efforts.
But it’s a precarious balancing act. Animals don’t recognize boundaries and often venture outside protected areas. In the past two years, farmers increasingly greet encroaching elephants with violence, while the acute resurgence of poaching continues unabated. These are complex and convoluted issues stemming from Kenya’s ballooning population (up from seven to 43 million since 1963), traditional pastoralist Masai culture embracing agriculture, limited arable land and the revitalized, highly profitable, high-demand illegal ivory trade.
<img loading="lazy" decoding="async" class="size-medium wp-image-31202 alignleft" src="http://www.forbesafrica.com/app/uploads/2017/05/IMG_6148-300x200.jpg" alt="" width="300" height="200" srcset="https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/05/IMG_6148-300x200.jpg 300w, https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/05/IMG_6148-600x400.jpg 600w, https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/05/IMG_6148-768x512.jpg 768w, https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/05/IMG_6148.jpg 1024w" sizes="(max-width: 300px) 100vw, 300px" />
Although the MEP collars and monitors Mara elephants, maintains a network of paid informants and two roving general security teams, “our resources are insufficient,” says Roberts.
Hoping to secure an airplane and additional security teams this year, it all comes down to funding.
“We’re seeing that poachers are becoming more organized and lethal, further emphasizing the need to expand MEP,” Goss interjects.
“The good news is that the KWS has many dedicated employees with whom we share information and resources. Kenya is very lucky to have one central wildlife service, which eliminates the kind of bureaucracy Tanzania has,” says Roberts.
Further encouragement derives from the new constitution that empowers the county rather than local government to oversee the Mara.
“We’re hopeful that things will improve with decentralization and the recent election of Narok County Governor Samuel Tunai. If all private sector revenue coming from Narok was used in a transparent manner it would be the third richest county in Kenya. If that money was used sustainably, we would solve a lot of these issues,” says Goss.
“In the past, administrators ignored anything going on outside their boundaries,” notes Ol Chorro Conservancy Manager James Hardy.
“Everyone is now realizing that we’re in this together and that one region’s problems ultimately affect and belong to all [regions]. We’ve recently established a conservancies forum to address issues and voice concerns on a national level.”
It’s Roberts’ birthday and he’s invited a few friends to celebrate. Pouring rain, snorting hippos and the menacing yelps of hyenas provide the soundtrack. Yet even in the relaxed ambiance of Roberts’ tented camp, conversation turns serious. Will the newly decentralized government be as effective as hoped? Will education help mitigate the human-animal and poaching crises? Will national reserve and conservancy entrance fees get to the right places and be used efficiently?
Before returning to my tent, I’m treated to a bedtime story that hinders any chance of peaceful sleep. It’s the tale of a huge and beloved Mara elephant named Heritage, who, although collared, had twice been wounded and treated for farmer-inflicted injuries. “We thought this elephant was blessed with a cat’s nine lives. Then a few weeks ago he was poached,” Goss laments, clearly taking it personally.
Heritage’s death adds yet another to the toll of seven mutilated bulls discovered in Mara West last December. Since January, 74 elephants have been slaughtered in Kenya. In 2012, a reported 656 elephants were killed (149 in the Mara), up from 578 in 2011. Samburu and Tsavo National Parks are especially vulnerable, the latter having lost 12 elephants, including a two-month-old calf, in March. In total, wildlife organization Born Free estimates that more than 32,000 elephants have been killed since the beginning of 2012.
Fueled by an insatiable Asian appetite for ivory, particularly amongst China’s newly affluent, the “shifta” with suspected links to Al-Qaeda, as some speculate, through Al-Shabaab in neighboring Somalia, are infiltrating Kenya in record numbers. With a kilogram of ivory fetching up to $2,000, this illicit industry nets an estimated $7 billion annually.
Most illegal large-scale ivory seizures over the last three years have originated in Kenya and Tanzania, which, alongside Uganda and five Asian nations were targeted at the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora (CITES) conference in March for failing to adequately crack down on the ivory trade.
<img loading="lazy" decoding="async" class="alignnone size-medium wp-image-31201" src="http://www.forbesafrica.com/app/uploads/2017/05/IMG_2517-300x200.jpg" alt="" width="300" height="200" srcset="https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/05/IMG_2517-300x200.jpg 300w, https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/05/IMG_2517-600x401.jpg 600w, https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/05/IMG_2517-768x513.jpg 768w, https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/05/IMG_2517.jpg 1024w" sizes="(max-width: 300px) 100vw, 300px" />
The good guys face tough odds as organized cartels, allegedly unscrupulous officials and outdated Kenyan laws that impose absurdly tame poaching penalties, conspire against them.
That said, notwithstanding a recent poor track record, Kenya has long been at the forefront of wildlife conservation. One of the first African countries to ban trophy hunting in 1973, Kenya vehemently opposed the CITES edict permitting China to purchase non–poached ivory and is currently countering Tanzania’s attempt to remove elephants from the endangered species list. To date, Kenya has allied with 16 African nations (two-thirds of the 23 member African Elephants Coalition) to quash the proposal that will repave the way for legal ivory sales.
Despite international outcry and support, officials and NGOs in Kenya and throughout Africa are fighting an uphill battle. A CITES report last June documented the highest African poaching numbers in a decade and the most ivory seizures recorded since 1989. The contraband ivory trade has more than doubled globally since 2007 and is three times larger than in 1998.
“The new wave of killing elephants in Africa is in many ways far graver than the crisis of the 1970s and 1980s… there are fewer elephants and demand is far higher. Record ivory prices in the Far East are fueling poachers, organized crime and political instability across the African elephant range and the situation shows no sign of calming,” wrote Save The Elephants founder Iain Douglas-Hamilton in the January-March issue of conservation journal SWARA.
Like most visitors, I journeyed to the Mara in pursuit of spotting big game. But, I depart with something far more indelible than beautiful photos, muddy shoes and Masai beaded jewelry. I take with me a profound awareness and renewed appreciation for the consequences of human infringement on our fragile planet. And a fierce desire to do s

2301

A New Wave Of Killing

On December 1, 1997, David Kinjah won a cycle race in Kenya on a day that was to change his life and help shape the future winner of the Tour de France.
As Kinjah sat high in the saddle, flushed with victory, Jane Froome walked up with her 12-year-old son, Chris.
“The mum was introducing the boy to the guy who won the race,” says Kinjah.
Froome said she tried to enter her son, but found there was no junior category. She asked Kinjah to train young Chris.
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That moment sowed the seed of a Tour de France victory and turned Kinjah into training a string of Kenyan cyclists.
A week later, Froome went to visit Kinjah in Muguga, his village—a 20-minute drive from Nairobi.
“The mother was a bit unsure and afraid about bringing Chris to the village. Chris was shy and not such a strong rider. But he loved bikes and soon opened up and enjoyed the village life. With time, the mother was now a bit more comfortable with him coming to the village,” says Kinjah.
In the steep hills around the village, Froome gathered the power that was to drive him over the finish line in Paris. By the time he went to school in South Africa, the cycling world was opening up.
“He saw how big a sport cycling is and he connected with what we were doing here. When he came back to Kenya for school holidays he was much more energized and we would spend weeks camping and riding,” says Kinjah.
On July 28, Kinjah and the Safari Simbaz team rode to Muguga, to celebrate Froome’s victory.
“There has been a lot of buzz in the local and international press wanting to know what we are doing after a Kenyan born rider went on to win the tour,” says Kinjah.
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Kinjah, 41, was born in Kenya’s Rift Valley, in the town of Eldoret, where his dad worked as a manager at a textile firm. He was the fourth born in a family of seven. When he was six, the family moved to the coastal town of Mombasa.
“I was never interested in bicycles because I played a lot of table tennis and was an altar boy at a catholic church in Mombasa,” he says.
In his free time, he played beach soccer and volleyball. The only problem was the beach was 20km from home.
In 1994, Kinjah spent $11 pocket money on a BMX bike, so he could pedal to the beach.
“Slowly the other cyclists on the road started to be my competition. I used to ride harder and faster so that they [were] not passing me. I used to enter into all these unofficial competitions on the road,” he says.
Kinjah began fixing and modifying his own bike. His father, who was a manager at a steel factory, helped him with spanners and spares, but that is as far as it went.
“My dad was harsh when I started cycling. He never supported my cycling. But even though my mum did not have money she was curious to see what I was doing with the bike,” he says.
On the road, he met cyclists like Patrick Tindi and Sabry Mohammed, who competed in races in Mombasa.
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“Tindi is one of the guys who had confidence in me and he paid for my ticket to attend my first national race,” he says.
Matthews Maina was another Kenyan cyclist who taught Kinjah racing strategy. Despite this, his first race proved a disaster.
“The race was 120 kilometers but I was naïve and started off very fast and by the 70th kilometer I was burnt out, so I blacked out in a bush,” he says.
Kinjah went on to win national races and competed in the 1995 All Africa Games, in Zimbabwe. He rode professionally in Europe and rode a 2,500km race in Australia.
In 2000, he founded the Safari Simbaz, which trains around 20 youngsters aged between 15 and 23. One day, he hopes to set up an academy with Froome.
For now, Kinjah’s star pupil is covered in Tour de France glory and his once skeptical father is now his number one fan.

The Kenyan Who Powered  A Shy Boy To Glory

Four years ago, Anne Githuku-Shongwe watched her teenage son play a video game called Civilization. The game challenged him to rebuild civilizations and imagine different scenarios. In his mind, he became King Mansa Musa, the ancient leader of the Malian Empire. As he excitedly explained what he was doing, his mother got an idea.
“It all came together at that minute through observing my son. It was a learning by doing approach, and I saw how powerful the visual and interaction process was,” she says.
Even before she saw her son playing the game, Githuku-Shongwe wanted to create a platform that would shape the mindset of young Africans, by equipping them with life skills.
“Whenever, I saw young boys and girls on the streets in Senegal, Rwanda or Kenya, I would ask myself, ‘How can you teach them if they can’t use the traditional learning routes?’ Also, conversations with my children on their role models like Hannah Montana, Bill Gates or Beyoncé had me worried that the youth weren’t being exposed to positive African media content. I wanted to create a sort of virtual learning academy that could hold their attention span. Gaming using African content was the answer.”
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This saw the end of her 15-year career with the United Nations, as an advisor on Africa’s development, and she began forging ahead as an entrepreneur.
“A colleague made a $1,000 bet with me that I would be back in six months. He gave me big brother advice by using examples of people who had left cushy jobs at the UN and returned shortly,” she says.
Determined to have the last laugh, she began studying games and managed to get a grant from the Kellogg Foundation for research. Combined with her savings, she was ready to build her social enterprise.
“I knew that to reach the masses in an affordable way, we had to use mobile phones, as Africa has the highest penetration rate in the world, especially among the youth. The games are free for the end user, with partners such as Ford Foundation, UN Women, Nokia and Vodafone paying for the costs,” says Githuku-Shongwe.
Today, Afroes—a play on the words ‘African’ and ‘heroes’—creates African mobile and online video games and applications for fun interactive learning. Afroes has built a series of mobile games with more than 450,000 players in South Africa, Kenya, and Ghana and further afield in India, Indonesia, Guyana and the Caribbean.
Her first game, Champs Chase, was developed in partnership with the Nelson Mandela Children’s Fund during the 2010 FIFA World Cup—to extend the Champions for Children campaign that protects children from abuse. The players took on the role of a character that had to save other children from harmful situations and predators.
Moraba is another award-winning mobile game that addresses difficult questions of gender-based violence and challenges players to contemplate their beliefs about sexual relations and sexual violence. The most recent release Haki: Chaguo Ni Lako, meaning Justice: the choice is yours, in Swahili, was designed to inform and empower the Kenyan youth to make wise choices when they went to the polls in March.
“We have made great strides, won several awards with the five games and have a full-time team of nine based in Kenya and South Africa, but it has been tough and we have many more milestones to achieve. Our biggest challenge is not only creating awareness on the power of ‘gamification’, but having our clients understand the cost of technology,” says Githuku-Shongwe.
She gets numerous requests from organizations to create games, but once the quote is received, many are surprised. And they still have to build the player-base through marketing and promotion.
“In the digital marketing world, it is a tough sell, but we know that you can push stronger engagement and brand loyalty through a ‘gamified’ product,” she says.
On every project, she works with a contracted team of 15 to 20 called ‘Mobiv8tors’, whose responsibilities are data collection, distribution, promotion and getting feedback from players.
Githuku-Shongwe is adamant that Afroes isn’t a short-term project but a marathon.
“When I meet a lot of techpreneurs in Africa, I sense that they are in a hurry for quick success to get the Facebook or Google effect. They come up with one product—it fizzles out and then move to grab onto the next one. We need to create digital solutions for the future of Africa by thinking ahead strategically. This requires a huge long-term investment and a motivation that’s bigger than quick success.”
Her focus is to build a learning academy that is gamified so as to push relevant content and introduce organizational learning for corporates, rather than be involved in game campaigns.
The question that remains is whether she collected on her $1,000 bet.
“I approached my former colleague 18 months after I began. He was shocked that I was still in the game and offered to take me out for lunch. It wasn’t a $1,000 lunch but I have proved I am here to stay.”

The Woman Who Gambled On Gaming

A new generation of African entrepreneurs and businesses is emerging. They are challenging the old way of doing business and driving cross-border growth.
Kenya’s ICT companies are investing in Rwanda and are now looking to enter Nigeria, while United Bank for Africa and other Nigerian banks are rapidly expanding into Africa. In 2009, South Africa invested $1.6 billion (FDI outflows) into other African countries. MTN, a South African mobile giant, operates in 21 African countries; and Glo, a Nigerian mobile operator, operates in the Republic of Benin, Ghana and Côte d’Ivoire.
Africa’s statistics speak of tremendous potential: the continent is the size of China, Mexico, Europe, India, the States and Japan combined. The population will soon surpass China, with a middle class as big as India’s. Africa has enjoyed more than a decade of sustained GDP growth, which has often outstripped many other parts of the world.
There is frustration in that Africans are not reaping the rewards of the current global investor confidence. The mass export of commodities doesn’t see wealth trickle down.
Home-grown investments, focused on value-adding industries, are the key to changing this dynamic.
Africans still seem to choose products and investments from outside the continent. They prefer to export outside Africa rather than to trade, manufacture and add value within. Many African countries continue to trade raw materials but they don’t have the capability to refine or process, so they import the finished products from outside of Africa.
We need to understand what is preventing Africa from being home to value-adding and value-creating businesses. Why, for example, is Africa’s agricultural richness not generating an integrated growing and processing industry as it has done in Brazil?
Africa requires an environment that facilitates investment and greater market integration. The current weaknesses—corruption, high start-up costs, poor infrastructure—are well-known. But our study will also shed light on the legal, social and cultural differences within Africa that restrict cross-border investments.
There need to be integrated regional production chains within Africa, where Africa’s raw materials are processed into finished goods to be traded. Regional trading blocs— including the Tripartite Free Trade Area, which encompasses the East African Community, the Common Market for Eastern and Southern Africa and the Southern African Development Community—would thus thrive, paving the way for a Continental Free Trade Area, that would produce and trade high value-added goods internally.
Greater market integration in Africa will lead to a significant reduction in the cost of doing business and alleviate some of the problems associated with securing work permits and labor mobility.
Over the long-term, Africa’s competitiveness will hinge to a great degree on how well we educate our young people. Often, the most talented Africans have sought educational advancement and careers overseas, but a combination of transformational educational technology, growing opportunities at home and the poor global economic climate could see this brain drain becoming a brain gain. Retaining talent, home-grown or otherwise, is critical. Policy that enables skilled Africans to work across our borders more easily will help achieve this goal.
Never have circumstances been more propitious for African business. A rise in disposable incomes, high rates of urbanization and a fast-growing working-age population speak of an emerging class of purchasers of consumer goods, financial services and infrastructure, as well as a potential source of manpower for industrialization and agricultural development.
Africans must explore ways to move beyond regional differences and competition to build Africa together from within, so that Africans at all levels become the primary beneficiaries of the continent’s growth.

Unite And Prosper

The polls were open, business was closed. Fourteen million Kenyans queued up across the country to cast their votes on March 4 in what many feared would be another violent election.
For most entrepreneurs it was far from business as usual. The Monday was declared a public holiday just after month-end when shoppers normally spend fistfuls of their hard-earned shillings. The violence of 2007 was fresh in many minds and for days the capital, Nairobi, was a ghost town.
“I remember very well December 27, 2007. When the problems arose it was just around the 31st of December, we had actually come to work. It was business as usual. Suddenly we had some police officers who came into the store and said we need to shut the store and go home. There is violence coming our way,” says Karim Fazal chairman of Little Red—a Nairobi luxury designer store.
Within the hour, on that fateful December day, a mob clashed with police just outside the store in Nairobi’s Kimathi Street, says Fazal. He was trapped in his store for nearly an hour with his workers, customers and passers-by, who were trying to shelter from the violence.
The unrest spread and flared into ethnic violence that left more than 1,200 people dead and 600,000 homeless. Rioters destroyed property and productivity collapsed. The country’s economy came to a standstill and the GDP growth for 2008 fell to the country’s lowest ever, 1.7%, on the cusp of the world economic crisis.
This time around, Fazal, along with other entrepreneurs, took expensive political risk insurance cover.
“The insurance charged us two shillings for every thousand shillings worth of goods and two shillings for loss of business which I took out for three months,” says Fazal.
At the very least, Kenyan insurance companies banded together to offer cheaper political risk insurance for business.
“Loss of business will not just be prevalent to the first two days, not the day for voting and not the following one. This will carry on until we get the election results out and that the results are accepted by all parties concerned until we see normalcy returning to the business environment,” says Fazal.
Kenya’s Independent Electoral and Boundaries Commission (IEBC) promised free, fair and secure elections. The voting was so, bar violent clashes in Mombasa that claimed 19 lives—including four police officers. The announcement of results, in a two-horse race between presidential candidates Uhuru Kenyatta and Raila Odinga, also proved peaceful.
“There seems to be a lack of security in the CBD, which will then lead to thugs taking advantage of the situation, which has been prevalent in Nairobi in the past few days because of the police being deployed at the polling centers to make sure things are peaceful. So in that way, we felt that there was lack of security,” says Fazal.
It took six hours for Fazal to cast his vote on March 4. His dream: the election of a leader who will bring peace and unity to Kenya; one who will also foster business.
“When you take the insecurity, the weariness and trepidations that we feel pre- and post-elections that should not be the case in this country. I am hoping for the next elections we will not have to look at this ever again,” concludes Fazal.
Millions of Kenyans are likely to agree.

Tag: Kenya

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