Education: Kenya’s Lacking Covid Response, and How to Improve.
Admittedly, everything has been a lot harder for everyone since the realities of Covid — 19 became our new normal. Some of these challenges affect the very core of how education is administered across the world. For the context of this piece, I will focus on what has largely been portrayed as Kenya's response, or lack thereof. The things you see online and on the news largely portray embarrassment, anger, and bewildering despair from multiple stakeholders.
A couple of months ago, there was a video of young girls at school premises…
In 1944 there was the invasion of Normandy, where allied troops focused their attention on the beaches — they staged their counter-invasion of Europe, and in effect won the Second World War. In business, the idea of a Beachhead Strategy focuses on resources being dedicated to a smaller market area (product/ category/ segment) to turn it into a stronghold before advancing to the broader market segments or industries. It is the conventional way of dominating smaller segments of a market, product, or industry and leveraging that capacity to dominate the rest of the focus.
Retail in East Africa remains a…
What has changed in the wider world? What do you think about leadership and leading? How much has power shifted? Who holds it, and who is effectively using or transmitting it? Admittedly, writing about Leadership and Power is not my primary focus but events as they occur in business, politics, social spheres, and just about every traditional leadership logical sense has shifted — away from what has existed for decades. Adaptation to moments in time is a lot louder today than it has ever been at any given time in history.
We never really think about how we learned greetings growing up. Often, parents and guardians are excited, and competitively so when a toddler says ‘Mama’ or ‘Papa’ as their first words — depending on which native or characteristic language is spoken in a household. Language and how to communicate is something I graciously credit my father for teaching me, deliberately and subconsciously. I think my father was very ‘aspirational’, by a typical African household’s standards. Like most ‘forward-looking’ kids, English was the preferred mode of communication — perhaps informed by the need to be articulate in future career paths. It…
The Pride Lands of Africa, The Kingdom of Wakanda, The African nation of Zamunda, The Equatorial Kundu and The State of Sangala. There are thousands of fictional African states showcased in various television series and movies for decades. These are just a few populous ones from Lion King, Black Panther, Coming to America, The West Wing and 24. Often, there is extensive outrage online whenever a picture depicts an African nation in undesired light. In recent times, there have been concerns about Lion King having a setting in East Africa — but lacking in featuring Kenyan Artistes. These complaints stretch further to Disney’s trademarking of “Hakuna Matata”, the alleged theft of the Kenyan Kiondo by a Japanese enterprise and the appropriation of the Kikoi as British, negating its Kenyan history.
Various media reports have brought forth a discussion of the personality that African Countries and their kin are given. From pictures of malady, craving or supreme destitution to giving an account of fear-mongering and turmoil in a political challenge; there has consistently been a feeling of shamefulness — which thanks to the digital and social media age, African netizens have been cautious in pushing back and moving in the direction of making a personality that either speaks to them or their ideal standpoint. …
For the past ten years, terrorism is a subject I have had to contend with on a personal level. Whether it is meeting someone new, explaining a physical defect either from a direct inquiry or from personal insecurity I feel necessary to get past so that I can focus on other matters at hand. I have always avoided weighing in on a deeper or intellectual level. As it were, on 20th December 2010, I got caught up in an attack orchestrated by Al Shabaab — a jihadist fundamentalist group based in East Africa, primarily in Somalia and which has pledged…
Zack Mukewa
Strategist. Innovation, Growth & Inclusive Development interests. Heterodox Economics. PhD Student.
