- Kibera Community Youth Programme is a community- based organization formed and run by a group of young people in the Kibera slum in Nairobi. The group have been manufacturing and selling solar torches going by the trade name Kibulight. We recently got the opportunity to briefly interview Elizabeth Otieno, a Programme Manager of the organisation regarding the group’s solar energy project. She told us though the group started assembling the Kibulight torches last year, the organisation has been implementing solar project for years. In fact in 2007, KCYP won a clean energy award in Switzerland for their solar technology program. The market reception for the torches has been promi…

- [justify]Sunday July 11th 2010 marked the annual commemoration of World Population Day which seeks to raise awareness of global population issues. The event was inspired by Five Billion Day marked on July 11th 1987, approximately the date on which the world’s population reached five billion people. And even though globalization has meant that youth experiences in the developed and developing countries are converging with the advent of new communications such as the internet and mobile phones; sub-Saharan Africa is grappling with a critical population challenge which if not addressed will literally explode. The bubble that’s inflating is called the youth bulge, a social ph…

- [justify]Recently, once again Kenyans were shocked as they watched the death toll rise of consumers of the illicit brew – changaa in Shauri Moyo Estate in Nairobi’s sprawling Eastlands area; which as of today has reached 9 according to the Daily Nation. Changaa is a local brew that resembles vodka, Tanzania’s Konyagi and Uganda’s Waragi. However unlike it’s East African sisters, changaa has not as yet been legalized. This is not the first such case in Kenya. In June 2005, 49 people died in Machakos (Eastern Province) after they consumed an illicit drink suspected to have been laced with a poisonous chemical, and it seems that such cases are not going to…

- [justify]SAGE Kenya is a country chapter of the Students for the Advancement of Global Entrepreneurship, a global community of teenage entrepreneurs sharing a common purpose. Started in 2009, Sage Kenya’s mission is to help create the next generation of entrepreneurial leaders whose innovations and social enterprises address the world’s major unmet needs. Much of Sage Kenya’s work is currently within Western Kenya preparing students for success in college and in the competitive global community by linking them to role models from Maseno and Great Lakes Universities. SAGE Kenya has also worked with high schools within Kisumu East and West District to inculcate the c…

- Youth 4 a Better Future Campaign is an ongoing environmental and social campaign that promotes market driven agriculture, enterprise development, environmental conservation and research. It is an initiative of Maa Community Foundation, Health Awareness Peer Education Programme (HAPEP), IMPACT Kenya Youth Initiative, Tabaiki Sports Association, KEYFORD and STOMAZ. Its main objective is to raise awareness on environmental, health, sports and entrepreneurship development. Currently the project has a very successful solid waste management enterprise in Narok town, a bee keeping project, a digital village centre, a goat project, an organic tomato farm project, a tree nurseries project,…

- This year Africans are eagerly anticipating the World Cup which for the first time will be held on African soil. For many youth, this is the opportunity to showcase our local talent. The dream of playing for a European team is more enticing than even the prospect of playing for local teams. In Kenya, football development has been adversely impacted by politics, and except for a few clubs that offer subsistence allowance, football can hardly be seen as a sustainable livelihood. And with the numbers of urban youth living in slums rising, football has emerged for the lucky few as a passport out of poverty. Recently Al Jazeera’s People and Power programme featured a neglected as…

- Last night on the news, Kenyans got to witness Dorothy Angote, the Permanent Secretary in the Ministry of Lands leading what was a day-long graft busting raid on junior officials in her Ministry. The Ministry which handles nearly five million title deeds, has been continuously been named as being one of the top most corrupt public institutions in the country. For her efforts, the PS unearthed thousands of files that had been stashed, some of which had been “missing” since the 1990s. Kenyans have long become used to the phantom menace called “missing” files. The ghost appears out of nowhere just when one needs to undertake a transaction with the government. Any…

- According to the World Health Organisation, gender-based violence is a major public health and human rights problem throughout the world. Though the assault is carried on in the privacy of the home, the violation is widely seen as a "private" family affair, and for some - a normal part of life. In Kenya, an estimated 49% of married women were physically abused by their husbands (Borwankar et. al, 2008). Though violence against women mainly occurs in the form of physical and sexual assault; it takes many forms including emotional abuse, verbal abuse, and economic abuse. Economic abuse includes the controlling of finances; not allowing one's partner to venture into enter…

- There was uproar on twitter this morning regarding Kibera Tours, a website advertising slum tours in Africa’s largest slum. Indeed Kibera Tours is not the first nor will it be the last outfit trying to make money out of poverty. Tourists seeking such experiences can go to Dharavi in Mumbai - the biggest slum in Asia, the favelas of Rio de Janeiro, South Africa’s townships or even Mexico City’s garbage dumps. Such escapades have been made even more popular by celebrities who sometime go by the title “Ambassadors” such as Angelina Jolie and Chris Rock, who after a tour of the ramshackle huts, having had to hold their breath while passing the open sewers, duck…

- In a landmark case settled this week, the family of the “Ogoni 9” executed in 1995 received a US$ 15.5 million payout from Royal Dutch Shell company. The case goes back to the 1990’s in Nigeria where it was alleged that Shell had a long history of closely working with the Nigerian government to quell popular opposition to its business operations in the Niger Delta region; home of the Ogoni people. Even though Nigeria is an oil-rich nation, environmental and human rights activists claim that oil and oil companies have brought nothing but poverty, environmental devastation and widespread incidences of severe human rights abuses to the inhabitants of the Delta. Oil spills…

The Africa Development Index 2008/09 (ADI) published by the World Bank focused on the urgent need for interventions to address the ever increasing numbers of unemployed youth. - Indeed the index can be described as the World Bank’s best book of numbers on Africa covering more than 1,400 indicators on the economy, human development, private sector development, governance, environment, and aid to Africa, with a series of indicators dating back to 1965. As such, the indicators provide a useful platform to analyze the socio-economic factors that have an impact on the business environment in Africa. On doing an analysis on youth entrepreneurship opportunities, we came across some figures…

As much as entrepreneurs are the engine of growth for the economy, in their own way their actions can also create positive social change. - Patrick is a young entrepreneur in his mid 30’s who has a posho mill (maize flour grinding mill) outside Nairobi. Having grown up in hard circumstances, he had to leave school at a young age. However, through sheer hard work, determination and belief in himself, he has managed to start a small and successful enterprise, which he also runs with his wife Mary. But Patrick also has another side. Having been left at a young age to fend for his younger siblings, this has cultivated a sense of social responsibility in him and his wife. They have both bee…

It turns out many of the injured and killed in the January 31st Sachangwan oil tanker explosion were youths. Noah Cheploen writing in a Daily Nation article in early February interviewed a few of the young survivors. With a growing population of idle youth and no employment opportunities forthcoming, it is not at all surprising that they took advantage of the overturned tanker in order to make some money just to put some food on the table. - “Those who were able to get the oil sold it at Sh. 50 per litre, while others sold a 20 litre jerry can for Sh. 500” – Oil spill survivors blame poverty, Daily Nation Wednesday February 4th, 2009. Apart from harrowing tales of what t…

- You must seize your dreams and ambitions and act on them” – Titus Muya, founder of Family Bank. An article published last month in the Business Daily had an in depth feature written by Titus Muya, the founder of Family Bank who started the bank in 1984 as a building society; and which has grown to become one of Kenya’s leading banks, with a customer base of close to 600,000 clients with assets in excess of Sh10 billion. Fascinatingly, on the same page, there was a story on Bank of America (though on different content) that brought forth striking parallels between Muya and Bank of America’s founder Amadeo Peter Giannini. Though both entrepreneurs created their…

- An article published in the mid 1990’s “The Coming of Anarchy” by journalist Robert Kaplan offers several lessons which if not considered, could result in failed states ala Liberia, courtesy of the youth who rise up and say ENOUGH! The post-election violence of 2007 and early 2008 aptly demonstrated that the barrier between crime and politically instigated tyranny is increasingly becoming blurred, particularly in urban centres. Kaplan’s vivid description in his article of cities in West Africa, echoes the state of Kenya’s urban slums where “streets are unlit; the police often lack gasoline for their vehicles; armed burglars, carjackers, and muggers pr…