African issues Archives

Category Archive For "African issues"

The barriers to citizen engagement

The Open Institute works in two main ways as regards government – citizen relations. First, we promote proactive government transparency and second, we work with citizen groups and CSOs to foster active citizenship. Government transparency has in the past decade been achieved, to some level of success, by implementing ideas such as building open data platforms, and …

A teenager’s pregnancy changed the destinies of two people forever.

Here’s the story of how Benjamin Katana dropped out of school to become a breadwinner When I started telling you the stories of Kenyans who don’t exist despite the fact that you see them every day as you walk and drive around, I started with this blogpost in which there was a story of Katana, …

To thrive, professionals must go rural

This week I took interest in seeing a tweet by an engineer who I understood to express tongue-in-cheek, her frustration in being unable to find “innovative engineering” work. This, she said, despite having gone to university for 5 years. I took a moment to ask her what she meant by “Innovative engineering” and she defined …

These are ways to make people count

A couple of weeks ago, I wrote here about Mama Furaha, a woman that I met that does not officially exist and how many people don’t count. I have so many more stories of real people and I will be telling you about them. One of the people I will often tell you about is …

There are people who don’t exist (Story 1)

The story of Mama Furaha and her group (Kilifi County). There are people who live in Kenya but don’t exist. Mama Furaha is 40 years old this year – at least that is her estimate because she is not exactly sure which day she was born. She doesn’t look 40 – more like a spry …

I am a writer first and foremost. I am passionate about social entrepreneurship, which I define by finding ways to innovate the world’s processes to make life better for people – whether in business or in the non-profit sector. I am professionally involved at the Open Institute, Thellesi Co and various agricultural ventures.