Photo Credit: SaBigFive via Wikispaces Every safari fan knows what the Big Five are – the five large animals that can be found in parts of Africa such as Kenya’s Maasai Mara National Reserve: the lion, rhino, leopard, Cape buffalo, and elephant. These are interesting times to watch Kenya, and not just because the rainy… Read More

When I visited Nairobi a few weeks ago, the signs of President Obama’s recent visit to attend the Global Entrepreneurship Summit were still clearly visible all around – from welcome posters to the spruced-up cityscape. I was in Kenya to work with CIPE’s partner organization, Kenya Association of Manufacturers (KAM), on a training-of-trainers workshop devoted… Read More

Transparency International’s Corruption Perceptions Index ranks Kenya in a distant 136th place. That low ranking confirms the sentiment often encountered in Nairobi: corruption is widespread in many aspects of life, from bribing a policeman to avoid charges for alleged traffic violations to graft at the highest levels of government, as poignantly described by a British… Read More

Cash for Corn

“When we entered the room where the President received us, he put the briefcase by the wall and left it there. After the meeting we collected the briefcase from where we had left it. On the departing journey I looked in the briefcase and saw that the money had been replaced with fresh corn.” Nasir… Read More

  Anti-corruption suggestion box in kenya (Source: Flickr user lauren_pressly) Transparency International last week released its annual report, which suggests that Kenya is losing the battle against corruption. According to the report, Kenya ranked 154 out of 182 countries surveyed, indicating that both Kenya and Zimbabwe, who are tied, are at the bottom of the… Read More