Notes from Kenya

Some tidbits I picked up during the few days I spent in Kenya…reminded me of how much I miss blogging from Nairobi…so many storos:

– Apparently Coke’s biggest competitor in Kenya is Safaricom – in the battle for disposable income Coke is losing – spend money on a soda or on buying credit? Guess who wins.

– The Libyans are all over Kenya, rumor has it they are buying real estate in chunks.

– More rumors – the Mungiki madness is really a proxy war about property and rent collection. Supposedly Mungiki had taken over collecting rents from slumlords who just happen to be very wealthy and connected folks and the slumlords are fighting back using their government connections. Sounded very spurious, but the source was well-placed to be in the know about these things. That’s quickly neutralized by the fact that he was blazed when giving us the story.

– Only a third of the kshs 210 million that was sent out to constituencies for youth groups has been paid out. Such a shame…wonder what the bottleneck is? The fund requirements are listed here (Youth Affairs Ministry is looking much better than the last time I checked it out). Some MPs are claiming that the requirements are too stringent. Apparently the banks can’t help being banks. On the brighter side, according to Makokha’s article a stunning 92% of the awardees have been women!