Real Business Is in Policy (Part IX): Who Controls the Payment Gate?
Will Kenya’s draft payment rules make it easier and safer for ordinary people to earn, receive and use their money, or tighten the gate without improving the road?
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All commentary22 articles
The Party Is Also a Map: Kenya’s 2027 Contest for Citizen Power
How parties, nominations and coalitions shape citizen power in Kenya’s 2027 election, across government-aligned formations, opposition organisations, emerging movements and citizens outside those camps.
Read articleReal Business Is in Policy (Part VII): The Tender Begins Before the Tender
How tax concessions, financing and equipment-use rules can affect contractor competition, and what evidence is needed to assess public value.
Read articleReal Business Is in Policy (Part VI): Finance the Learning. Prove the Capability.
Financing opens the school gate. Capability is proved when skill, experience, credentials and a first chance can be shown, not when money alone has been counted.
Read articleReal Business Is in Policy (Part V): Who Owns the Gate to Opportunity?
Placement and funding begin the journey. Learning, assessment, credentials and access to work depend on further decisions. Who makes those gates fair?
Read articleReal Business Is in Policy (Part IV): The School Gate and the Debt Ledger
Kenya’s education funding reform asks who gains access today, who repays tomorrow, and who carries the risk when education does not immediately become income.
Read articleTwiga Foods and the Affordable Loss Principle
An African entrepreneurship case study examining Twiga Foods, affordable loss, scaling commitments and the cost of discovering a viable business model, with a Corporate Governance Console simulation on commitment gates.
Read articleTribal Numbers: Count Us, Then Account to Us
Regional registration totals describe where registered voters live. They do not establish ethnic voting blocs or a leader’s authority to deliver those votes. Age, gender and livelihoods reveal circumstances representation should address.
Read articleReal Business Is in Policy (Part III): Coffee, Cash Crops and the Chief
Part III: Kenya’s coffee economy shows that markets are not merely discovered, they are designed through land, labour, licences, chiefs and power.
Read articleThe Kenya Sugar Belt: Leasing, Capability and the Ledger Nobody Can See
Four state sugar mills were leased, not sold, in May 2025. Farmer payments and milling have improved at some sites; disclosure, worker arrears and creditor claims remain unresolved. This fact-checked case asks whether leasing has produced capability, or only a change of gatekeeper.
Read articlePan Paper Mills, Webuye: Industrial Revival or Industrial Capability?
Pan Paper Mills collapsed in 2009 and failed a state-backed revival in 2010. Since 2016, Rai Group has rebuilt it around recycled fibre. This fact-checked commentary and governance simulation asks what would actually prove capability rather than repeat an announcement.
Read articleThe Magadi Test: When Sovereignty Must Become Capability
Kenya is right to demand more value from Lake Magadi. The real test is whether it can enforce accountability and build downstream industry without replacing one opaque arrangement with another.
Read articleOf Platform User Journey and Customer Lifetime Value: UmojaLink at the Inflection Point
An African-philosophy-informed board simulation on platform journeys, coupled lifetime value, consent, community and renewal.
Read articleWhen the Institution of Trust Becomes the Risk: A KUSCCO Governance Simulation
KUSCCO's liquidation is not only a story about money. It is a case of evidence, incentives, dissent and accountability failing to meet at the same decision table.
Read articleFor Every Answer, There Is a Question
Best Practice remembers what worked. The Use Journey reveals what is happening. Relevance evidence turns better questions into Next Practice.
Read articleMzungu Research vs Mwafrika Research: Who Holds the Knowledge?
A doctoral defence and a jua kali engine on the same morning. Formal research makes knowledge contestable; apprenticeship makes it consequential. Africa’s opportunity is not to crown one laboratory and dismiss the other, but to build institutions where footnote and fingerprint can interrogate each other.
Read articleFrom Ethnic Geography to Convivial Democracy
We live convivially. Why do we vote territorially? Applying Paul Gilroy’s idea of convivial culture to Kenya’s constituencies, and asking whether representation should begin from the systems through which Kenyans already share a life.
Read articleOf Crowdsourcing, Crowdfunding and the Linda Mwananchi Movement-Building Story
Linda Mwananchi is proving that citizens can finance and expand a political movement through small contributions and digital networks. Its deeper test is whether it can convert a crowd into a transparent, citizen-governed institution capable of restraining, and surviving, its most popular leaders.
Read articleThe Candidate Is Also a Map: Sifuna and the Test of a Civic Movement
Citizen TV’s The Explainer presented Edwin Sifuna as Kenya’s “man of the moment.” But the more important question is whether his political moment can become a civic movement, one capable of organising citizens around shared values and problems rather than merely rearranging Kenya’s familiar ethnic blocs.
Read articleReal Business Is in Policy (Part II): What Kenya’s Post-Vision 2030 Blueprint Could Mean for Enterprise
Part II: Eric Omanga examines President William Ruto’s proposed post-Vision 2030 economic blueprint and asks how national policy can become real markets, enterprises, jobs and public value.
Read articleReal Business Is in Policy (Part I)
The biggest business opportunities often emerge before customers begin buying, when policy defines the rules, redirects money and exposes the solutions society still lacks.
Read articleThe Map Is Also a Ballot: Rethinking Kenya’s Constituencies to Defeat Negative Ethnicity
Kenya’s electoral boundaries do more than determine where citizens vote. They influence who politicians must persuade, who is treated as an outsider and whether elections reward civic coalitions or ethnic fortresses.
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