KenGen, Kenya Power, Pipeline in hunt for CEOs.

Kengen, Kenya Power, and Kenya Pipeline are in hunt for new CEOs. Eddy Njoroge (Kengen) is expected to resign, Joseph Njoroge (Kenya Power) has been nominated as Principal secretary in the energy docket, and while the contract for Selest Kilinda of Kenya Pipeline came to an end last month.  The cash rich parastatals control billions of shillings directly, and indirectly through the contracts for the many infrastructure projects they undertake.

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Budget to be read on Thursday.

The budget will be read on Thursday. The cabinet secretary for Treasury, Henry Rotich, is expected to unveil the government's fiscal policy for the 2013/2014 financial year. Of key concern will be to watch the government's commitment to devolution, with many analysts keen to see how much will be allocated to the counties. Currently, the senate and national assembly members are embroiled in a dispute over who has the final say on the county budgetary affairs. Analysts will also be watching to see whether there will be an increase in taxes of essential goods such as milk and bread to finance MPs salaries, and the two tiers of government.

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Opinion: Caution must be taken in School's latptops project.

When Erin Hayba began a project to bring computers to solar-powered schools in the world's biggest refugee camp, there were plenty of sceptics. "People said, 'No, this can't happen, you're in a refugee camp, why don't not stick with paper and pencil and chalkboards?'" she recalls.

Two years later, there are 215 computers spread among 32 primary, seven secondary and four vocational schools in the Dadaab complex in north-east Kenya, home to more than 400,000 people, mostly from nearby Somalia. Each school has a solar panel.

"Many of the youth told me they want to learn computers so they can get a job when they go back to Somalia," she told the eLearning Africa international conference in Windhoek, Namibia. "Teachers are saying some students are coming back to school who might have dropped out."

But the intentions of the world's leading tech companies came under scrutiny during a recent

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Africa registers growth in wealth funds.

Africa is experiencing the strongest growth in new sovereign wealth funds in the world, a newreport by JPMorgan Asset Management shows.

During the past two years, 15 state funds have been set up or are being considered in Africa, Patrick Thomson, the global head of sovereigns at JPMorgan Asset told Bloomberg news in an interview.

With commodity prices rising, African countries are putting their surpluses into government-owned funds designed to manage a country’s wealth for future generations. Angola set up its $5 billion state

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Mutula’s widow Nduku Kilonzo joins race for Makueni senate seat.

The late Makueni senator Mutula Kilonzo’s widow Nduku Kilonzo has joined the race to succeed her late husband. This comes barely three days after her step daughter, Kethi Kilonzo, had declared interest in the seat- a move that is likely to split the Mutula family further.

She made the announcement in Machakos, after attending a memorial service for the late Machakos Catholic Bishop Urbanus Kioko which was also attended by President Uhuru Kenyatta.
Fielding questions from journalists she said; “Yes I confirm to you that I’m in the race.”
She however declined to name the party she will run on, promising to divulge that at a later date.

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Kenya top of US Spying list.

A ranking of countries by the number of interceptions of Internet communication places the country first in Sub-Saharan Africa and second only to Egypt on the continent.

Kenya is marked out in yellow on the so-called “world heat map”, alongside oil-rich Saudi Arabia, Jordan, Germany, and the United States with tens of billions of interceptions between them.
Sunday’s disclosures are the latest in a series that begun last Thursday when the British newspaper, The Guardian, revealed that the US has been carrying out a top-secret government data surveillance programme in which it routinely obtained millions of phone records from technology companies.

The programme, code-named Prism, has enabled national security officials to collect e-mail, videos, documents and other material from at least nine US companies over six years, including Google,

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The right keywords to use on your CV.

Getting a job is hard anywhere in the world the days. Despite all manner of advice we receive on how to get a job, there is simply no one way of getting a job. Stellar grades might work; powerful networks might work, so too is exemplary work and leadership skills. However, increasingly, the all important reason is that your CV doesn’t have the right keywords.

Companies’ nowadays automate the CV screening process by using specialized software to look for certain keywords. These applicant-tracking systems, which are used by almost every large employer, score candidates based on rough measures like the number of keyword matches between a job

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HELB to delay disbursing loans.

The Higher Education Loans Board (HELB) says students will have to wait for at least one month before the loans are disbursed, as it is waiting an allocation from Treasury. The  budget will be read this week. In earlier proposed moves, HELB had sought to have the minimum allocation per student increased to kshs.40,000 from the current kshs.60,000, to offset rising inflation. Over 90 percent of public University students that apply for HELB loans are usually allocated loans.

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Kenya dethrones South Africa in new technology race.

Adapted from TechCentral.co.za: South Africa appears to be losing its status as the preferred investment destination on the continent for international technology companies. That honour, increasingly, is going to Kenya, which may be on the cusp of a technology-fuelled era of economic growth.

When apartheid ended in 1994, there was a flood of investment into South Africa by international technology companies. Microsoft, IBM, Intel, Motorola, Xerox, Hewlett-Packard: they all poured millions into establishing local offices to serve not only South Africa but often markets across Southern Africa and even sub-Saharan Africa. The view was that South Africa was the gateway to the continent.

Twenty years later, and perceptions are shifting.
In South Africa, economic growth has flat-lined. In the technology space, a weak policy making and regulatory environment where fast and smart decision making just doesn’t happen, coupled with a

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Cracks emerge in Mau Mau settlment deal.

The British government announced compensation for Kenyans abused during a rebellion against colonial rule in the years leading up to independence

Foreign Secretary William Hague told the House of Commons more than 5,000 Kenyans will be compensated in a package worth nearly 31 million dollars, which translates to just about half a million

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Kenyan prostitutes embrace technology, and reap a windfall.

Hundreds of Kenyan call girls have subscribed to various sex chat sites, which feature live webcam models streaming direct from their homes and studios to various parts of the world, an investigation by Sunday nation shows. Modern technology has changed the face of Kenyan prostitution with the practice moving from poorly-lit back streets to some of the most exclusive estates in major cities.

In the coastal tourist haven of Mombasa, many twilight girls who used to linger around night clubs and guest houses are moving to secluded up market areas where they procure clients over the Internet.

Instead of physically booking rooms with their clients in lodges, the girls now use modern video transmission methods such as Skype to reach clients the world over, for a good fee.

The sophistication of prostitution became evident last week when police raided a five-bedroom luxury house in the posh Nyali area of Mombasa and recovered 15 laptops, all connected to wireless Internet (WiFi). The house also had high-speed broadband.

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4 of the most successful Mobile apps in Kenya.

An increasing number of young Kenyans are developing software, apps and cellphone-based programmes to help small-scale farmers increase their agricultural skills and yields. At the most recent PivotEast, East Africa’s premier mobile start-ups competition and conference, held in June 2012, three out of five finalists were young entrepreneurs who had created agrarian apps.
In whole, Kenya is proving to be a hot ground for mobile innovations, here are some of the five most well known.

1. M-Farm.
M-Farm is one of many services that have been developed in the last five years on the back of Kenya’s lead in information and communications technology (ICT), particularly mobile phones. With more than 6 400 farmers in its database, farmers couldn’t have asked for anything better. Three young software developers in their early to mid-twenties started the company in 2011 to provide market prices to

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The 10 Least Stressful Jobs of 2013.

Every job comes with stress, but some are just easier on the mind and body.
Career site CareerCast.com compiled a list of the least stressful jobs of 2013, comparing 11 factors like travel, public visibility, competitiveness, growth potential, deadlines and physical demands. The lower the score, the more relaxing the job.

Which jobs are the most laid-back?

1. University professor/ Lecturer
It’s true they have to create course work, give lectures, put in office hours, and grade hundreds of papers, but long summer vacations and seasonal breaks help wash away job-related stress. However, those looking to break into the field face serious competition, and teachers without the comfort of tenure may feel a bit more on edge.

2. Seamstress/tailor
Tailoring is mostly a low-stress job in a quiet work environment, but that’s probably not so true for those sewing costumes for big-budget productions with strict deadlines. However, CareerCast

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5 Things That Could Hurt Your Career- But You Didn’t Know.

Some of the ways you could damage your career are obvious - poor work performance, shouting at your boss and stealing from the company are all pretty well-known career-harmers. But there are less obvious things you might be doing that can also damage your career without you realizing it, and they're worth paying attention to.
Here are five ways you might harm your work progression that might not be so obvious.

1. Staying at one job for too long. You might think that loyalty to an employer would be valued, and it is, but there's also a point where staying too long at one company can raise questions for future prospective employers about how you'll adapt to new environments.
(You can combat this, however, by demonstrating adaptability: Showing a progression in responsibilities and job titles, and finding other ways to show that you're flexible, open to change and don't have an insular viewpoint.)

2. Being too good at something you don't like. In general, the better you are at something, the more

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Samsung Galaxy smartphones overtake Apple IPhone in market share.

Samsung Galaxy is overtaking the Apple IPhone in the Smartphones market, a new market research shows. This is attributed to increasing advertising spend by Samsung, and a lower price for Samsung products as compared to Apple products. Equally, Apple has not had any major IPhone product development in over a year, signaling that the company may be comfortable with the current

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