Ian's Blog

  The people supporting William Ruto and his government are not defending ideas or principles. They are defending access . Access to tenders, appointments, protection, shortcuts, and survival within a collapsing system. They are not trying to fix Kenya; they are trying to extract from it before it burns . This is not politics, it is a hustle. It's a hustler's government after all, right? Those opposing this regime are not perfect, but they are fighting for something fundamentally different: history over handouts, principle over proximity, constitution over convenience . And that difference matters. If you support punitive taxes that crush workers, small businesses, and the unemployed while insulating political elites, then understand this clearly: you are not “pragmatic,” you are complicit. When fuel taxes rise, food prices spike, and PAYE workers are squeezed dry to service loans they never benefited from, silence becomes endorsement. Poverty is not accidental, it is policy. A...

  You walk into the Teachers Service Commission (TSC) offices to follow up on a pension matter, entering what feels like an administrative underworld where years of service fade into paperwork limbo. The Commission operates under the TSC Act 2015 , and there are references to a 2024 amendment — but what is painfully clear to anyone who has walked these corridors is this: we lost Mzee before he ever received his pension. And he is not an exception. He is the pattern. Across Kenya, teachers who have spent decades shaping young minds die waiting for what was legally due to them. Some spend ten to fifteen years chasing their pension , enduring disappearing files, stalled processes, and endless administrative circles. Time passes. People age. Some simply do not make it. What should be a dignified transition into post‑service life becomes a waiting room for death . This is not mere inefficiency. It is cruelty clothed in bureaucracy. For the small minority who receive their pensions with...

  Look at Kenya today, and one cannot help but ask: what exactly is our tradition? What is our rich heritage as a people? For a country so culturally diverse, with over forty distinct ethnic communities, the answers often feel surprisingly thin, fragmented, or borrowed. This absence of clarity did not happen by accident. It is a direct consequence of how colonialism was imposed on Kenya—a deliberate restructuring of society that left deep scars on identity, governance, and cultural continuity. Unlike other African territories where the British practiced indirect rule—such as Uganda, Nigeria, and parts of Ghana—Kenya was subjected to direct rule. In indirect rule systems, colonial administrators relied on existing local governance structures: kings, chiefs, councils, and councils of elders. These structures, while subordinated to the colonial state, were allowed to persist and evolve, creating hybrid systems where indigenous practices could coexist with imposed colonial rules. In K...

  In my opinion, prayer was never meant to be complicated. It was never meant to sound rehearsed, perfect, or impressive. At its core, prayer is simply the language of the human heart speaking honestly to the divine. Somewhere along the way, we turned it into a performance, a formula, or a spiritual exam—yet the most powerful prayers are often the simplest ones. When someone says, “Lord, I don’t understand, but Thy will be done,” that is a prayer of faith. It is not born from certainty, but from surrender. Faith does not always mean knowing what will happen next; sometimes it means accepting that you don’t know, and choosing trust anyway. That quiet surrender, offered without explanations or demands, is itself an act of deep belief. When something good happens and the words “Thank you, Lord” rise naturally from the heart, that is a prayer of thanksgiving. It does not need to be long. Gratitude does not need decoration. Acknowledging goodness, recognizing grace, and saying thank you...

  One morning in 2009, Malaysian officials made a fateful decision: they would attempt to outmaneuver their own constitution. They established the 1Malaysia Development Berhad (1MDB), a fund publicly framed as a “strategic development vehicle” designed to accelerate infrastructure, attract foreign investment, and fast-track national growth. On paper, it was visionary. In practice, it was catastrophic. Rather than maintaining the fund within constitutionally mandated budgetary controls, the government embedded it within opaque corporate structures, special-purpose entities, and government-linked companies that appeared commercial yet carried sovereign backing. This single structural choice shattered the firewall that separates public resources from private discretion. Once the fund’s operations were removed from parliamentary oversight, routine audits, and transparent procurement protocols, systemic accountability collapsed almost immediately. Billions of dollars were borrowed osten...

  Three years have passed since the death of Jose Maria Sison, founder of the Communist Party of the Philippines, yet his ideas resonate with unrelenting relevance, not only in Southeast Asia but across the African continent, particularly in Kenya. Sison articulated a truth that history repeatedly confirms: when the oppressed masses begin to rise, to question entrenched exploitation, and to demand structural change, capital does not respond with reform, dialogue, or accommodation. It responds with coercion, suppression, and fascist tactics—violent attempts to obscure the real roots of crisis while maintaining the prevailing order. Kenya presents a case study in the systemic logic Sison described. For decades, the working majority—the informal sector workers, rural farmers, youth, and urban laborers—has borne the brunt of policies designed to enrich a narrow elite. Structural adjustment programs, debt-driven development projects, and public-private partnerships have concentrated wea...

How is it possible to be politically conscious and not sink into despair in Kenya today? The more one grows aware of the structures, choices, and consequences of power, the less hope there seems to be in the electorate. Political consciousness — the understanding that governance is a product of both leadership and citizen participation — is often a lonely pursuit in a society where bad leadership is fetishized and corruption normalized. When you take the time to study candidates, scrutinize manifestos, and analyze past performance, you inevitably notice patterns. Every election, it seems, the Kenyan voter gravitates toward leaders who flaunt corruption, display impunity, or operate with little regard for the Constitution. Some of these leaders are murderers, directly or indirectly responsible for political violence. Others thrive on patronage, amassing wealth at the expense of public service. Yet despite evidence of incompetence, mismanagement, or outright criminality, they are electe...

  In Kenya, poverty is not an accident. Concentrated wealth is not a natural outcome. Inequality is not something that “just happens.” These are policy choices made by those in power, and since 2013 those choices have repeatedly favoured political patronage, elite enrichment, and reckless borrowing over broad‑based economic empowerment. The result has been rising unemployment, growing poverty, spiralling national debt, and public resources siphoned off into private coffers. The evidence is in the trail of scandals that have marked Kenya’s recent economic history. One of the most egregious examples is the Arror, Kimwarer and Itare dam scandal , a project sold to Kenyans as transformative infrastructure but which became emblematic of mismanagement and corruption. Kenya borrowed tens of billions of shillings to fund these dams — only for the projects to stall and be cancelled amid allegations of irregularities and financial misconduct. The Auditor‑General’s reports show that Kenya d...

African social media audiences, including Kenyans, are not unintelligent. They are being conditioned. What many mistake for a lack of depth, short attention spans, or an appetite for “low-quality content” is not an organic reflection of African minds—it is the predictable outcome of an information ecosystem designed elsewhere, optimized for extraction rather than empowerment. When Africans engage with Western-controlled digital platforms, the relationship is fundamentally unequal. It mirrors the old colonial logic: extract value, shape behavior, and suppress self-definition. This conditioning is particularly visible in Kenya. Observe the proliferation of social media personalities, pages, and news accounts that thrive on scandal, gossip, celebrity drama, and outrage. These trends are not accidental reflections of Kenyan culture—they are curated. They sell, and so they dominate feeds. Content that triggers immediate emotional reaction or short-term virality is promoted, while content t...

  For generations, society has been told that morality is the child of religion—that without scripture, clergy, commandments, rituals, and divine consequences, human beings would descend into chaos. The argument insists that only belief in a higher power can tame the darker impulses of human nature. Yet when you observe the real world honestly, a more uncomfortable truth emerges: morality has never been the exclusive property of religion. In fact, some of the most empathetic, respectful, and fair-minded individuals are those who are not driven by religious dogma at all. This raises an essential question: Is morality possible without religion? And more importantly, why do so many non-religious or agnostic individuals often demonstrate more human decency than the devout? In Kenya, this question is even more relevant. We are a deeply religious nation—churches on every corner, crusades every weekend, prophets on every billboard, and prayer meetings on every problem. Yet, ironically, w...

  One of the most dangerous assumptions in any society is the belief that legality and morality are the same thing. They are not. They never have been. History is full of moments where the law—the very instrument meant to protect justice—was instead used to justify cruelty, inequality, and exploitation. It was once legal to buy and sell human beings. It was legal to deny women the right to vote. It was legal to colonize nations, seize land, and silence entire populations. Legality has always been shaped not by what is right, but by who holds power at a particular moment in time. And whenever we confuse legality with righteousness, we give power the ability to disguise oppression as order. The idea that law equals morality is appealing because it simplifies life. It allows people to outsource their conscience, believing that as long as they follow the rules, they are good citizens. But laws are written, amended, and enforced by human beings—fallible, biased, and often driven by self...

  Human beings carry many faces, but none more layered than the face a man wears before the world. Society teaches men to project strength, certainty, and control, even when life is pulling them in the opposite direction. We admire confident men, follow decisive men, listen to assertive men—but rarely ask what lies beneath those performances. The truth is that every man carries an internal landscape far more complex than the mask he wears daily. And if you would truly like to know what men really are, the moment of revelation comes not when they are comfortable, victorious, or in control, but when they stand in danger or in doubt. It is in those fragile junctures where the truth of a man rises from the depths of the heart, shattering the practiced mask and revealing the reality beneath. Danger exposes what comfort conceals. When a man is threatened—physically, emotionally, socially, or financially—the instincts buried under layers of performance come to the surface. Some men show c...

For decades, Kenyans have faithfully paid taxes with the belief that these contributions form the backbone of a functioning nation. In principle, taxes are supposed to guarantee public goods—healthcare, education, water, electricity, infrastructure, and security. They are the social contract through which a population entrusts its government with the responsibility of managing shared resources for collective benefit. Yet the lived reality in Kenya creates a troubling contradiction: even after paying some of the highest taxes relative to income in Africa, citizens still finance nearly all essential services from their own pockets. The result is a deeply unfair system where taxpayers carry a double burden—one through the official tax system, another through private spending for services the state has failed to provide. This raises an uncomfortable but necessary question: what exactly are we paying taxes for? Consider healthcare. Every Kenyan knows that walking into a public hospital oft...